FP6 Instruments Task Force
Dear Research and Innovation (RTD),
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 refer to the FP6 Instruments Task Force. I would appreciate if DG RTD, as presumably the lead service, would provide me with copies of the following documents:
1. The internal administrative decision, or equivalent, establishing the Task Force.
2. The minutes of the meetings of the Task Force.
3. The documents drawn up by the Task Force and published or otherwise disseminated to the public
4. The internal documents drawn up by the Task Force, other that those under (2) above.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Tasos Ntetsikas
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your e-mail dated 8/11/2013. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered on
12/11/2013 under reference number GestDem 2013/5611.
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
3/12/2013. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be
informed in due course.
Yours faithfully,
Silvia BOJINOVA
Head of Unit
[1]cid:image001.png@01CDF26F.EF7D9990
European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
R5
ORBN 09/151
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-85891
[2][email address]
[3]http://ec.europa.eu/research
References
Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://ec.europa.eu/research
Dear Mr Ntetsikas,
We refer to your e-mail dated 08/11/2013 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered on 12/11/2013 under the above mentioned
Gestdem reference number.
Your application is currently being handled. However, 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 03/12/2013.
An extended time limit is needed in order to contact our relevant Services
to ensure the widest possible treatment of your application.
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 03/01/2014.
We apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours faithfully,
Silvia BOJINOVA
Head of Unit
[1]cid:image001.png@01CDF26F.EF7D9990
European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
R5
ORBN 09/151
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-85891
[2][email address]
[3]http://ec.europa.eu/research
References
Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://ec.europa.eu/research
Dear Research and Innovation (RTD),
This is a kind reminder that the extended time-limit to provide the initial response expired on 3 January 2014.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Tasos Ntetsikas
Dear Mr Ntetsikas,
We refer to your request for access to documents registered under the
above mentioned reference number.
We have taken good note of your kind reminder of 9 January 2014.
We sincerely regret that we were not in a position to complete the
handling of your application within its time limit, which expired on 3
January 2014. This is due to the fact that your request concerns documents
of 2001-2002 for which we needed to identify the responsible services.
Your application is currently being processed. We would like to inform you
hereby that we intend to contact you before the end of month in order to
propose to you a fair solution pursuant to Article 6§3 of Regulation (EC)
N°1049/2001 after having determined with the Services concerned a
realistic deadline, which should also be convenient to you.
We would like to assure you that we are doing our utmost to provide you
with our reply as soon as practically possible, considering our limited
resources.
We truly apologize for this unexpected additional delay and for any
inconvenience this may cause.
We thank you very much in advance for your patience and kind
understanding.
Yours faithfully,
Liliane DE WOLF
Head of Unit
[1]cid:image001.gif@01CF1087.1393DAC0
European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
J1 Common Legal Support Service
ORBN 01/037
1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-61073
[2][email address]
[3]http://ec.europa.eu/research
References
Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://ec.europa.eu/research
Dear Research and Innovation (RTD),
Thank you for your message of 14 January informing the status of handling of the application.
Since 40 working days have elapsed since the registration of application and DG RTD has not granted access to a single document, it is necessary to observe the following:
1. According to the case-law of the Courts of the Union on Regulation 1049/2001, an Institution has the obligation to handle swiftly applications.
2. The documents at issue were drawn up some 10 years ago, meaning that in principle no exception of article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001 is applicable. It would be outright absurd to claim that they are protected by article 4(1)(a) fourth indent (financial or economic policy) or article 4(3) (decision making). Consequently, DG RTD could have had the utmost confidence that most - if not all - of the documents at issue were to be fully released.
3. On 3/12/2013 DG RTD relined on article 7(3) to extend the time-limit to 3/1/2014 http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/fp6_i..., implying that it had identified 'a large number of documents' for which an exception might be applicable - otherwise it could have released them all.
4. It appears that DG RTD had not identified documents like the one entitled 'PROVISIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING
INTEGRATED PROJECTS', authored by the FP6 Instruments Task Force, dated 13/5/2013, and which is downloadable form Europa today (22 January 2014). All it takes is a targeted Google search to identity that document.
5. Yet DG RTD relied on 14/1/2014 on article 6(3) to confer with the applicant, which is inconsistent -even outright incompatible- with having previously relied on article 7(2) to extend the 15 day time-limit.
6. The documents falling under requests (1) and (3) are not that many - perhaps fewer than a dozen - and DG RTD ought to have released them by the 10th of January.
Having regard to the above, I suggest that the priority order (from high to low) for granting access to the documents be as follows:
1. Documents under request (1)
2. Documents under request (3)
3. Documents under request (4)
4. Documents under request (2)
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Tasos Ntetsikas
Dear Research and Innovation (RTD),
I refer to the application pursuant to Regulation 1049/2001 GestDem 2013/5611 acknowledged on 14/11/2013.
As it appears from asktheeu.org, DG RTD has not granted access to a single document. That the documents date from 2001-2002 does not at all mean that DG RTD has faced difficulties to identify them.
Several of the requested documents were drawn up and published electronically; the Commission has spent several millions of Euro to implement sophisticated Commission-wide document management systems; DG RTD is supposed to be managing leading edge research, which implies that its electronic document document management systems are sophisticated; DG RTD specifically developed for FP6 and FP7 (via framework contracts with IT service providers) tens of IT applications, with the total cost running in the order of 40 million Euro. All this suggests that the requested documents are identifiable in a straightforward manner.
Moreover, it is difficult to see how any of the exceptions of article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001 might be applicable; it means that there is a justifiable presumption that full access it to be granted. This tells that assessing each document will take a few minutes.
I would therefore be obliged if DG RTD would commence granting access to some documents in the short-term future.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Tasos Ntetsikas
Dear Mr Ntetsikas,
We refer to your request for access to documents registered under the
above mentioned reference number.
Thank you for your email of 20 February 2014, the content of which is duly
noted.
We would like to inform you hereby that the processing of your application
is being finalised. You should receive a reply as soon as it is approved
by our hierarchy, but in any case before the end of next week.
We truly apologize again for this unexpected delay and for any
inconvenience this may cause.
We thank you very much in advance for your patience and kind
understanding.
Yours faithfully,
Liliane DE WOLF
Head of Unit
[1]cid:image001.gif@01CF1087.1393DAC0
European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
J1 Common Legal Support Service
ORBN 01/037
1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-61073
[2][email address]
[3]http://ec.europa.eu/research
References
Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://ec.europa.eu/research
Dear Mr Ntetsikas,
We refer to your email of 8 November 2013 in which you submit, within the
framework of Regulation (EC) N°1049/2001[1]^^[1], an application for
access to documents, registered on 12 November 2013 under the above
mentioned reference number.
1. SCOPE OF THE REQUEST
Your request concerns the release of the following documents in relation
to the FP6 Instruments Task Force:
1. The internal administrative decision, or equivalent, establishing the
Task Force.
2. The minutes of the meetings of the Task Force.
3. The documents drawn up by the Task Force and published or otherwise
disseminated to the public
4. The internal documents drawn up by the Task Force, other tha[n] those
under (2) above.
2. IDENTIFICATION OF THE CONCERNED DOCUMENTS AND ASSESSMENT
Your application is considered to fall within the scope of Regulation (EC)
N°1049/2001.
1. In respect to points 1 and 4 of your request, we regret to inform you
that despite every effort to locate the requested documents, we were
unable to retrieve the concerned documents.
We wish to inform you that a thorough search was conducted in order to
find these historical documents. Both the European Commission’s Central
and Historical Archives were consulted, in parallel with several members
of the Task Force who were also contacted. Unfortunately, we were unable
to trace the internal decision establishing the Task Force or the numerous
internal draft documents which were produced by the latter. Given the
time elapsed, these documents may not have been retained according to the
Commission's rules on document retention.
In this instance, we are therefore, unfortunately, unable to handle your
application.
2. In respect to point 2 of your request, we have identified the attached
thirty Minutes of the FP6 Instruments Task Force which are fully disclosed
to you.
3. With regards to point 3 of your application, please kindly note that
all the guidance documents that were produced were by definition made
public and can be found at the following link:
[2]http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp6/index_e...
We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that all the
documents in the versions there-in were supervised by the "Task Force
Follow up of the Implementation of the New Instruments", the successor of
the original FP6 Instruments Task Force, as from 03/04/2003. Earlier
versions were also published on the internet, but were superseded by the
these, which were considered stable and remained unchanged thereafter.
Numerous internal drafts were produced but were not retained.
Yours sincerely,
Liliane DE WOLF
Head of Unit
[3]cid:image001.gif@01CF0AE9.BBA1E200
European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
J1
ORBN 01/037
1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-61073
[4][email address]
[5]http://ec.europa.eu/research
------------------------
[6][1] Regulation (EC)N°1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament,
Council and Commission documents, OJ L 145/43 of 31.5.2001, hereinafter
‘Regulation (EC) N°1049/2001’.
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/foiextract20140303-30962-1w39fz2-0#_ftn1
2. http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp6/index_e...
4. mailto:[email address]
5. http://ec.europa.eu/research
6. file:///tmp/foiextract20140303-30962-1w39fz2-0#_ftnref1
Dear Research and Innovation (RTD),
Referring to the application GestDem 2013/5611, I am grateful for the DG RTD's complete and comprehensive response and the granting of full access to all documents that DG RTD identified.
Yours faithfully,
Mr. Tasos Ntetsikas