Madrid, 10 November 2016 - Access Info Europe has expressed serious concern that Italy’s newly-adopted “FOIA” still falls far behind international standards after an analysis of the quality of the law ranked Italy 54th out of 111 countries. The pro-transparency organisation criticised the decree, passed in May this year, specifically because it weakens the appeals system by abandoning Italy’s Information Commission as a national oversight body. “Italy’s new FOIA forces requesters to go through the infamously-slow Italian court system in order to challenge non-disclosure of information, making it difficult to hold public officials accountable and near-impossible for citizens to participate