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:

Under the right of access please provide any correspondence between Ireland and the EU on the issue of compliance with the Habitats Directive

For the purposes of this request please only include the Year 2025

By way of background:

Ireland breached the EU Habitats Directive by failing to designate sufficient Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and implement site-specific conservation measures for its Natura 2000 sites. In 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled against Ireland in case C-444/21 for these failures, which occurred primarily by January 2019. The judgment highlighted that Ireland also failed to address a general and persistent infringement across its Natura 2000 network. In addition, Ireland has not acted to stop peat extraction in Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).

The European Commission has now told Ireland it “must demonstrate compliance” with the Habitats Directive when granting farmers a nitrates derogation. It is unclear how Ireland can demonstrate compliance as recent CJEU rulings show non compliance. Hopefully the correspondence will illustrate what is now required, as it is unclear from media coverage to date

Yours faithfully,

Right to Know CLG, Registered in Dublin, Ireland No. 565565
Registered Office: 25 Herbert Place, Dublin 2

Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

I understand the request is overdue

Please pass for internal review

Yours faithfully,

ashley glover

Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

This system of requests is not working. The system redacts the name/contact details of the decision maker. Where the data is not provided within the timeframe, there is no penalty and no mechanism to follow up, as the applicant does not have any access to the decision maker.

Yours faithfully,

ashley glover

Dear Secretariat General of the European Commission,

Please pass this on to the person who reviews confirmatory applications. RTK request the a named individual to review the decision, and contact details for the decision maker to allow RTK to have meaningful engagement

I am filing the following confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'Habitat Directive and Nitrates Derogation (Ireland)'.

RTK would expect many more records than the 4 provided

The exact number of meetings between EU Commission and DAFM is not publicly available, but there have been numerous high-level and official-level discussions in 2025, including presentations at the EU Nitrates Committee (March, June, September), a visit to Ireland by senior EU Commission officials in September, and a meeting between the Irish Minister and the Commissioner in Brussels on September 23. Engagement has been described as "ongoing" throughout 2025

The records do not include agendas, minutes or and just one single generic DAFM slide deck. This would seem illogical for a process that is so involved throughout 2025, and would be expected to generate significant correspondence just around the meetings themselves

In particular the records do not include any correspondence around the new requirements to incorporate Habitat Directive into the Nitrate Derogation. That is a huge change, which RTK would expect to have generated significant correspondence between Dublin and Brussels

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

Yours faithfully,

ashley glover
Righttoknow