To Secretariat General of the European Commission,

From: Belen Balanya, Corporate Europe Observatory

Rue d’Edimbourg 26, 1050 Brussels.

19 December 2022 RE: Access to Documents related to Green Hydrogen

Dear sirs,

Referring to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to EU documents and to the 'Aarhus Regulation', I would herewith like to ask for access to the following:

1. A list of the meetings/ discussions (including those held face to face, online, by telephone etc) that have taken place since 1 January 2022 between Commission President van der Leyen and/or her cabinet on one hand and representatives from the European Hydrogen Backbone (EHB) initiative and/or 'Gas for Climate: a path to 2050' in which the issue of hydrogen infrastructure was discussed (including Hydrogen Partnerships with third countries).

2. Any records, minutes or notes of these meetings/discussions.

3. Any briefings prepared for these meetings.

4. All correspondence exchanged since 1 January 2022 (including SMS & any other type of messages processed through phone apps - eg., WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc, recorded voice messages, emails, letters and attached documents) between Commission President van der Leyen and/or her cabinet on one hand and representatives from the European Hydrogen Backbone (EHB) initiative and/or 'Gas for Climate: a path to 2050' on the other.

In the interests of good administration, Corporate Observatory Europe requests that the response clearly identifies the documents held by the Commission in relation to each of these categories and clearly indicates to which category the disclosed documents relate.

To the extent possible, our preference is to receive documents in electronic format. Documents that cannot be sent in electronic format should be sent to Corporate Europe Observatory, Rue d’Edimbourg 26, 1050 Brussels – to the attention of Belén Balanyá. Should you transmit documents to us by regular post, we kindly ask you to announce us in advance in this regard.

I would like to make clear I prefer you produce the documents on a rolling basis.

At no point should the Commission’s search for—or deliberations concerning—certain documents delay the production of others that the Commission has already retrieved and elected to produce.

Should my request be denied wholly or partially, please explain the denial or all deletions referring to specific exemptions in the regulation. Also I expect the partial release of documents, in case of partial exemption according to article 4.6.

I reserve the right to appeal.

Please confirm having received this application. I look forward to your reply within 15 business days, according to the regulation.

Thank you for your assistance.

Belen Balanya

Corporate Europe Observatory

Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

I confirm I received your message of March 13

Kind regards,

Belen Balanya