Dear European Commission DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNCT),

Under the right of access to documents in Article 15 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 42 Charter of Fundamental Rights, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001 on Public Access to Documents, I am kindly requesting the following documents related to the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA):

1. any preparatory documents, briefings, meeting summaries, presentations or discussion papers held by DG CNCT that refer to the practices of stakeholder engagement of very large online platforms and search engines (hereinafter ‘VLOP/SEs’) when it comes to the elaboration and testing of systemic risk assessment and mitigation per articles 34-35 and recital 90 of the DSA. These documents may relate to the already existing three rounds of systemic risk reporting (2023, 2024 and 2025); and, to preserve the commercial interests of VLOP/SEs, may be redacted to only encompass that which relates to VLOP/SEs’ stakeholder engagement practices;
2. any responses submitted by VLOP/SEs to any requests for information made by the Commission that refer to practices of stakeholder engagement done by VLOP/SEs. To preserve the commercial interests of VLOP/SEs, the disclosed documents may be redacted to only encompass that which relates to VLOP/SEs’ stakeholder engagement practices;
3. third-party reports submitted by civil society organisations or independent researchers (either at the request of the Commission or not) that contain references to VLOP/SEs practices of stakeholder engagement. These documents do not have to relate to any compliance assessment of the three rounds of systemic risk reporting (2023, 2024 and 2025), e.g., they could relate to public consultations or calls for evidence that the Commission has launched to assess emerging systemic risks or set up data access mechanisms. To preserve the commercial interests of VLOP/SEs, the disclosed documents may be redacted to only encompass that which relates to VLOP/SEs’ stakeholder engagement practices;
4. any reports and meeting summaries referring to the control of VLOP/SEs’ risk reports done within the framework of the execution of Lot 2 of tender “DSA technical assistance for market intelligence, evidence gathering and compliance monitoring”, internally identified as EC-CNECT/2024/OP/0052-LOT-2. This refers to reports submitted by the respective contractor and meeting summaries of the regular meetings held by that contract and the Commission. These documents may relate to any of the already existing three rounds of systemic risk reporting (2023, 2024 and 2025); and, to preserve the commercial interests of VLOP/SEs, may be redacted to only encompass that which relates to VLOP/SEs’ stakeholder engagement practices.

Regarding all of the requested documents, I should clarify that by ‘stakeholder engagement’ I mean all forms of VLOPSEs’ engagement with civil society which are relevant to assess compliance with articles 34-35 DSA (referred in recital 90 DSA and mentioned also in pp. 20-21 of the technical specifications of the call for tenders ‘EC-CNECT/2024/OP/0052’), as well as VLOP/SEs’ procedures for grating civil society organisations and academic researchers access to data under art. 40(4) and (12) DSA.

I should also stress that I am available to narrow down my request to a number of specific VLOP/SEs, to be agreed upon in subsequent exchanges between me and the Commission official responsible for handling my request, in order to make such processing of my request manageable for Commission staff.

Furthermore, I note that I am requesting these documents to be able to access information on the practices of stakeholder engagement of VLOP/SEs that may be relevant to scrutinise their compliance with articles 34-35 and recital 90 of the DSA. I am an academic researcher with the European University Institute who, in his project, is assessing the sufficiency and breadth of VLOP/SEs engagement with stakeholders and how that is being controlled by the Commission. The requested documents are thus invaluable for my research, which could contribute to the (publicly disseminated) production of knowledge about the ways in which platforms and regulators enact and control stakeholder engagement practices related to systemic risk management. Not only is the access to the requested documents, as a matter of principle, a fundamental right that I enjoy as an EU citizen under article 42 of the Charter, there is also, I submit, a public interest in the disclosure of these documents for the purposes of contributing to academic research on this matter. Public scrutiny of the implementation of any EU piece of secondary law – including the DSA – is not just a power of EU institutions, it should also be facilitated to the broader community of EU citizenry, civil society organisations and researchers. The fact that the Commission holds an exclusive legal competence to assess compliance with articles 34-35 DSA does not mean that civil society at large (including researchers) may not scrutinise such compliance, using the access rights afforded to them not just by specific DSA provisions, but also by the Charter and Regulation 1049/2001.

In addition, concerns on several systemic risks created by VLOP/SEs have been widely raised, among others by media, civil society organisations, and researchers, in matters such as child safety, electoral processes or gender-based violence. Several researchers and civil society organisations have warned that the first rounds of systemic risk reporting done by VLOP/SEs did not reveal that much meaningful action had been taken by these platforms in assessing and mitigating systemic risks. In particular, several civil society organisations – and chiefly the DSA Civil Society Coordination Group – have noted the insufficiencies of VLOP/SEs’ stakeholder engagement practices in the first round of systemic risk reporting. Such diverse and broad engagement is crucial for contributing to a comprehensive and accurate assessment of the negative effects of VLOP/SEs experienced by several impacted groups. In line with the aims of Article 1 DSA, rendering the requested information public would strengthen societal trust in the online environment as well as the good functioning of DSA accountability arrangements and contributes to democratic debate on the safe, predictable, and trustworthy nature of the online space. It would also empower myself, as an academic researcher, to add to civil society’s public scrutiny over DSA implementation which is equally an aim of the DSA, as is repeated several times in this regulation’s recitals and echoed by Commission officials, related guidelines and communications.

Moreover, with regard to the need to protect VLOP/SEs potential commercial interests, I have accordingly narrowed down the breadth of my request for it not to require the disclosure of information related to crucial aspects of the products or services of VLOP/SEs. Information related to stakeholder engagement by VLOP/SEs is not such a crucial aspect, nor does it touch potential competitive advantages that these companies may enjoy in the internal market. Therefore, there should be no prevailing commercial interest to be protected in the disclosure of the requested documents (if eventually that would be the case in some requested documents, I understand that such information is redacted).

Finally, with regard to the protection of the purpose of the Commission’s investigations, I am aware of the principled application by the Commission of a general presumption of non-disclosure of any DSA case files, drawing on previous CJEU case law on access to documents in the field of competition law. However, I argue that this presumption does not entail a blank exclusion of the disclosure of all documents that might be relevant in eventual DSA proceedings and, specifically, of the requested documents, as this would, first, constitute an abuse of the figure of a general presumption of non-disclosure, which still requires - according to the CJEU’s case law - a specific case-by-case analysis of the concrete reasons why the purpose of a specific investigation would be undermined by the release of a specific document. If that should be the understanding of the Commission related to any of the abovementioned requested documents, then an explanation of the specific reasons as to why a concrete document affects the purpose of an investigation should be thoroughly provided.

In addition, a complete refusal of the requested documents under the general argument of the existence of a presumption of non-disclosure would run contrary to the recommendation of the European Ombudsman (EO) of November 3rd of 2025 in case 1746/2024/MIG, where the EO encouraged the Commission – for risk of running into a practice of maladministration - to do a detailed and individual balance between the fundamental rights of access to information and the protection of the purpose of investigations for each requested document.

Finally, I have already sought to narrow down the requested information in a way that strikes a balance between all interests involved. It would be de facto impossible to me, as an applicant, to further specify my request given that, logically, I do not have access to any of the requested documents. It, therefore, is a responsibility of the Commission to seek to achieve this balance by either redacting as requested the abovementioned documents in what ensures the protection of countervailing interests; or seeking to reach an agreement with the applicant by providing some additional information of the type and nature of the documents held. To demand further precision on the part of the applicant about information that he does not know beforehand would amount to placing a disproportionate burden on the individual exercise of the fundamental right of access to information.

I look forward to receiving your reply within 15 business days, as established by the regulation.

My postal address is Via Bolognese 156, 50139 Firenze FI, Italy. However, I request this information in electronic form.

Many thanks for your work and best regards,
Mateus Carvalho

Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,

I will hand in my response to yout fair solution proposal until January 26th at noon.

Yours faithfully,

Mateus Carvalho

Dear DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team,

Many thanks for your reply and fair solution proposal of 14 January 2026. In it, you have kindly asked me to do two things: first, to “specify the objective of [my] request” and, secondly, to “narrow down the scope” of my request to 15 documents. I will deal with these two requests separately.

Firstly, regarding the requested specification of my request, I consider that I have already provided enough justification of the reasons of my request in my first message, of December 1st (to which I refer you for further consultation). To summarise them, I seek to research and scrutinise this critical aspect of platform governance – stakeholder engagement by VLOP/SEs – in light of the repeated and manifold warnings of its insufficiency by the European civil society community.

Moving on, and regarding the request to narrow down the scope of my request to 15 documents, I would first like to thank you for listing the types of documents you hold that may fall within the scope of my request, as well as for pointing out where to publicly access the responses to the Call for evidence for the Delegated Regulation on data access provided for in the Digital Services Act.

However, I feel compelled to respectfully point out that the requested limitation of my request to 15 documents does not have any specific basis in EU secondary law or related case law. While I acknowledge and fully understand the need of the Commission to reduce the workload involved in processing and handling the request documents, I nonetheless would like to signal that reducing the request to 15 documents makes it excessively narrow for the purposes of my research. Meaningful research analysis relies on access to sufficient data, and the proposed limitation could impair the usefulness of this request for my research work. Moreover, if one consults repositories of access to information requests – such as the platform where this request itself is being handled – it is possible to see that there have been many past instances of fair solution proposals that have entailed the sharing of much more than 15 documents, both before and after the Commission started asking, as a reiterated practice in its fair solution proposals, for a narrowing down of requests to 15 documents.

In this sense, I would like to kindly ask for access to a maximum of 60 documents related to the category “Responses submitted by VLOPs/VLOSEs to requests for information that refer to practices of stakeholder engagement done by VLOPs/VLOSEs”. I understand that these documents are part of DSA case files, and that there is an exception in Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001 related to open investigations and the protection of commercial interests.

Regarding the latter exception, I have clearly stated in my original request that all documents sent my way can be redacted to only encompass VLOP/SEs practices of stakeholder engagement, something that is not a core part of VLOP/SEs’ products and is, therefore, not susceptible of undermining their commercial interests.
Regarding the former exception (related to the protection of open investigations), I re-state, as in my original request, that “a general presumption of non-disclosure of any DSA case files (…) does not entail a blank exclusion of the disclosure of all documents that might be relevant in DSA proceedings and (…) still requires - according to the CJEU’s case law - a specific case-by-case analysis of the concrete reasons why the purpose of a specific investigation would be undermined by the release of a specific document. If that should be the understanding of the Commission related to any of the abovementioned requested documents, then an explanation of the specific reasons as to why a concrete document affects the purpose of an investigation should be thoroughly provided”. I also re-state that a complete refusal of access to relevant documents related to stakeholder engagement practices of VLOP/SEs in light of a general presumption of non-disclosure “would run contrary to the recommendation of the European Ombudsman (EO) of November 3rd of 2025 in case 1746/2024/MIG, where the EO encouraged the Commission – for risk of running into a practice of maladministration - to do a detailed and individual balance between the fundamental rights of access to information and the protection of the purpose of investigations for each requested document”.

In any case, I further specify that I limit my request by excluding any exchanges between the Commission and VLOP/SEs that have occurred during the course of ongoing formal proceedings. This means that I still ask for access to any documents (up to a maximum of 60) corresponding to exchanges between the Commission and VLOP/SEs taking place in the context of already concluded proceedings, as well as of requests for information made by the Commission in the context of its general monitoring of DSA compliance (not related to formal ongoing open proceedings), including as a follow-up to the submission of systemic risk reports by VLOP/SEs. To consider all of the regular monitoring of VLOP/SE compliance with Articles 34-35 DSA as constituting an open investigation within the meaning of Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001 would virtually make it so that such “open investigation” would never end, since this monitoring will be recurrent and ongoing for as long as the DSA is in force. Consequently, this would mean the de facto impossibility of any interested EU citizen to ever exercise their fundamental right to access to information regarding the enforcement of the DSA systemic risk management provisions. Finally, I would further point out that I have asked for a maximum of 60 documents pertaining to this category since in your fair solution proposal you have not made explicit how many documents of this category could potentially fall within the scope of my request. In this sense, I am willing to further limit the number of documents of my request should (i) a total number of available documents in this category be stated; and (ii) concrete reasons for further limitation, relating to the specific nature of the requested documents, be provided.

Should the above narrowed request not be accepted, and referring myself to the list of potential documents present in your fair solution proposal, I alternatively would like to ask access to the following documents, corresponding to a maximum of approximately 60 documents:

1. Of the indicated 7 documents related to “May 2025 stakeholder workshop on systemic risks (notes, agendas, lists of participants, background information for participants)”, I only ask for access to the notes;

2. Of the 50 documents of the category “Input received from CSOs as part of the 25 edition of the Article 35(2) report”, I only ask for those documents that refer to practices of stakeholder engagement of VLOP/SEs. I clarify that I do not mean here general statements of CSOs regarding how stakeholder engagement should look like in abstract, but any specific mention, description, assessment, critique, report, or policy recommendation for improvement related to actual and concrete stakeholder engagement practices or lack thereof.

3. Regarding the multiple documents related to the category “Reports and meeting summaries referring to the control of VLOPs/VLOSEs’ risk reports done within the framework of the execution of Lot 2 tender EC-CNECT/2024/OP/0052-LOT-2”, I understand that the work relating to this tender is ongoing, and so I shall refrain from asking access to any reports or meeting summaries. However, and basing myself on p. 72 of the respective call for tenders, I would like to ask access to the specification of the specific nature of the task of the contractor relating to the control of VLOP/SEs stakeholder engagement practices (what exact metrics are used in this control, what is the concrete object of analysis of the contractor to assess VLOP/SEs engagement practices, or, at least, the relevant tasks to be performed as proposed by the contractor and agreed upon with the Commission). This could be present in the submitted tender, which the call for tenders acknowledges as an object of a request for public access to documents, in the following paragraph:

"The contracting authority may disclose the submitted tender in the context of a request for public access to documents, or in other cases where the applicable law requires its disclosure. Unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure, the contracting authority may refuse to provide full access to the submitted tender, redacting the parts (if any) that contain confidential information, the disclosure of which would undermine the protection of commercial interests of the tenderer, including intellectual property."

Accordingly, I am not asking for access to the full tender, nor to any protected commercial information, but merely to any reference of the types of tasks exercised by the contractor to, in the context of the abovementioned Lot, assess and control the practices of stakeholder engagement of VLOP/SEs as mentioned in pp. 20-21 of the call for tenders. Simply put, I am merely asking for documents that allow me to understand how exactly, in the context of the execution abovementioned Lot, are stakeholder engagement practices being controlled. This should, I anticipate, not require the disclosure of more than one or two documents (the submitted tender, or any document containing a description of the contractor’s task redacted to only contain the requested information).

If necessary due to the global workload, please provide this access in three batches over a period of 45 working days from today, 26 January 2026.

Many thanks for your work and kind regards,
Mateus Carvalho

Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,

I acknowledge receipt of the response to my request and the documents sent.

Yours faithfully,

Mateus Carvalho

Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,

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 'Stakeholder engagement practices of VLOP/SEs for systemic risk management'.

While I sincerely thank you for the disclosure of the 4 documents sent in your decision of March 13th, I still feel compelled to challenge the refusal to disclose more documents. Notwithstanding that, I want to explicitly state my agreement with the Commission’s steps to protect personal data contained in the disclosed documents, and that I did not (and do not) seek the disclosure of any such data, as that is not needed for my research.

In this confirmatory application, I would like to restate and develop all my arguments from the fair solution response. The exposition contained below is a mere summary of my argument, highlighting the most important aspects of my request. However, my full argumentation can be consulted in my original request and response to DG CNCT’s fair solution proposal.

Before a more detailed explanation, I want to state the importance of upholding broader access to documents in light of Article 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 15 TFEU. Furthermore, I also want to highlight that there is a strong overriding public interest in granting wider access to the requested documents concerning digital platforms' stakeholder engagement practices under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), as transparency in this area remains critically scarce despite the regulation's emphasis on accountability for very large online platforms and search engines (VLOP/SEs). Accountability, as the DSA recitals state themselves, is not solely a prerogative of the public regulators but also a function of civil society, including academic researchers. General freedom of information requests can curb the current reported limitations in practice of the DSA's current transparency and access to data tools. My academic research seeks to scrutinise stakeholder engagement practices, which are essential for evaluating the DSA's effectiveness in fostering inclusive governance and mitigating risks to users. Yet public information is limited to high-level disclosures, leaving a significant information gap that hampers independent analysis and public oversight, including academic research. Under Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, the principle of widest possible access must prevail where, as here, the interest in democratic scrutiny of EU regulatory implementation outweighs any presumed institutional or third-party interests, particularly given the DSA's novel stakeholder engagement obligations and the need for empirical evidence to inform policy refinement and civil society engagement. I, of course, understand the need to protect commercial interests and the purpose of the Commission’s investigations, but those exceptions should be construed narrowly, and lead the Commission to consider disclosure of documents while properly redacted to protect those interests as well as data protection rights of those mentioned in the documents, as recommended by the European Ombudsman - https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/news-....

With this said, I seek to highlight three components of my argumentation in both my original request and response to the fair solution proposal.

First, I believe that the Commission's reliance on a blanket presumption against disclosure of all DSA case files would run contrary to the recommendation of the European Ombudsman (EO) of November 3rd of 2025 in case 1746/2024/MIG, where the EO encouraged the Commission to do a detailed and individual balance between the fundamental rights of access to information and the protection of the purpose of investigations for each requested document. Furthermore, this contravenes the principle that access to documents is the rule and non-disclosure the narrowly construed exception, as established in settled case law (e.g., Case C-39/05 P, Sison v Council). Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001 requires a concrete, case-by-case assessment of harm rather than general presumptions, which the Court has repeatedly annulled (e.g., Case T-84/13, ClientEarth v Commission). Instead of outright refusal, the Commission must conduct a strict analysis to identify redactable elements (Article 4(6)), providing partial access to the remainder where possible. More specifically, I argue that this presumption does not entail a blank exclusion of the disclosure of all documents that might be relevant in eventual DSA proceedings and, specifically, of the requested documents, as this would, first, constitute an abuse of the figure of a general presumption of non-disclosure, which still requires - according to the CJEU’s case law - a specific case-by-case analysis of the concrete reasons why the purpose of a specific investigation would be undermined by the release of a specific document. If that should be the understanding of the Commission related to any of the abovementioned requested documents, then an explanation of the specific reasons as to why a concrete document affects the purpose of an investigation should be thoroughly provided. Finally, it is my contention that there is a difference between formal investigations open by the Commission under the DSA (formal proceedings), which I would understand must be protected; and the general documents that the Commission keeps as part of its general monitoring of systemic risk reports (minutes, notes, briefings, etc.) that relate, in my case, to VLOP/SEs stakeholder engagement practices.

A second issue relates to the multiple documents related to the category “Reports and meeting summaries referring to the control of VLOPs/VLOSEs’ risk reports done within the framework of the execution of Lot 2 tender EC-CNECT/2024/OP/0052-LOT-2”. I understand that the work relating to this tender is ongoing, and so I shall refrain from asking access to any reports or meeting summaries. However, and basing myself on p. 72 of the respective call for tenders, I would like to ask access to the specification of the specific nature of the task of the contractor relating to the control of VLOP/SEs stakeholder engagement practices (what exact metrics are used in this control, what is the concrete object of analysis of the contractor to assess VLOP/SEs engagement practices, or, at least, the relevant tasks to be performed as proposed by the contractor and agreed upon with the Commission). This could be present in the submitted tender, which the call for tenders acknowledges as an object of a request for public access to documents, in the following paragraph:
"The contracting authority may disclose the submitted tender in the context of a request for public access to documents, or in other cases where the applicable law requires its disclosure. Unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure, the contracting authority may refuse to provide full access to the submitted tender, redacting the parts (if any) that contain confidential information, the disclosure of which would undermine the protection of commercial interests of the tenderer, including intellectual property."
Accordingly, I am not asking for access to the full tender, nor to any protected commercial information (which DGCNCT’s decision refers to), but merely to any reference of the types of tasks exercised by the contractor to, in the context of the abovementioned Lot, assess and control the practices of stakeholder engagement of VLOP/SEs as mentioned in pp. 20-21 of the call for tenders. Anything else may be redacted from a document that would be disclosed. Alternatively, I would ask to the Commission whether any public information will be made available when the execution of this tender ends regarding the assessment of VLOP/SEs stakeholder engagement practices.

As for the other available documents, a third issue concerns the limitation on their disclosure to 4 documents. This limitation lacks any legal basis under Regulation 1049/2001, which imposes no numerical cap on disclosures and mandates widest possible access (Recital 4). The Commission had proposed at least 15 documents in fair solution discussions and now cites workload as the reason for limiting the disclosure to 4 documents. I restate that this limitation, provided without further justification, unduly hampers my academic research. This arbitrary limitation undermines the purpose of Regulation 1049/2001, which is to promote good governance and public participation (Article 15(1) TFEU). I request disclosure of at least the proposed 15 documents, plus the remainder up to 60.

A final issue relates to the fact that 3 of the 4 disclosed documents originate from third parties rather than the Commission's holdings, whereas at least some of them were already available online, offering no new insight into the Commission's assessments of stakeholder engagement practices. This does not fulfil the obligation to disclose all relevant held documents (Article 2(3) Regulation 1049/2001). I particularly seek Commission-held documents such as internal notes, assessments, or analyses on VLOP/SEs' current stakeholder engagement practices under the DSA, which are central to my research and not evidently protected by exceptions, absent specific justification.

In light of the above, I urge reconsideration and full or partial disclosure within the 15 working days prescribed by Article 8(1) Regulation 1049/2001. Failure to provide a reasoned reply will prompt a complaint to the European Ombudsman and/or action before the General Court.
A full history of my request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.asktheeu.org/request/stakeho...

Yours faithfully,
Mateus Carvalho