Will the requesting country see what you file with the CCF, and will you see its reply?

What the bureau sees

The procedure is adversarial on paper. The 2024 report describes it: once the General Secretariat confirms data exist, the Commission contacts the bureau “to solicit their feedback on the substantive arguments presented by the applicant”, asking whether the data remain accurate and how the bureau answers your claims. Article 34 authorises that consultation; Article 36 confines the case to written submissions, with hearings only if the Chamber deems them necessary. The bureau reads your grounds, not your life. The Procedural Guidelines draw the line: the Commission “never communicates to the NCBs information concerning the applicant’s location, representative, etc.”, and any item “specifically identified by an applicant as confidential will not be communicated”.

What you see

Article 35(1) makes information connected with the request accessible to you, and the Chamber must consult the owner of any item before disclosing it. Article 31(3) obliges it to tell both sides the examination date and the deadline for additional submissions. The bureau’s reply comes to you through a filter: it can ask for restrictions on four grounds — national security or crime prevention, the confidentiality of an investigation, the rights of third parties, the Commission’s own functioning — and some bureaus, the report notes, seek to restrict even the fact that no data exist.

The price of secrecy

Restrictions cut both ways. Article 35(4) requires every restriction to be justified and to say whether a summary can be provided; a bare refusal does not force disclosure, but the Chamber may weigh the missing justification when deciding. The Guidelines repeat the warning for applicants: an unexplained confidentiality request counts against you. Where restrictions pile up, the report adds, the Commission is sometimes “not in a position to share its reasoned decisions with the parties” — a reason to restrict sparingly.

What stays private altogether

Your request is not recorded in INTERPOL’s databases (Article 20(2)); the Guidelines say you may apply “without fearing that the request will be used” for police cooperation. Since 2025 the Chamber can bring reported intimidation or reprisals to the attention of INTERPOL’s bodies (Article 28(3)(c)), after hearing in 2024 of applicants and families threatened for filing. The rule: write every paragraph as if the bureau will read it, mark the exhibits it must not see, and build the case on documents that survive being answered — the bureau’s reply is what the Commission weighs against yours.

Related

• Who actually asked for your Red Notice, and what is a National Central Bureau?
• What does a strong deletion request look like?
• How long does Red Notice deletion take?