The European Commission, where emails could not get out, or get in, and one asks if anyone noticed (EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET)

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EXCLUSIVE: EU official emails hit with four-day partial outage

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The European Union’s official email service was hit with a four-day partial outage between October 10 and October 14, documents seen by Brussels Signal have confirmed.

The incident appears to have centred around official emails belonging to the European Commission, with the ability of an unknown number of email addresses to send and receive messages having been hit.

In a letter sent to MEPs on October 15, the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for tech support warned that emails sent from the European Parliament to the Commission or vice versa from October 10 at 12:42 until October 14 at 14:10 may not have successfully gone through.

“Should you have sent an email or Outlook invitation during that timeframe to EC email recipients, it is recommended to resend them,” the notice read.

“If you were expecting to receive one, please check with your EC counterparts to have them resent in case of need.”

The body added that, thanks to the “implementation of a temporary solution”, the “situation is currently restored”.

“We reassure you that the technical teams are working closely with the Commission to apply a permanent solution,” the notice added.

“We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, and will keep you informed on the progress.”

It is unclear whether the outage only affected intra-Eurobubble communications, although one commission source told Brussels Signal that the problems appeared more “general”.

They described receiving a warning from commission tech support on October 14 that the body’s email service was currently “unstable”.

Other sources said they had no problems.

Brussels Signal has approached the commission for comment.

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