Dear Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations,

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:

All documents related to the WindEurope and Azerbaijan COP29 event in Brussels on 2 July, at which DG NEAR Director Adrienn Kiraly was a speaker.

This includes but is not limited to:

- All correspondence between the Director and/or their staff and the organisers of the event or other participants (EU Commission, industry, Azerbaijan government officials);

- All preparatory documents that were provided to the Director and/or their staff before the event, including an agenda, speaker list, background note, a briefing, his speech. This includes documents provided by the event organisers and EU Commission staff;

- All follow-up documents, including minutes, notes (hand written or electronic), audio or video recordings, verbatim reports, operational conclusions, read-outs, presentations, action points and any other correspondence between the Director and/or their staff and the organisers of the event, or other participants.

I would like to make clear I prefer you produce the documents on a rolling basis. At no point should the Commission's search for—or deliberations concerning—certain documents delay the production of others that the Commission has already retrieved and elected to produce.

Should my request be denied wholly or partially, please explain the denial or all deletions referring to specific exemptions in the regulation. Also I would expect the partial release of documents in case of partial exemption according to article 4.6. I reserve the right to appeal.

Please confirm having received this application. I look forward to your reply within 15 business days, according to the regulation.

Yours faithfully,

Pascoe Sabido
Corporate Europe Observatory
Mundo Matonge
26 Rue d'Edimbourg
Bruxelles 1050
Belgium

Dear Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations,

Thank you for your response.

However, I find the level of redaction over the top and entirely unnecessary in order to protect international relations (it was a blanket redaction, rather than an analysis of what would and wouldn't be in the public interest).

As requested, this is a response to confirm I received the documents, but I will be soon filing a confirmatory application.

Yours faithfully,

Pascoe Sabido

Dear Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations,

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 'WindEurope and Azerbaijan COP29 Brussels event'.

You disclosed two documents, one being "Briefing - Azeri Government and WindEurope event on COP29, Ref. NEAR3324".

The vast majority of the document is redacted, with the justification given that "they contain internal policy positions as well as external policy positions and interests communicated to the EU in confidence, whose publication would have a detrimental effect on the EU’s external relations."

However, in relying on Article 4(1)(a) it was not sufficiently demonstrated that disclosure of the documents would cause a reasonably foreseeable, non-hypothetical harm. Given that the briefing was for a public event that has now taken place, with a public audience, much of the content in the document has been shared publicly. And given that similar positions around COP29, wind and hydrogen have been disclosed in briefings from other DGs, your arguments are not sufficient to prove that this harm would exist.

I am therefore asking for a review of the request and the parts that would not cause a reasonably foreseeable, non-hypothetical harm be disclosed in full, while respecting the exception laid out in Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001.

Yours faithfully,

Pascoe Sabido

Dear Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations,

Thank you for your response. I look forward to the documents as soon as possible.

Yours faithfully,

Pascoe Sabido