The complainant, a journalist, asked the European Commission to grant public access to a text message sent by an EU Head of State to the Commission President concerning the EU-Mercosur trade negotiations. The Commission confirmed that its President had received the text message but noted that the message had been received via the instant messaging application ‘Signal’, which had had the ‘disappearing messages’ feature activated. As a result, the Commission concluded that it did not hold any documents falling within the scope of the request.

Following a meeting with Commission representatives and an inspection of documents related to the access request, the Ombudsman could not exclude the possibility that the message had been automatically deleted after the request had already been received. She also found that the Cabinet of the Commission President had failed to address the complainant’s request for 15 months. As a result, the Ombudsman concluded that the way the Commission had handled this request amounted to maladministration.

To address this shortcoming, the Ombudsman recommended that the Commission review and improve its handling of public access requests involving the Cabinet of the President or of any Commissioner. In addition, she suggested that the Commission adapt its internal rules to ensure that documents subject to public access requests are preserved and that the Commission duly keeps, for a reasonable period, all text and instant messages exchanged between Heads of State or Government, or ministers, and Members of the Commission.