President European Commission 1049 BRUSSELS

 

Dear President,

I am contacting you in an effort to seek a solution in this case.

The complaint is that the Commission, by removing contact details of staff from below Head of Unit level from the online directory ‘Whoiswho’, has disproportionately restricted the capacity of citizens and civil society to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action. The complainant also argues that the decision fosters inequality in access to the Commission, since well-funded lobbyists have greater access to contact details by investing the necessary resources to compile them themselves through research.

I appreciate that the Commission has to balance the principle of transparency and open decision-making with the duty to protect its staff, including those dealing with sensitive files. I also appreciate that the number of staff members dealing with sensitive matters has grown over the years, in line with the additional tasks and responsibilities assigned to the Commission as a result of successive crises.

In its written reply, the Commission clarified that it took the decision to no longer publish the contact details of all staff members following “a number of incidents reported to senior management having affected staff members in charge of sensitive files”. In the context of my parallel inquiry 1647/2023/NH, which concerns a request for public access to documents about the decision in question, my inquiry team examined an email exchange between the various services of the Secretariat-General regarding the matter.

It appears that the Commission, when taking the decision to revisit its current policy, did not:

• conduct thorough internal or external consultations - beyond checking alignment with the approach of the European Parliament and the Council - on the merits of such a decision, to obtain input on the different interests at stake;
• carefully assess the impact of the removal of the names of staff members, including on the equality in access to the Commission;
• identify possible alternative measures (such as removing only names of certain staff members working on sensitive files);
•  and
• carefully balance the different interests at stake (such as transparency, equality of access, data protection and due diligence towards its staff).

I therefore propose that the Commission carries out a new decision-making process that takes into consideration the elements listed above.

I would like to emphasise that this solution proposal does not take any position on the outcome of such a renewed decision-making process, but concerns only the process as such.

I would be grateful to receive your reply to my proposal by 20 June 2024.

At this stage, the solution proposal is confidential. My inquiry team has, however, informed the complainant of our intention to seek a solution in this case.[1] Please note that our usual practice is to send a copy of the solution proposal to the complainant for comments, together with a copy of the institution’s reply to it, once we have received that reply. I would therefore ask the Commission to inform us if any information contained in the solution proposal, or in its reply, should not be shared with the complainant.[2]

Yours sincerely,

Emily O'Reilly
European Ombudsman

Strasbourg, 25/03/2024

 

[1] In line with Article 2(10) of the Statute of the European Ombudsman, Regulation 2021/1163 of 24 June 2021 laying down the regulations and general conditions governing the performance of the Ombudsman’s duties: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/legal-basis/statute/en.

[2] If you wish to submit documents or information that you consider to be confidential, and which should not be disclosed to the complainant, please mark them ‘Confidential’. Encrypted emails can be sent to our dedicated mailbox. Information and documents of this kind will be deleted from the European Ombudsman’s files shortly after the inquiry has ended.