Blog – Page 121 – Access Info Europe

Request Process in Estonia

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Summary: You Must Pay €286,000 for the Company Register Database Request sent to Ministry of Justice Outcome of request Information refused. Time taken to respond 1 day. Reason for refusal Must pay for access. Another law overrides FOI law. The request was sent on 4 November 2013 to the Ministry of Justice by Access Info and its partner, Mikk Salu. They replied the day after and asked us to provide more details about the information we were requesting, and we were informed that we could become a contractual user if we wanted to buy all the data in the

Request Process in EstoniaHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Request Process in Cyprus

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Summary: No Right to Request, No Right to Receive Request sent to Department of the Registrar of Companies and Official Receiver (Click here). Outcome of request Information refused. Time taken to respond 9 working days (no official deadline as there is no freedom of information law) Reason for refusal No access to information law. On 28 August 2013, Access Info sent a request to the Department of the Register of Companies and Official Receiver of Cyprus. Cyprus doesn’t have a law on access to information that obliges it to respect citizens' right to know and to answer their requests

Request Process in CyprusHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Request Process in Armenia

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Summary: Younger Laws on Fees Prevail over Right to Information Request sent to State Register of Legal Entities (Click here). Outcome of request Information refused. Time taken to respond 3 days (deadline is 5 working days). Reason for refusal Must pay for access. Another law overrides FOI law. The initial request, translated into Armenian, was sent to the State Register of Legal Entities on 5 August 2013 by our partner in Armenia, Marine Madatyan. On 9 August, a reply was received, which explained that the information requested could only be accessed upon payment of a fee, according to the

Request Process in ArmeniaHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Request Process in the United Kingdom

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:06:06+01:00

Summary: Information That Must Be Paid For Is Exempt Under the Freedom of Information Act Request sent to Companies House (Click here) Outcome of request Information refused. Time taken to respond 7 working days (Deadline is 20 working days) Reason for refusal No need to answer if info is already available. On 17 February 2015, Access Info Europe requested access to the complete database of companies, as held by Companies House, using the online request platform “What do They Know?” The response came in on 26 February 2015, which stated that access to the database needed to be refused

Request Process in the United KingdomHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:06:06+01:00

Access Info in the News 2009

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

News Articles from 2009 Una ley asegurará al ciudadano el control de la gestión pública Público | 13/12/09 Spanish - La prometida ley de transparencia pública obligará a las Administraciones e instituciones públicas a facilitar a cualquier ciudadano toda información oficial que no esté expresamente sujeta a reserva por razones de Estado o de protección del derecho a la intimidad. Read more... La ley de transparencia llegará en junio al Congreso Público | 11/12/09 Spanish - El Gobierno espera llevar en junio al Congreso el proyecto de ley de transparencia, que debe garantizar el libre acesso a la información

Access Info in the News 2009Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:01+01:00

Meeting with the government

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

Coalición Pro Acceso meets with Spanish Government 10 December 2009: On international human rights day, members of the Coalición Pro Acceso met with representatives of the Ministry of the Presidency to exchange opinions on a future Access to Information Law. They urged that this law clearly recognise the right to access to information as a fundamental right protected by the freedom of information provision of the Spanish Constitution (Article 20) and as recognized by the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The meeting lasted two hours and included a constructive and interesting exchange of

Meeting with the governmentHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

International Aid Transparency Initiative

Helen Darbishire2020-02-14T12:12:56+01:00

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is a multi-stakeholder, government-led initiative which aims to increase the availability and accessibility of aid information. The IATI focuses on donor transparency and is working to agree common standards of aid information that must be published by donors, taking into account the needs of all stakeholders. By aiming to make more aid information accessible the IATI is working to increase the ability of stakeholders to participate in decision making, increase aid effectiveness and address poverty. As an NGO Access Info is not a member of the IATI but we see it as an

International Aid Transparency InitiativeHelen Darbishire2020-02-14T12:12:56+01:00

Ratification Readiness

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

Ratification Readiness Analysis This is a resource page for national NGOs and FOI experts working on analysis of whether their national legal framework is ready for ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents. You can download here the framework for the analysis, the Convention and the Explanatory Memorandum: • Ratification Readiness Analysis Framework • Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents • Explanatory Memorandum to the Convention On this page we will be posting the results of completed analyses along with advocacy and related materials.

Ratification ReadinessHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

Europe and the Police

Helen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

Ireland, Germany, Spain lagging behind on police transparency Ireland is the only country in Europe to exclude the police from the scope of its freedom of information law, in Germany the right to know does not apply to all police forces, and Spain is the largest EU country without an access to information law and so no public right to obtain information from the police. These findings are contained in our new report, The Right to Know: Europe and the Police presented at a conference on police transparency held at the Centre for Freedom of Information, Dundee (Scotland) on 26

Europe and the PoliceHelen Darbishire2018-11-13T10:14:02+01:00

Question to Brussels

Helen Darbishire2020-02-14T11:42:36+01:00

Question for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents? At the end of 2009, Access Info filed access to information requests with the 16 Directorate Generals of the European Union. The aim was to monitor whether or not their internal guidelines on answering information requests were of a good enough standard. The findings of Access Info's research, published in the report "Question for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents?" include a serious barrier to access posed by languages: only two of the 16 DGs had an internet page about access to documents in all the official languages of the EU. “If you don’t speak English, you

Question to BrusselsHelen Darbishire2020-02-14T11:42:36+01:00