List of requests unanswered due to lack of postal address

La demande est réussie.

Access Info Europe

Dear Secretariat General (SG),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:

I would like to access a list of the access to documents requests, or copies of these requests, that have been sent to the European Commission and that have not been registered or answered due to the failure by the requester to provide a postal address, as required by the Commission access to documents policy, dated 1st of April 2014.

Thank you in advance.

Yours faithfully,
Access Info Europe

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Thank you for your request for access to documents. Unfortunately you have not indicated your postal address that is required for registering and handling your request in line with the procedural requirements. Please send us your full postal address at your earliest convenience. Pending your reply, we reserve the right to refuse the registration of your request.
You may, of course, use directly the electronic form for entering your request:

http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/...

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

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Access Info Europe

Dear Secretariat General (SG),

The postal address of Access Info Europe is:

Cava de San Miguel 8, 4º centro
28005 Madrid
Spain

Yours faithfully,

Access Info Europe

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Dear Access Info Europe,

Thank you for sending us your postal address.

We hereby acknowledge the receipt of your email of 16/10/2014 registered on 23/10/2014 under the reference number GESTDEM 2014/4941.

In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, you will receive a response to your request within 15 working days: 13/11/2014.

If this deadline needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.

Best regards,

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

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Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Dear Access Info Europe,

Following the submission of your postal address, we have registered your request in our system. In order to be able to address you officially in our notifications and replies, could you please confirm – by return of e-mail – that we can address the letters to your legal representative, Ms Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info Europe?

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Bernadett BERCZELI
Access to Documents

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

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Access Info Europe

Dear Secretariat General (SG),

I hereby confirm that you may address your letters to our legal representative, Ms Helen Darbishire.
Thank you in advance.

Yours faithfully,

Access Info Europe

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Darbishire,

Please find attached a preliminary copy of the answer to your request for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, GESTDEM 2014/4941.

The original note will be sent to you by registered post.

Best regards,

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

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Access Info Europe

Dear Mr Kröger,

Thank you for your response in which you inform us that any requests for documents which do not provide a postal address are not registered in the GESTDEM system dedicated to public access to documents requests.

Whilst there may be no registration in GESTDEM, it is nevertheless the case that the requests themselves and the responses asking for postal addresses are documents that are held by the Commission. The requests that have been refused on the basis of lack of postal address can thus be provided by looking through your email responses to the requestors. In Access Info Europe’s request, we ask for a list of requests or copies of the requests.

We thereby repeat our request for copies of these requests and/or the responses. Since there is a new policy of refusing to register requests, we had presumed that there would be some monitoring system in place for evaluating the impact of that policy on members of the public making access to documents requests under the rights in the EU treaties and Regulation 1049/2001.

In the first instance, in order to narrow your search, we would be happy to have copies of all replies to requests in which there was a refusal to register sent by the Secretariat General (rather than the entire Commission) for the period 1 September 2013 to 30 October 2014. We are happy to receive copies of these responses with the personal data of the requesters (names, email addresses, phone numbers) removed.
Thank you very much in advance.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Darbishire

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Dear Mr Darbishire,

Following your email of 30 October, we will carry out a manual search for the period from 1 April (i.e. the starting date of the administrative practice in question) to 30 October 2014 and the search will be done for requests that have been addressed to the Secretariat-General. Given the technical difficulties I already described, this will take some time to complete and we will come back to you by mid-November.

Best regards,

Martin KRÖGER
Head of Unit

European Commission
Secretariat-General
Unit B4: Transparency

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Access Info Europe

Dear Mr Kröger,

Thank you for your message.
As indicated previously, we are happy for now to receive information about refusals to register requests sent to the Secretariat General.
We are, however, interested in knowing about any refusals to register requests by the Secretariat General from 1 September 2013 onwards. We know that there were some refusals to register made in late 2013.

With best regards,

Helen Darbishire (Ms)

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

21 Attachments

Dear Ms Darbishire,

 

We refer to your e-mail dated 16 October 2014, in which you submitted a
request for access to documents, registered on 23 October 2014 (following
the communication of your postal address) under reference number Gestdem
2014/4941.

In your application, you requested access to a list of the access to
documents requests, or copies of these requests, that have been sent to
the European Commission and that have not been registered or answered due
to the failure by the requester to provide a postal address, as required
by the Commission access to documents policy, dated 1st of April 2014.

 

By letter of 29 October 2014, unit SG/B4 informed you that the Commission
does not have the technical tools at its disposal to retrieve documents
falling under the scope of your request, as by their nature they are not
registered in our application dedicated to requests for access to
documents.

By e-mail of 30 October 2014, you repeated your request, asking the
Commission to carry out a manual search for the documents requested. You
specified that, in order to narrow [the Commission's] search, [you] would
be happy to have copies of all replies to requests in which there was a
refusal to register sent by the Secretariat General (rather than the
entire Commission) for the period 1 September 2013 to 30 October 2014, and
that you are happy to receive copies of these responses with the personal
data of the requesters (names, email addresses, phone numbers) removed.

 

Following a thorough, manual search as requested by you, please be
informed that:

-          the Secretariat-General has identified 24 access-to-documents
requests that it did not register for lack of a (valid) postal address
after the entry into force of the Commission's new policy regarding the
provision of a valid postal address, on 1 April 2014:

o    ARES(2014)3624215 (document 1)

o    ARES(2014)3624252 (document 2)

o    ARES(2014)3830637 (document 3)

o    ARES(2014)3830670 (document 4)

o    ARES(2014)3830701 (document 5)

o    ARES(2014)3830722 (document 6)

o    ARES(2014)3830750 (document 7)

o    ARES(2014)3624009 (document 8)

o    ARES(2014)3624070 (document 9)

o    ARES(2014)3624141 (document 10)

o    ARES(2014)3624169 (document 11)

o    ARES(2014)3623364 (document 12)

o    ARES(2014)3623416 (document 13)

o    ARES(2014)3824251 (document 14)

o    ARES(2014)3824314 (document 15)

o    ARES(2014)3824323 (document 16)

o    ARES(2014)3824331 (document 17)

o    ARES(2014)3624407 (document 18)

o    ARES(2014)3624428 (document 19)

o    ARES(2014)3830859 (document 20)

o    ARES(2014)3624483 (document 21)

o    ARES(2014)3624508 (document 22)

o    ARES(2014)3677057 (document 23)

o    ARES(2014)3677105 (document 24)

Documents 8, 9, 10 and 11 were processed through the AsktheEU.org website
and I therefore consider that these documents are in your possession and
fall outside the scope of your application.

            Please find enclosed a copy of the remaining documents falling
under the scope of your request.

-          as regards the timeframe from 1 September 2013 to 31 March
2014, for which you expressed an interest only through your e-mail of
October 2014, the Secretariat-General has identified seven applications
which it closed for lack of a proper identification of the applicants.
However, the closure of these cases was not linked to the Commission's new
policy regarding the provision of a postal address, which entered into
force only on 1 April 2014, but to a specific need to identify the
applicants concerned, following well-founded doubts about the applicants'
identity. These documents therefore fall outside the scope of your
request.

Kind regards,

 

Martin Kröger
Head of Unit

 
[1]ec logo
European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency
BERL 05/340

B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 29 99559
[2][email address]

 

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Access Info Europe

Dear Mr Kröger,

Thank you for your message and for the documents you provided.
As the focus of our request is the denial of access to documents based on the lack of a valid postal address, we would like to gain access to the additional seven applications you have identified.
We would also like to know the total number of requests made to the General Secretariat concerning access to documents after April 1st 2014.

With best regards,

Helen Darbishire

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Dear Ms Darbishire,

I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your email of 20/11/2014 registered on 20/11/2014 under the reference numbers GESTDEM 2014/5554.

In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, you will receive a response to your request within 15 working days: 11/12/2014.

If this deadline needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.

Best regards,

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

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Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

5 Attachments

Dear Ms Darbishire,

Please find attached a preliminary copy of the answer to your request for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, GESTDEM 2014/5554.

The original note will be sent to you by registered post; annexes only transferred by email.

Best regards,

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM

European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit SG.B4 – Transparency

Dear Mr Kröger,

Thank you for your message and for the documents you provided.
As any request for access to documents made to the Secretariat-General is recorded on the GestDem database, is it not possible to extract or retrieve the total number of requests made after April 1st 2014 that have been registered there? Would you please be so kind as to check this?

With best regards,

Helen Darbishire

Secrétariat général de la Commission européenne

Dear Ms Darbishire,

In response to your email from 12 December 2014, I regret to inform you that our database cannot generate the data you are interested by a simple routine operation. Due to the design of the system, retrieving statistical data unfortunately involves always the participation of experts in our IT department. Given the related workload, this operation cannot be carried out on an ad hoc basis but should be limited to the preparation of the Commission's annual report on access to documents which the Commission submits to the European Parliament.

Best regards,

Martin Kröger

_________________________________
Martin KRÖGER
Head of Unit
European Commission
Secretariat-General
Unit B4: Transparency

BERL 5/325
+32 2 29 99559
B-1049 Brussels
[email address]

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Pam Bartlett Quintanilla a laissé une remarque ()

Access Info Europe has presented a complaint to the European Ombudsman about this postal addresses policy, which came into effect on 1 April 2014.

Access Info believes that citizens should not be required to present a personal postal address in order to ask questions or make requests using their right of access to information. This is because access to public information is a fundamental human right which anybody should be able to exercise freely and efficiently.

To read more about the complaint, please visit: http://www.access-info.org/eut/12670