Ms Ursula von der Leyen President European Commission

 

Dear President,

The Commission is currently engaged in developing and rolling out many new initiatives in order to deal with the enormous challenges stemming from the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The European public is intensively following these events. Some of them, including journalists, academics and practitioners, seek to follow developments in detail including through the making of public access requests for documents. Some seek to participate in the decision-making by doing this, others wish to understand at a later stage how and why particular decisions were taken.

I appreciate that the timelines for replying to such requests are demanding, even more so when colleagues are tasked with new and urgent priorities. It is, for this reason, all the more important to tackle what might be systemic shortcomings that lead to delays.

Public access to documents is a fundamental right that safeguards the transparency and legitimacy of the EU institutions. To ensure meaningful access, it is key that the EU institutions deal with every request for public access as swiftly as possible.

My Office has been monitoring^[1] whether the European Commission deals with requests for public access to documents promptly, as required under Regulation 1049/2001^[2].

As indicated in a recent letter^[3], I have now decided to follow up on this issue with the Commission primarily because delays are increasingly being raised in complaints to my Office in this area^[4].

I am aware of the large number of initial and confirmatory access requests the Commission receives every year and that this number has been increasing. The complaints that my Office receives constitute a limited sample of cases only and, by definition, indicate problems that applicants have faced. They do not necessarily therefore reflect how the Commission implements Regulation 1049/2001 overall.

That said, the complaints against the Commission that have been brought to my attention during the last few years do show that the Commission does not always meet the statutory time limits under Regulation 1049/2001. In some cases, the Commission adopted decisions with a significant delay.

 I have therefore decided to open an own-initiative inquiry to try to identify if there are any issues that could be addressed by systemic solutions. I consider that this would be helpful to the public but also to the Commission itself.

As a first step, I consider that it would be useful to receive a written reply from the Commission. Specifically, I would appreciate it if the Commission could reply to the questions annexed to this letter and to provide my Office with the relevant data, if possible, by 30 May 2022.

Based on our analysis of this information, my Office will then select a sample of files for inspection.

Should your staff have any queries, or any difficulties in retrieving the requested data, they may contact the responsible inquiries officers, Ms Michaela Gehring or Ms Tanja Ehnert.

Yours sincerely,

 

Emily O'Reilly
European Ombudsman

Strasbourg, 04/04/2022

 

ANNEX - List of questions

Initial access requests

1) How many initial requests for public access to documents did the Commission receive in the year 2021?

2) What was the average duration (in working days) for the Commission to take a decision on an initial request for public access in that year? What was the median?

3) What was the duration in those five cases that took the longest? And in those five cases that took the shortest?

4) In how many cases did the Commission exceed the maximum time limit of 30 working days?

Confirmatory requests

5) How many confirmatory requests did the Commission receive in the year 2021?

6) What was the average duration (in working days) for the Commission to take a decision on a confirmatory request in that year? What was the median?

7) What was the duration in those five cases that took the longest? And in those five cases that took the shortest?

8) In how many cases did the Commission exceed the maximum time limit of 30 working days?

New Commission portal

9) A study on the public access portal the Commission is about to launch suggested that the new portal will “decrease the delays in providing replies to the requests”? How and at what stage in the procedure does the Commission consider that time will be saved?

 

[1] See, for example, decision in case 129/2019/MIG: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/118611.

[2] Articles 7(1) and 8(1) of Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32001R1049.

[3] Request for reply in case 2107/2021/DL dated 13 December 2021.

[4] See, for example, complaints 1689/2020/OAM, 1896/2021/MIG, 2221/2021/OAM, 5/2022/DL, and 383/2022/MIG.