DG Trade and free flow of data
Dear Directorate-General for Trade,
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:
- minutes and other reports of the meetings of the European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström and other officials and representatives of his DG about all the issue related to digital trade (including those of Data Flows, data localisation and data transfer) with private providers of digital services (including tech companies and tech industry groups such as ESF, Digital Europe or BusinessEurope, but also lobby consultancies, law firms and others working for tech industry clients or otherwise representing the tech industry) in the EU between January 1st 2012 and today;
- also should be provided all the mentioned above information related with the DG Trade launching - on the day of the adoption of the “privacy shield” adequacy decision - of an Inter-Services Consultation on data flows in preparation of presenting a proposal at the TTIP and TiSA rounds, where more than 10 DGs contributed.
I would prefer you to produce the documents on a rolling basis, rather than waiting until the full response is ready, and I would be pleased to receive an initial list of all documents as soon as possible.
Errekatxu Kalea nº13
48902 Bilbao, España
Yours faithfully,
Ekaitz Cancela
Dear Mr Cancela,
Thank you for your e-mail dated 20/06/2017. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered today
under reference number GestDem 2017/3682.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, your application
will be handled within 15 working days. The time limit will expire on
12/07/2017. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be
informed in due course.
You have lodged your application via the AsktheEU.org website. Please note
that this is a private website which has no link with any institution of
the European Union. Therefore the European Commission cannot be held
accountable for any technical issues or problems linked to the use of this
system.
Yours faithfully,
Access to Documents Team
[1]60^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[2][DG TRADE request email]
Dear Mr Cancela,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered on 21/06/2017
under the above mentioned reference number.
The initial examination of this request leads to the conclusion that it
concerns a large number of documents which is also why it took us until
today to get back to you. We would like to inform you that so far we have
identified 69 documents that would fall under the scope of your request.
We approach you now in particular regarding the first part of your request
("minutes and other reports of the meetings of the European Commissioner
for Trade, Cecilia Malmström and other officials and representatives of
his DG about all the issue related to digital trade (including those of
Data Flows, data localisation and data transfer) with private providers of
digital services (including tech companies and tech industry groups such
as ESF, Digital Europe or BusinessEurope, but also lobby consultancies,
law firms and others working for tech industry clients or otherwise
representing the tech industry) in the EU between January 1st 2012 and
today)".
We prepared a list of documents identified as regards this first point of
your request: please find attached a list of these documents and please
note that this list may be amended in the event that we find additional
documents relevant to your request.
Regulation 1049/2001 provides for a possibility to confer with applicants
in order to find a fair solution when an application relates to a very
long document or concerns a very large number of documents. Article 6(3)
of the same Regulation provides that, in the event of an application
relating to a very long document or to a very large number of documents,
the institution concerned may confer with the applicant informally, with a
view to finding a fair solution.
Based on the above-mentioned provision, we would kindly ask you if you
could narrow down the scope of the first part of your request ( i.e.
specifying a concrete set of stakeholders, the subject matter(s) and/or
timeframe covered) . That would reduce the request to a more manageable
amount of documents and would enable us to identify and then release
documents relevant to the topic of your interest.
To give you an idea of the overall timeline, we would expect to be able to
process a batch of up to 30 documents within 30 working days. This
includes:
- assessment of the content of the documents in light of the
exceptions of Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001;
- third-party consultations under Article 4(4) of Regulation
1049/2001;
- final assessment of the documents in light of the comments
received;
- drafting of the reply;
- redaction of those parts of the documents to which one or
several exceptions apply(ies);
- internal approval of the draft decision on your request;
- preparation of the reply and the documents for dispatch.
It follows that, according to our first estimates, a maximum of 30
documents could possibly be dealt with within 30 working days, starting
from the day of your reply.
We would kindly ask you for a swift reply to our invitation to propose a
fair solution. In the absence of a reply within five working days, we will
unilaterally restrict the scope of your application to those parts that
can be dealt with within the extended deadline of 30 working days.
Thank you in advance for your understanding!
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents Team
[1]60^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[2][DG TRADE request email]
_____________________________________________
From: TRADE ACCES DOCUMENTS
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 12:23 PM
To: 'Ekaitz Cancela'
Cc: TRADE ACCES DOCUMENTS
Subject: RE: access to documents request - DG Trade and free flow of data
Dear Mr Cancela,
Thank you for your e-mail dated 20/06/2017. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered today
under reference number GestDem 2017/3682.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, your application
will be handled within 15 working days. The time limit will expire on
12/07/2017. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be
informed in due course.
You have lodged your application via the AsktheEU.org website. Please note
that this is a private website which has no link with any institution of
the European Union. Therefore the European Commission cannot be held
accountable for any technical issues or problems linked to the use of this
system.
Yours faithfully,
Access to Documents Team
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[3]60^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[4][DG TRADE request email]
Dear Trade,
I fully understand your position, but I think that my request cannot be narrowed too much. Only to avoid the documents related to stakeholders like AccessNow, BEUC or other NGOs, which are not private providers. Data flows has been one of the most controversial issues in trade policy and I want to understand the big picture. This is why the topics cannot be reduced more. Hope you understand my position and I will wait the time needed to analyse and process them.
Yours faithfully,
Ekaitz Cancela
Dear Mr Cancela,
Thank you for your reply!
We refer again to your request for access to documents, registered on
09/06/2017 under the above mentioned reference number and would wish to
inform you that your application is currently being handled. However, due
to the heavy workload on a large number of requests, we will not be in a
position to complete the handling of your application within the time
limit of 15 working days, which expires on 12/07/2017.
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 03/08/2017. We
apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause!
Also, we understand that your request concerns wide scope of documents and
that you agree with the possibility that it might take more time than
usual to identify and process all the requested documents. Therefore, if
needed, your reply might be sent out in several batches.
Thank you in advance for your understanding!
Yours faithfully,
Access to Documents Team
[1]60^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[2][DG TRADE request email]
Dear Mr Cancela,
We are aware that the deadline for our reply to your request with
reference 2017/3682 expires today.
We would like to let you know that we are handling your request alongside
a large number of other requests, some of them quite complex and we very
much appreciate your reply in which you agreed to wait the time needed to
process all the documents.
We would like to inform you that, concerning your request, the total
number of 76 documents was identified. Therefore, your request is being
processed in 2 Batches: the first Batch includes assessment of 52
documents related to the first part of your request and the assessment of
the documents related to the second part of your request. Additionally, 12
documents related to the part 1 of your request will be assessed and
processed in the Batch 2.
At the moment, Batch one should be sent out very soon: it is going through
the final verification and we are doing our best that it is processed and
signed as soon as possible. Documents concerning Batch 2 are being
assessed at this moment and we believe this part of the reply should be
sent out within 30 days after Batch one is sent out.
We apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause and
will do our best to send out the reply as soon as possible!
Best regards!
Access to Documents Team
[1]60^th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[2][DG TRADE request email]
Dear Mr Ekaitz Cancela,
Please find attached the list of access to documents that you requested on
20 June 2017.
Best regards,
DG Trade
Dear Mr Cancela,
Please find attached the list of access to documents that you requested on
20 June 2017.
Best regards,
DG Trade