Correspondence and exchanges on pesticide reduction law (SUR)
Dear Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs,
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:
all correspondence since 01 August 2022, (including emails, letters and attached documents, and SMS & any other type of messages processed through phone apps - eg., WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc, recorded voice messages), regarding the revision of the Sustainable Use of pesticides Directive (SUD) and the proposal for a Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products as published on 22 June 2022, between the European Commission (President, Vice-Presidents, Comissioners & cabinets, DGs and officials) on the one hand, and on the other hand, one or several of these entities: Croplife Europe, CropLife International, ECCA (European Crop Care Association), Copa-Cogeca, CEJA, Business Europe, CEFIC, FarmEurope, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, Corteva, Agriculture&Progress, CEFS (European Federation of Sugar Manufacturers), Cargill, CEPM/Maiz’Europ’, CIBE (International Confederation of European Beet Growers), Coceral, the Grain Club; and anybody acting on their behalf, such as law firms or lobby firms including EPPA, Hume Brophy or Fleishman Hillard.
I would also like to request a list of the meetings/ discussions (including those held face to face, online, by telephone etc) between the above-mentioned entities, with detailed minutes and any other reports of such meetings having occurred, since 01 August 2022, as well as any records, minutes or notes of these meetings/discussions and any briefings prepared for these meetings. My request does not include submissions to public EU consultations.
I am asking you to not redact any name of EU employees, professional lobbyists and the organisations and companies they work for, as such data cannot be considered personal data under Regulations 1049/2001 on access to documents and 45/2001 on data protection. Similarly, I kindly urge you to not apply an excessive interpretation of the clause on commercial secrets under 1049/2001.
Should this request be denied wholly or partially, please explain the denial or all deletions by referring to specific exemptions in the regulation, and by justifying your interpretation of the applicable legislation. 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 Hans van Scharen. Should you transmit documents to us by regular post, we kindly ask you to announce us in advance in this regard.
I look forward to a positive consideration of this request.
Yours faithfully,
Hans van Scharen
Dear Sir or Madam,
We hereby acknowledge the receipt of your request for access to documents
sent on 03/04/2023 and registered on 04/04/2023 under the case number
2023/2068.
We will handle your request within 15 working days as of the date of
registration. The time-limit expires on 28/04/2023. We will let you know
if we need to extend this time limit for additional 15 working days.
To find more information on how we process your personal data, please see
[1]the privacy statement.
Yours faithfully,
Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and
SMEs - Access to Documents
European Commission
References
Visible links
1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/principles-and...
Dear Sir,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered on 04/04/2023
under the above mentioned reference number.
Your application is currently being handled. However, we are not in a
position to complete the handling of your application within the time
limit of 15 working days, which expired on 28/04/2023.
An extended time limit is needed as the application concerns different
Services under consultation.
Therefore, we have to extend the time limit with 15 working days in
accordance with Article 7(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding
public access to documents. The new time limit expires on 24/05/2023.
We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours sincerely,
DG GROW – Access to documents team
European Commission
Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and
SMEs
DG GROW/B1 – Planning and Briefings
