on the application in 2021 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents





1.Introduction

The present annual report, drafted in accordance with Article 17(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (hereafter ‘Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001’), covers the implementation by the European Commission in the year 2021 and is based on statistical data, which are summarised in Annex . It also refers to findings of the European Ombudsman concerning the European Commission's implementation of the Regulation and the rulings handed down by the EU Courts.

The year 2021 was another one in which the European Commission continued to exercise its transparency obligations in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the light of the recovery ambitions embodied in the NextGenerationEU. This context influenced the number and nature of the specific requests submitted under the Regulation.

The statistics reflect the number of applications received and replies provided in 2021. They further provide more accurate data as regards the statistics retrieved for the previous years, following subsequent regular encoding corrections.

The statistics show that the requested documents were fully or partially disclosed in almost 74% of the 8,280 cases at the initial stage, and wider or even full access was granted in 38% of the 247 cases reviewed at the confirmatory stage. The data not only confirm the openness of the European Commission, but also the commitment of the institution to the right of access to documents as part of its overall transparency policy.

In the European Commission, the treatment of initial access to documents requests is handled on a decentralised basis by the various Commission Directorates-General and services. Each Directorate-General and service appoints at least one legal expert for this task, acting as ‘access to documents coordinator’. Depending on the size of the service and the number of requests received, these coordinators are usually assisted by support staff and are entrusted with the coordination of the draft replies with the units in charge of the underlying policy areas.

Confirmatory requests are dealt with by a specific team within the Secretariat-General’s Unit for Transparency, Document Management and Access to Documents, so as to ensure an independent administrative review of the reply given at the initial stage. In addition, the Unit provides horizontal guidance, training and advice to all Directorates-General and services of the European Commission on the implementation of the Regulation, in close cooperation with the Legal Service, ensuring the coordination and uniform implementation of the detailed rules for the application of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001.

This Unit also manages Gestdem – the European Commission-wide IT system for handling initial and confirmatory requests for access to documents. In parallel, during 2021, the European Commission continued to develop its future system for handling access requests through an electronic online portal, namely ‘Electronic AccesS to European Commission Documents’ (or ‘EASE’). The first version of EASE will go live in 2022 and will provide:

(1).a new online portal allowing the citizens to (i) submit and have an overview of their applications for access to Commission documents, (ii) communicate with the Commission as well as (iii) search for previously disclosed documents; and

(2).a new case-management system allowing the Commission staff to register, attribute and handle the applications for access to documents. It will replace Gestdem, the current IT system used for this purpose.

The Commission services are supported by the Historical Archives Service (HAS) with regard to archives of all previous Commissioners and Cabinets. In relation to access to documents applications, in 2021, HAS provided its assistance to the Commission services in 175 cases, mostly to the Secretariat-General (22) and the Directorates-General for Climate Action (19), Research and Innovation (18), Trade (14), Energy (11) and Health and Food Safety (8).

2.Making information and documents available through Registers and Internet Sites

The Commission publishes a wide variety of legal, policy, administrative and other documents on different websites and registers. Many are available on the Register of Commission Documents, Register of Delegated Acts and other corporate registers managed by the Secretariat-General, while others can be found on websites managed by Directorates-General or EUR-Lex.

The updated version of the Register of Commission Documents (hereafter ‘RegDoc’) became operational on 17 May 2021. It features new search functionalities, improved user interface and improved presentation of documents. As of 2022, new document types will start being published on RegDoc. Thanks to its improved IT architecture, RegDoc can be integrated with certain other registers managed by the Secretariat-General of the European Commission. This is the next phase of the project. Thanks to such integrations, documents published on other Secretariat-General registers will be available also via RegDoc.

In 2021, 15,009 new documents were added to RegDoc (see Annex – Table 1), falling within the following categories: C, COM, JOIN, OJ, PV, SEC or SWD .

In 2021, the number of visitors of the ‘Access to Documents’ website on Europa reached 15,222 compared to 14,716 in the previous year. Similarly, the number of pages viewed increased by over 37%, with 33,508 pages viewed (see Annex – Table 2).

3.Analysis of the applications for access to documents

3.0.The number of applications (Annex – Tables 3 and 4)

As illustrated by the graph below, in 2021, the number of initial applications reached 8,420. This figure reflects an increase of 5.2% in comparison with 2020. The European Commission provided 8,280 replies under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and 9,141 replies in total.