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Press release
August 16, 2017 at 10:30 AM
Madrid, Spain (TDN)
On August 9, after Access Info Europe published two months of detailed data on the travel expenses of EU commissioners, journalists bombarded the European Commission spokesperson with questions about her travel expenses.
Access Info Europe fact-checked some of Andreeva’s key statements.
1. “Whenever we are asked to provide information, we publish the cost of the mission.”
Incorrect: The European Commission has been strenuously resisting the release of this information. After a long campaign by Access Info and 120 requesters from across Europe (who submitted more than 200 requests in total), we were able to obtain data for only two months in 2016 and a small amount of travel expenses for earlier years. This is the first time such detailed information has been disclosed.
2. “The entire EU budget includes a portion for administrative expenses (Title 5), and you can check online how much we spend.”
real: The European Commission does publish an overall figure for the cost of the missions, which is the total amount in the EU budget line. It doesn’t tell you what the money is used for.
3. “…each request for access to documents is considered on a case-by-case basis and we decide what information to provide.”
Incorrect: The European Commission did not process these 189 requests on a case-by-case basis. Instead, it refused to register 152 of them, did not process 188 of them, and did not respond to 51 of the appeals. The Commission then combined all the requests into one, erroneously attributing them to a single requester – Access Info Europe – and then said that providing all the information was too much work. In fact, the Commission explicitly stated that it “does not intend to send individual communications to applicants regarding the processing of requests,” refusing to acknowledge that these requests were made on their own initiative by individual citizens.
4. “We are very transparent about all the tasks that the commissioners are carrying out. (…) As for the actual details, each task will be disclosed to you…”
part: The Commission is transparent about its activities and missions, publishing the locations and times of these activities and missions. The Commission does not disclose the cost of each trip for these missions.
5. “We are one of the most transparent governments in the world”
Incorrect: While it is difficult to verify facts, we note that the EU is not one of the most transparent governments, even in Europe, when it comes to travel expenses of ministers and senior officials.
6. “I do not think it is possible to publish, on a case-by-case basis, all the costs of all missions for all the people travelling… There is also the rule of proportionality, where the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that requests for access to documents need to be proportional to the amount of work they require.”
real: There are rules and jurisprudence regarding the proportion of requests and the burden of responding, which must be applied to each individual request.
7. “…Regarding the proportions: Of course, if you were to list how many people a delegation is travelling with, and how much a normal commercial aircraft costs unless you charter it, that would be a lot of work… So of course there would need to be some work to compile those things and make them available in a way that responds to actual requests for access to documents.”
Incorrect: The spokesperson did not seem to be familiar with the details of the EU document access rules. There is a right to request actual documents (not information), so no additional work needs to be done, just remove personal or sensitive data and provide the documents. This has been done in this case, but only for some of the documents. In this case, each of the 189 requests was for a relatively small number of documents (no more than 10 per request), and no calculation or additional information would be required for additional work. If the press service needs to explain documents to journalists or add relevant context, as it did in this press conference, that is another matter, part of the Commission’s duty to assist the press, and will probably never be included in the time calculation of requests made by citizens.
8. Referring to Juncker’s €27,000 air taxi: “This is an incomplete amount that was published because it was obviously the amount for the entire mission (to Rome).”
Incorrect: The amount was based on a travel claim form submitted in the name of Jean-Claude Juncker; there was nothing on the document provided to indicate that it was for the entire mission, nor that nine people were travelling with him.
9. “It is in our interest to find a balanced solution to respond to each request while maintaining transparency by making public what our commissioners are doing.”
Incorrect: The EU’s rules on access to documents are very clear that every document request from a citizen or EU resident must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. This is a right under Article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. This principle of openness is further enshrined in Regulation 1049/2001, which explicitly states that “this Regulation applies to all documents held by institutions… in all fields of activity in the Union.” Access to a document will only be denied in part or in full if it would cause harm to a specific interest, such as privacy. In this case, access was denied without correctly applying that test to each of the 189 document requests.
10. “We are not rejecting anything; on the contrary, we are reporting everything that happens wherever our commissioners go.”
real: The Commission is transparent about events and assignments, disclosing where and when these events take place.
Incorrect: The committee does not publish all information: it is not possible to disclose the travel costs of each delegation, nor the specific amount of hospitality expenses.
11. “That is why, in this case, we provided all the details; and before, I want to emphasize that we certainly provided information when we requested documents.”
Incorrect: The Commission did not provide all the information requested because, despite asking for full expenses for 2016, it chose to disclose expenses for only two months.
12. “We followed the rules; the rules were very clear about document requests, and we followed those rules and provided the information.”
Incorrect: The Commission refused to register 152 requests, did not process 188 requests, and did not respond to 51 appeals, in flagrant violation of the EU’s obligation to register and process all requests for document access.
13. “Also please note that these requests were made between January 25, 2017 and February 28, 2017. We responded on July 20, so I think for 196 groups that was actually pretty good; we provided the information as required.”
Note: For accuracy, requests were submitted between January 25 and 28, 2017.
Incorrect: EU regulations require a response within 15 working days, which may be extended by another 15 working days if the request is complex. The documents were provided six months after the request was submitted, which is a serious violation of the legal time limit. In fact, before the response arrived, 53 requesters had already complained to the European Ombudsman about multiple violations of their rights, including time limits.
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