2.6.2 Minutes of a consultation using the Shared area

Generally, minutes of the consultation must be issued in the same manner as described in C‑VII, 2.4. In particular, it must be clear from the minutes what was discussed during the consultation and, if an agreement was reached, any agreed amendments must be identified as precisely as possible. However, the minutes must not include any details of new substantive information discussed during the consultation or anything that is not relevant to the application. Identifying agreed amendments may be done by quoting the relevant parts of the final edited/commented documents from the Shared area in the minutes. Only with the applicant's explicit agreement may the relevant parts of those documents be annexed to the minutes.

The minutes must list the persons who were present during the consultation. Authors or editors of the document who were not present during the consultation are not mentioned in the minutes. The date for the purpose of minutes is the date the consultation was held, even if the document was edited before then.

The minutes must specify who will perform the next action. Depending on whether or not an agreement is reached and on the procedural situation, the minutes can be sent for information only or they can set a new time limit, extend or cancel a pending time limit or indicate the cancellation or maintenance of scheduled oral proceedings (see C-VII, 2.4(i)-(v) and C-VII, 3.3).