Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

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 and the list of documents held since 2015 until now (including emails) between the European Union institutions and parties involved in the investigation of the MOU between China and Hungary on a high speed railway between Budapest and Belgrade.

In 2013, China signed the MOU of $2.89 billion with Hungary and Serbia for constructing high speed railway of 350 kilometer between Budapest and Belgrade. However, as an EU member state, Hungary has been investigated by the European Commission for possible infringement of EU public tender laws. The preliminary infringement proceedings have been initiated in May 2016 by the European Commission.

Yours faithfully,

Tong Liu

Access Info Europe
Cava de San Miguel 8, 4 centro.
28005 Madrid Spain

Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

Please pass this on to the person who reviews confirmatory applications.

I am filing the following confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'correspondence and the list of documents on investigation of Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway MOU'.

Subject: Request for access to documents - confirmatory application

Reference number: GESTDEM 2017/4329

Following the European Commission's denial of access to the correspondence and the list of documents I requested on 24 July 2017, I am hereby submitting a confirmatory application pursuant to Article 7(2) of Regulation (EC) 1049/2001.

The full request chain can be found on the AsktheEU.org website here:
https://www.asktheeu.org/es/request/corr...

The ground for denial of the access to the documents is the exception of protection of investigations laid down in Article 4 of the Regulation (EC) 1049/2001, stating that ¨the disclosure of the documents at this point of time would affect the climate of mutual trust between the authorities of the Member State and the Commission, which is required to enable them to resolve the case without having to refer it to the Court of Justice¨.

However, what is meant by the climate of mutual trust here is questionable. The Commission has failed to explain why transparency would necessarily and per se impact negatively on the mutual trust between it and the Member State. Is the Commission asserting that the possible conflict can only be settled between the parties with possible compromises that might not be acceptable to the public because the public’s rights and interests might be affected in the process? Again, the Commission has failed to establish how transparency would damage mutual trust.

The Commission further stated that partial access to the documents was considered but then refused because they believed that the information that would remain unredacted, would be “meaningless or illegible” after removing the confidential elements. In that scenario, whether the information left on the documents would be meaningless or illegible should be judged by the readers based on the scope of the information and their interpretation of it rather than by the Commission. I therefore ask that you provide me with the documents in their redacted form.

Furthermore, the Commission states that, as required by Regulation 1049/2001, consideration has been given to an overriding public interest in disclosure of the documents, and that they have not been able to identify such a public interest.

I hereby argue that, contrary of the Commission's assumption, there are indeed multiple public interests in access to these documents. First, for various companies both in EU and non-EU countries, not knowing whether the investigation process was conducted fully and fairly, may dissuade these companies from participating in future public tenders, hence damaging their commercial interests. Dissuading participation by any companies in tenders, in the EU or in this Member State, will in turn have a negative effect on investment in the EU and hence in the economic interests of all EU citizens.

In addition, one of the objectives of the fundamental right to documents in the EU treaties and Regulation 1049/2001, is that it permits the public to hold the European Union accountable for its conduct and for how public funds are spent. Especially for the citizens of the Member State, and all other EU citizens who will use this high speed rail link in the future, it is important for them to access the relevant documents in order to know how this transport link came about and how their tax money was used.

Moreover, there has been an on-going public debate on corruption of the government in the Member State, and journalists and civil society, as public watchdogs, need to be able to access these documents now in order to investigate any possible problems or wrongdoing, or to rest assured that there was none.

Given the particular concerns existing at present about whether this Member State (Hungary) is observing democratic processes, it is particularly important that Commission be open about formal investigation procedures such as this one, in order that the public can scrutinize the process and be assured that the Commission is doing everything it can to uphold fair procurement processes. A lack of transparency about this risks undermining public trust in the European Commission.

Thus, it is of great interest and importance for private sector companies, for the general public, and for the journalists and civil society, to access these documents now to safeguard transparent, just, and accountable investigation process.

In addition, I note that the two links the Commission provided for the existing publicly available documents are not, in fact, accessible for free by the public because they are owned by Wolters Kluwer, a private global information services company. Therefore, please kindly also send copies of those documents.

In light of the arguments above, I hereby request full access to the correspondence and a list of documents held since 2015 until now (including emails) between the European Union institutions and parties involved in the investigation of the MOU between China and Hungary on a high speed railway between Budapest and Belgrade with reference number GESTDEM 2017/4329.

A full history of my request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/corr...

Yours faithfully,
Tong Liu
Access Info Europe
Cava de San Miguel 8, 4 centro.
28005 Madrid Spain