Date: Wednesday, 05 June 2024

Remote video-conferencing meeting

Present

European Commission

Secretariat-General

Unit SG.C.1: Transparency, Document Management and Access to Documents:

• Legal and Policy Officer - Access to Documents
• Legal and Policy Officer – Access to Documents

Unit SG.C.2: Ethics, Good Administration & Relations with European Ombudsman:

• Senior Expert - Coordinator for inter-institutional relations

Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs

Unit HOME.B.1 - Schengen & External Borders:

• Legal and policy assistant

Unit HOME.A.4 - Legal affairs & Anti-corruption:

• Legal officer

European Ombudsman

Directorate of Inquiries

• Jennifer King, Legal Expert
• Nicholas Hernanz, Inquiries Officer

Purpose of the meeting

The purpose of the meeting was for the Ombudsman inquiry team to better understand why the Commission redacted certain parts in documents 1 and 2 at issue in the complainant’s request (ref. EASE 2023/5159).

Information exchanged

The Ombudsman inquiry team introduced themselves, thanked the Commission’s representatives for meeting with them and set out the purpose of the meeting. They said that they had questions on four specific paragraphs in the documents.

The Commission’s representatives provided additional explanations on the reasons for redacting the parts at issue.

In particular, they explained that two paragraphs in document 1 do not fall within the scope of the complainant’s request; as such, they are marked as “out of scope”. The representatives said that the complainant stated clearly that he was looking for (i) documents concerning allegation of fundamental rights violations, (ii) within the context of Joint Operation Terra and (iii) in Bulgaria. Since the paragraphs in question failed to cover the three conditions cumulatively, they were considered to fall outside the scope of the request. The Commission representatives provided additional confidential explanations concerning the content of the paragraphs.

They also explained that two paragraphs in document 2 are covered by the exception concerning the protection of the public interest as regards public security.[1] They noted that, as already explained in the confirmatory decision, the paragraphs depict essential details of situational awareness of external borders used by Frontex to monitor those borders and develop risk awareness reports. The Commission’s representatives argued that disclosure could hamper the effectiveness of operations carried out by Bulgarian authorities as it would outline their modus operandi.

The Ombudsman inquiry team noted that some information in the paragraphs in question is already publicly available, in particular in the annual reports by the Fundamental Rights Officer of Frontex. The Commission representatives explained that the redacted parts do not present the information in the same terms as in the publicly available reports. They provided concrete examples of additional information in the paragraphs that, if disclosed, could give information and be useful to criminal groups (such as migrant smugglers) as they could potentially indicate ways of avoiding border controls in specific areas.

The Commission representatives provided additional confidential explanations concerning the content of the paragraphs. They insisted that the confirmatory decision contained all the explanations needed to understand why the documents had to be redacted; providing more specific explanations could have revealed information on the content of the redacted paragraphs.

Conclusion of the meeting

The inquiry team thanked the Commission’s representatives for their time and for the explanations provided, and the meeting ended.

 

Brussels, 28 June 2024

Jennifer King                                                                                                               Nicholas Hernanz

Legal Expert                                                                                                                Inquiries Officer

 

[1] Laid down in Article 4(1)(a) of Regulation 1049/2001.