Of the 25 access to documents requests made by citizens to the European Central Bank via AsktheEU.org between September 2011 and August 2013, just eight were successful in obtaining all or some of the information requested.
In three instances there was full disclosure of the documents requested.
The other five requests were successful even though no documents were provided because the requested correspondence did not exist or the meetings enquired about had never taken place. Five requests concerned documents that the ECB did not hold, and requesters were generally referred to another institution which was likely to possess those documents.
There were seven partial refusals to provide information based on the exceptions found in the ECB’s access to documents rules, and two refusals to provide any information at all.
The incomplete response avoided answering questions about a former staff member with the evasive answer “we are not in the position to provide you with this information.”
Just once was the outcome of a request “administrative silence” as the ECB did not send the requester any acknowledgement of receipt and no response has been provided to date. At the time of publishing this report, there was still one request awaiting response.
You can read the full report here. 