Secretariat‐General Head of Unit - C2 European Commission

 

Dear Mr X,

I am writing to follow-up on the meeting between your colleagues and the Ombudsman inquiry team on 10 June 2022 from which we understand that the Commission is concerned about our request to review the documents at issue before it has finalised its confirmatory assessment.

It is not unusual for the Ombudsman to review the documents at issue at this stage and we have often done so in the past.^[1]

As you know, Regulation 1049/2001 requires the EU administration to deal with requests for public access promptly. Delays of several months are therefore of great concern to the Ombudsman.

The prescribed time limit in this case expired in February 2022. In addition, the Commission was not in a position to reply within the deadline set by the Ombudsman (19 April 2022) and it is unclear when the Commission will finalise its assessment.

We would therefore like to move this case forward and, to this end, review the documents at issue, as explained in our letter of 13 May 2022. We would be grateful if they could now be provided to us, in electronic format, without further delay.

In addition, we consider that it would be useful to review the reply from the Dutch authorities whom the Commission consulted. We would appreciate it if a copy of this reply could be provided to us by 30 June 2022.

Yours sincerely,

Rosita Hickey

Director of inquiries

 

Strasbourg, 23/06/2022

 

 

[1] See, for example, cases 552/2018/THH, 1995/2019/MIG, 1525/2020/MIG.