Dear Ms Izuzquiza,
We would like to refer you to the request for access to documents you filed to ESMA in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on 3 May 2019 in which you requested to get access to information relating to the following:
1. For the years 2017, 2018 and 2019:
* any and all documents that contain the number of staff in your Transparency Unit (or the Department dealing with access to documents requests);
* any and all documents containing the budget for your Transparency Unit (or the Department dealing with access to documents requests).
1. And for the years 2016, 2017 and 2018:
* any and all documents containing data on the handling of access to documents requests by this institution, in particular broken down data, per year, on the number of initial access to documents requests received, and the number of confirmatory applications received.
Preliminary we would like to inform you that at ESMA there is no readily available medium/document that would provide the composite information you sought with each individual question of your application. In this respect we would like to draw your attention to Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) 1049/2001 which states that the right of access applies only to documents in possession of the EU institution/body concerned.
As a consequence and in order to address all your questions, ESMA needed to compile the dedicated response below with the relevant requested information.
Therefore, your request was treated as a request for information in accordance with the Code of good administrative behaviour of ESMA (the “Code” - ESMA/2011/MB/6 -
https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/defaul…).
In light of the above, we note the following:
As regards point 1) above please note that the workload of dealing with the requests for access to documents depends on the number of requests received and when these are received, they require the involvement of different Officers in different Departments of ESMA depending on the subject matter. Due to this reason, neither is possible to give a specific and definitive number of full time employees dedicated to requests for access to documents nor ESMA possesses any document indicating such numbers.
Moreover, please note that (also for the years covered by the scope of your request for information) the requests for access to documents received are all centralised and dealt by the Legal Team of the Legal, Convergence and Enforcement Department of ESMA where the expertise with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 in particular lies with one Legal Officer expert on this matter and acting as “document access coordinator”, one back-up and the Legal Team Leader and/or the Head of Department.
With respect to point 2) above, please note the following:
* In 2016, ESMA received six requests for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. Out of these six requests, two confirmatory applications were received. Further information on the requests for access to documents received pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 can be found on ESMA’s 2016 Annual Report on page 75 at the following weblink:
https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/defaul….
* In 2017, ESMA received six requests for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. Out of these six requests, one confirmatory application was received. Further information on the requests for access to documents received pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 can be found on ESMA’s 2017 Annual Report on page 59 at the following weblink:
https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/defaul…
* In 2018, ESMA received twelve requests for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. Out of these twelve requests, four confirmatory applications were received. You will find additional information on the requests for access to documents received pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on ESMA’s 2018 Annual Report which will be published very soon.
We trust that this response satisfies your request in full.
With kind regards
Enrico Gagliardi
