Access Info Europe Celebrates International Right to Know Day 2011

Access Info is marking the 9th International Right to Know Day on 28th September 2011 with a series of events to promote awareness of the right of access to information.

International Right to Know Day was first celebrated on 28 September 2003 by access to information activists. The day is now marked by NGOs, Information Commissioners, Ombudsmen, and Inter-Governmental Bodies around the world.

The aim of Right to Know Day is to raise awareness about the right of all to access information about what government bodies are doing: it is the right to know how politicians are exercising power and how they are spending the money received from our taxes.

Seminar: International Right to Know Day: What the EU can learn from others

At this event, the European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, will be joined by the following speakers: Finnish Minister for International Development and former MEP, Heidi Hautala, the Deputy Chief of the U.S. Mission to the EU, Thomas J. White, the Director of Access Info Europe, Helen Darbishire. Chaired by Geoff Meade, Europe Editor of the Press Association.
More details, and a registration form, are available at the Ombudsman's website

Asktheeu.org

Access Info Europe will launch a new web portal via which anyone can file a request to any institution, office, body or agency that is covered by the European Union Access to Documents Regulation 1049/2001. The portal, which will be called www.asktheeu.org, will track the responses received from the EU institutions, and will inform citizens of their right to access EU information.

Seminar: "Lights, information and action"

ALBOAN, one of Access Info's partners in Spain and member of the Coalición Pro Acceso, will be hosting an event in Bilbao about the right of access to information which will explore the ways in which citizens can take action and hold their politicians to account. Click here for more information.

Event in Madrid

A roundtable between the leaders of Spain's main political parties, journalists and civil society organisations will be held at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in the Facultad de Ciencias de la Información at 18:00. If you are interested in coming, please email victoria @ acess-info.org so that she can explain how to get to the meeting room.