EU Commission creates barriers for access to documents requests
| 18 Jun 2014: posted by the editor - European Union | |
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by Kirsten Fiedler, EDRi However, this access to information is now likely to become more burdensome. Now, new barriers are being put in place to make it even more difficult to gain access to European Commission documents. In April 2014, an internal note was circulated by the European Commission in order to announce a change in policy. The Commission argues that it has "increasingly confronted with cases where applicants seem to hide behind false identities". Strangely enough though, in its latest report on access applications dated July 2013, the Commission neither mentions abusive requests nor gives statistics on requests by applicants hiding behind false identities, let alone why this would be a problem. Moreover, the European Commission explains that the number of applications has dropped compared to previous years: "the flow of access requests at the initial stage decreased in number of applications" and "the number of replies was 5274 in 2012 in comparison with 6055 in 2011." On 16 June 2014, EDRi therefore lodged two complaints to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) against the European Commission. The first complaint was that this new procedure is in breach of EU data protection law because the Commission is asking for unnecessary personal information. The second complaint concerns the lack of basic standards to ensure secure communications with the Commission's website. EDRi asked the EDPS to assess, in the absence of any evidence presented by the Commission showing that additional data collection and processing is necessary, if the collection is excessive and, consequently, is contrary to Articles 4.1.c and 5 of Regulation 45/2001 (which establishes standards for the protection of personal data processed by the EU institutions and bodies). EDRi's second complaint concerned the European Commission's online form for the submission of access-to-documents requests. The electronic form used by the European Commission for receiving document access requests collects personal data via a non-encrypted form over a page that is not equipped with an SSL connection. EDRi therefore asked the EDPS to assess whether this non-existent security constitutes a breach of Article 22 of Regulation 45/2001, in that it fails to implement appropriate technical measures to ensure a level of security for the personal data transmitted via that form. EU Commission's note to heads of unit (19.03.2014) http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/1337/response/4880/attach/2/Notification%20of%20negative%20replies%20Note%20to%20DGs%20signed.pdf |
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