Access to Information - Restricted! Alexander KASHUMOV, Access to Information Program At the end of March 2007, the European Commission is expected to publish its regular monitoring report on Bulgaria - the first after the country’s accession to the European Union. As it is well known, the focus of Europe’s attention to Bulgaria is on Chapter 24: Justice and Home Affairs. Is this particular topic a priority for our politicians, though? On February 28, three MPs from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the National Movement Simeon the Second and the Bulgarian People’s Union submitted to the National Assembly a bill for amending the Access to Public Information Act. It turned out that the document was not drafted by a civic organization, as should be expected for a parliamentarian initiative, but by a body within the executive power - the State Agency for Information and Communication Technologies. Every society with democratic traditions would wonder why the institutions of the executive power do not use the government’s legislative initiative instead of the “public entrance”. As it seems, not many are wondering in our country. What is even stranger is that the bill swiftly moved through the parliamentary committees. The formal occasion for the legislative initiative was the implementation of Directive 2003/98/EC on the reuse of public information. The Directive requires that member states guarantee equal conditions for access to information from public institutions, as well as equal conditions for the use of such information by the recipients. So, our parliamentarians started dutifully copying the texts of the Directive. Which is fine; however the wheel has already been invented in our country. In other words, the Access to Public Information Act (APIA), adopted in 2000, sets much higher standards for the access to information from public institutions than the Directive itself. As for the use of information in Bulgaria, it is free. Since our politicians rarely refer to this Act when requesting information from institutions, they do not seem to know it very well. EU directives, however, have to be implemented; that is why they are directives after all. So, let’s amend the law a bit and settle this all so important issue. Justice and home affairs can wait! This is probably what the proponents of the bill were thinking. In this turmoil, no one is really concerned that citizens’ constitutional right to obtain information from the state is being endangered. No one cares that under the APIA everyone has the right to obtain information from state and other public institutions without being an “interested party”, that the response time is 14 days, that the access is free, and that the institutions are required to provide excerpts from official documents thereof. And what is being proposed? Exactly the opposite. Informa-
tion is to be provided to “interested” parties alone, the response time is extended to 20 days, the access fee should not exceed “significantly” the material costs (whatever that means); and parts of documents do not necessarily have to be provided. Well, the last thing is not included in the directive, but then again, the implementation is happening in our own way. Meanwhile, many non-governmental organizations, journalists, public figures, citizens, civil servants and politicians opposed the amendments. The campaign launched by the Access to Information Program, an entity working in this field for 10 years, began to rapidly generate support. More than a thousand signatures against the amendments were collected via the Internet. On Friday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed its concern to the Bulgarian institutions with regard to the proposed changes. Why are these changes dangerous after all? They introduce a new term, “information from the public sector”, and a procedure for access to information parallel to the existing one, which was already described above: introduction of interest, longer deadlines, higher fees. A closer look at the new term, however, shows that it is identical to the term “public information”, the access to which is currently regulated by the APIA. It is this identical meaning of the two terms that poses the danger, as it opens the door to administrative arbitrariness in deciding which of the two legal procedures to apply. Whether proof of interest should be required or not. Whether to respond in 14 or 20 days. Whether the information will cost 0.09 lv. per page or more. And let us not forget that from now on, there will be instructions to that effect: “Dear citizen, you have not clarified what type of information you would like to access - public or from the public sector?” Of course, in 99 % of the cases citizens will respond: “Well, I do not know what the difference is.” And then, the official will answer: “I do not know either, but why should I care. You are the one asking for information, dear. So, please clarify your request!” So, that is how things stand. It is like the question why money was invented. The trivial answer is because of the need to have uniform means of exchange. We need only one regime for access to information for that same reason. From the point of view of formal logic, the debate is not taking place at a very high level, but obviously, this is our reality. In our opinion, the Directive was implemented with the introduction of the APIA. There is still room for improvement, though. What we lack is publication of documents on the Internet. The mandatory posting of documents on the Internet is the norm that Hungarians have introduced in implementing the Directive, without amending their access to information legislation. This is the situation. Otherwise, we had the same start years ago. OBEKTIV 2