Japanese government should acquit environmentalists denied information proving they acted in public interest
Madrid, 3 September 2010 – Access Info Europe today criticised the Japanese government for using censorship in response to access to information requests, and called for the acquittal of two environmental activists who exposed government corruption linked to the black market in whale meat.
Greenpeace anti-whaling activists Toru Suzuki and Junichi Sato, known as the Tokyo Two, are on trial for trespass and theft linked to their work to expose how whale meat from the government-funded research programme ends up in Tokyo’s top restaurants and is given to senior public officials and parliamentarians. The verdict will be announced on Monday 6 September 2010.
Request to Spain's Zapatero re Secret Transparency Law
Madrid, 25th August 2010 — Access Info today wrote to the Spanish government asking for information about the draft “Law on Transparency and Citizen Access to Public Information”. On Monday 16th of August the press carried news that the law would soon be approved by the Council of Ministers; nothing has been heard since about the progress of the draft law.
Meeting agendas of the Council of Ministers are secret in Spain until after the meeting has taken place. Access Info provided the government with comparative examples of other countries in which Cabinet meeting agendas are made public and asked to be informed when the Council of Ministers will consider the draft law. The letter also asks for a full consultation on the draft with members of the public and civil society groups.
Comparative information on openness of Cabinet Meetings (English) 
Letter to the Spanish Government (Spanish)
Transparency Law begins Legislative Process Behind Closed Doors
Madrid, 16 August 2010 - Spanish Daily El País today announced that this Friday (20 August 2010) the Spanish Council of Ministers will consider for approval the draft “Transparency and Access of Citizens to Information Law”, thereby initiating the legislative process with leaked information. Access Info Europe condemns the leaking of the draft law to the media rather than a formal public release of the text, and has renewed its call for full debate and structured public consultation around the draft law.
“To date, the only information that we have about this law has come from leaks in the media. This is precisely the culture that must change to allow citizens to hold their governments accountable and participate in the decision-making processes which met the standards of a modern democracy,” commented Helen Darbishire from Access Info Europe.
The 6 Question Campaign
The 6 Question Campaign is the most extensive transparency monitoring exercise that has ever been conducted. A total of 84 organisations across the world presented the same 6 questions to their national public institutions between February and June 2010. However, this campaign is more than a simple transparency monitoring exercise since the point is also to analyse government spending on maternal health, development cooperation and the environment. The results of the investigation will be produced in the form of five reports, one on each of these three areas, and the other two on budgetary transparency and on access to information in general. The latter will be produced by Access Info Europe and the Centre for Law and Democracy.
The 6 Question Campaign is coordinated by Access Info Europe, the Centre for Law and Democracy and the International Budget Partnership. The project works in four phases – definition of the project, investigation/monitoring, analysis of the results and production of the reports, and finally, the dissemination of the results.
The results will be presented at the World Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, which will take place between the 20th and 22nd of September 2010 in New York. Between the 22nd and 28th of September we will be presenting and disseminating the reports in various countries with events such as press conferences; thus taking advantage of International Right to Know Day, which takes place on the 28th September each year.
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