Records of contacts with the tobacco industry and affiliates
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
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 meetings of the European Commissions DG Taxud with the tobacco industry, their representatives, their affiliates, lobby groups and/or lawyers who present and protect their interests about the possible review of Directive 2011/64/EU which regulates taxation on tobacco products. This request also includes contact with think tanks, the e-cigarette industry and/or other nicotine based industry, packaging industries, buyers, sellers and retail representatives and their lobby organisations (between September 2016 and today).
- All correspondence (including emails) between the European Commission's DG Taxud and the tobacco industry, their representatives, their affiliates, lobby groups and/or lawyers who present and/or protect their interests about the possible review of Directive 2011/64/EU which regulates taxation on tobacco products. This request also includes contact with thinks tanks, the e-cigarette industry and/or other nicotine based industry, packaging industries, buyers, sellers and retail representatives, and their lobby organisations (between September 2016 and today).
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
journalist
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your request for access to documents.
Note that your postal address is required for registering and handling your request in line with the procedural requirements. Please send us your full postal address at your earliest convenience. Pending your reply, we reserve the right to refuse the registration of your request.
You may, of course, use directly the electronic form for entering your request:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/...
Best regards,
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
Thanks for your reply.
My adress is:
Lijsterlaan 108
3145VL
Maassluis
The Netherlands
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Dear Sir,
I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your email of 28/08/2017 registered on 28/08/2017 under the reference number GESTDEM 2017/4896.
In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, you will receive a response to your request within 15 working days: 18/09/2017. If this deadline 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.
Best regards,
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Sir,
We refer to your request dated 28/08/2017 in which you make a request for access to documents, registered on 28/08/2017 under the above mentioned 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 18/09/2017.
An extended time limit for consultations with third parties is needed in order to complete our assessment on the possibility for the public disclosure of the document requested.
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 09/10/2017.
We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours faithfully,
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Mr Van Woerden
We have received an access to documents request registered under above mentioned reference.
As your request concerns a high number of documents, and some of them are subject to consultations with the third parties, unfortunately, we are not in a position to finalise the handling of your request within the deadline of 9/10/2017.
To complete these consultations and our assessment we would like to propose you an extension of the deadline until 16/10/2017 for delivery of our reply.
We hope you will find this proposal acceptable and we thank you in advance for your understanding.
Best regards,
ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM
Dear Mr. Van Woerden
We have received an access to documents request registered under above
mentioned reference.
As your request concerns a high number of documents and some of them are
subject to consultations with third parties, unfortunately, we are not in
a position to finalise the handling of your request within the deadline of
9/10/2017.
To complete these consultations and our assessment we would like to
propose you an extension of the deadline until 16/10/2017 for delivery of
our reply.
We hope you will find this proposal acceptable and we thank you in advance
for your understanding.
Best regards,
Ms. Veerle De Leeuw
Acting Head of Unit
European Commission
Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union
Inter-institutional Relations, Coordination, Communication & Strategic
Planning
J79 - 3/238
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 229-59939
Visit us on the [1]Web, [2]Twitter, [3]YouTube and [4]Flickr
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References
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1. https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/in...
2. https://twitter.com/EU_Taxud
3. https://www.youtube.com/EUTaxationandCus...
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/146315122@...
5. https://europa.eu/european-union/eu60_en
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
Thanks for your message. I will wait till the 16th then as you proposed.
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
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 'Records of contacts with the tobacco industry and affiliates'.
The response to my request is long overdue. By law, the authority should have responded by now. I've been given several notifications of extensions to answer my request. The last extension ended yesterday without word from the authority. Please review the responses given.
A full history of my request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/reco...
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Dear Mr. Van Woerden
We have received an access to documents request registered under GestDem 2017/4896.
We would like to inform you that the requests have been processed and the reply is prepared, so we expect to send you the reply tomorrow 18/10/2017.
We apologise for the delay and we hope this is acceptable for you and we would like to thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
Dear Mr. Van Woerden
We have received an access to documents request registered under GestDem 2017/4896.
We would like to inform you that the request has been processed and the reply is prepared. However, we are still analysing whether our reply covers all the documents requested.
In order to finalise our assessment we would like to propose an extension of the deadline until 27/10/2017 for delivery of our reply.
We apologise for the delay and we hope that this is acceptable for you. We would like to thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Mr. Van Woerden,
Please find herewith our reply together with the annexes.
As there is a great number of documents, you will receive them in 4
batches:
1^st batch: documents 1-11
2^nd batch: documents 12-22
3^rd batch: documents 23-33
4^th batch: documents 34-41
Best regards,
Elodie SIMONS
European Commission
DG TAXUD – R2
Access to documents
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS would like to recall the message, "(2017)5512584 - Reply to your request for access to documents - GestDem 2017/4896 (2/4)".
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS would like to recall the message, "(2017)5512584 - Reply to your request for access to documents - GestDem 2017/4896 (2/4)".
TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS would like to recall the message, "(2017)5512584 - Reply to your request for access to documents - GestDem 2017/4896 (1/4)".
Dear Mr. Van Woerden,
Please find herewith our reply together with the annexes.
As there is a great number of documents, you will receive them in 4
batches:
1^st batch: documents 1-11
2^nd batch: documents 12-22
3^rd batch: documents 23-33
4^th batch: documents 34-41
Best regards,
Elodie SIMONS
European Commission
DG TAXUD – R2
Access to documents
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
Thank you for your reply and the documents.
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Dear Mr. van Woerden,
Following our reply on 20/10/2017 and your subsequent reaction (see attached), we would conclude that the below mail is at present void of purpose.
If you would nevertheless like to pursue your confirmatory application already at this moment, could you please let us know?
Yours sincerely,
DG TAXUD ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM.
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
Thank you for your message. There is no need to follow up on the confirmatory application for the whole request. However I would like to ask you kindly to still apply the confirmatory application to reevaluate doc 13. Large parts have been redacted. According to the explanation in the letter, the reason is that the information becoming public would undermine the EU decision making process. I would like to challenge that. It is necessary for the public to understand the decision making process to begin with and for the EU to be transparant about it especially when the tobacco industry is involved, citing the international FCTC Treaty article 5.3, ratified by the EU. Also, document 13 is supposed to have attendee lists that are not attached to the document. Therefor I would like to request those attendee lists to be released as well.
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your email dated 26/10/2017, by which you request, pursuant to Regulation No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, a review of the position taken by DG TAXUD in reply to your initial application GESTDEM 2017/4896.
We hereby acknowledge receipt of your confirmatory application for access to documents which was registered on 26/10/2017 (Ares(2017)5235007).
Your application will be handled within 15 working days (20/11/2017). In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.
Please be informed that the answer to your confirmatory application is a formal Commission decision that will be notified to you by express delivery.
We kindly offer you the possibility to provide us a contact phone number (by email to [email address]), so that the external delivery service can contact you in case of absence.
Please note that the Commission will not use your phone number for any other purpose than for informing the delivery service, and that it will delete it immediately thereafter.
Yours faithfully,
Carlos Remis
SG.B.4
Transparence
Berl. 05/315
Dear Taxation and Customs Union,
Thank you for this awknowledgement. I wasn't sure if the emailadres I just replied to was the proper one, but I did just sent my phonenumber to your team.
Yours faithfully,
Ivo van Woerden
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Ares(2017)5618715 - FW: 1st holding letter, Van Woerden 2017/4896
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Dear Mr Van Woerden,
I refer to your email of 26 October 2017, registered on the same date,
through which you submit a confirmatory application in accordance with
Article 7(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents ('Regulation
1049/2001').
We have finalised the assessment of your application. However, as our
reply still needs formal approval, we will not be able to respond within
the 15-working day time-limit, expiring 20 November 2017.
Consequently, we have to extend the deadline for handling it by another 15
working days in accordance with Article 8(2) of Regulation 1049/2001. The
new deadline expires on 11 December 2017.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours sincerely,
Martine Fouwels
Deputy Head of Unit
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European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit B4 (Transparency)
References
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5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/ext/doc...
Dear Mr van WOERDEN,
Please find attached an advance information copy of the confirmatory
decision taken on your requests for access to documents registered under
reference GESTDEM 2017/4896 (C(2017)7944 final).
Please note that the Secretariat General of the European Commission will
proceed with the formal notification of the decision in the coming days.
This advance copy is solely sent for your information and is not the
formal notification of the confirmatory decision.
Yours sincerely,
BLURIOT-PUEBLA Madeleine
Cellule 'Accès aux documents'
European Commission
SG/B/4 - Transparence
BERL 05/315
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 296 09 97
[1][email address]