Madrid, 24 November 2016 – A letter from seventeen (17) Spanish civil society organisations sent today to the Spanish government calls for information about progress on the third Open Government Partnership Action Plan, as well as urging the Spanish authorities to send ministerial level representatives to the OGP summit, to be held in Paris on 7-9 December 2016.

The letter from members of the Coalicíon Pro Acceso

[1], also signed by five (5) individual transparency experts, notes that Paris is a high level summit, and at least 32 countries, including France, Germany and the UK, will be sending heads of state and/or ministers to the event.

In 2013 Spain only sent one mid-level representative to the London OGP Summit and in 2015 it sent no one to the Mexico OGP Summit.

“Civil Society in Spain is operating in a total vacuum of information and participation,” commented Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info. “The OGP Steering Committee has had to write to the government asking what is going on and there is a risk that Spain will be expelled from the global alliance if it does not step up on its commitments!”

The letter comes in the context in which the OGP Steering Committee wrote to the Spanish government on 14 November 2016, chastising it for failing to meet its OGP commitment to deliver an action plan by 30 June 2016 and giving a new deadline of 31 December 2016.

Civil Society has had no information from Spain’s Ministry of the Presidency (Cabinet Office) about the Open Government Partnership action plan since 5 October 2015, when a response to an access to information request stated that they were working on the action plan and were planning to organise a meeting with CSOs.

Access Info is currently party to a court case in which the Spanish government is litigating against the Transparency Council to challenge its ruling that Helen Darbishire and Access Info Europe should be provided with documents relating to what Spain is doing to implement its Open Government Partnership commitments.

The letter sent by the members of the Coalición Pro Acceso can be read here (in Spanish): file_doc alt

The letter sent by the OGP Steering Committee to the Spanish Government can be read here: alt

For more information, please contact:

Alba Gutiérrez | Access Info Europe
Send an e-mail or call +34 913 656 558

Notes for the editors:

[1] Signatories of the letter to the Spanish government are: Access Info Europe, Fundación Civio, OpenKratio, Archiveros Españoles en la Función Pública (AEFP), Associació Ciutadania i Comunicació (ACICOM), Asociación Andaluza para la Defensa de los animales (ASANDA), Asociación Española de la Transparencia (ACREDITRA), Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid (APM), Asociación de Usuarios de la Comunicación (AUC), Asociación para la Comunicación e Información Medioambiental (ACIMA), Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (APDHE), Centro de Investigación y Estudios sobre Coherencia y Desarrollo (CIECODE), Coordinadora ONGD-España, Fundación Cibervoluntarios, Fundación Cultura de Paz, Open Knowledge Foundation Spain and the Plataforma en Defensa de la Libertad de Información (PDLI).

As well as the following individual transparency experts: Dr. Antonio Rubio Campaña, Director Máster en Periodismo de EL MUNDO/San Pablo CEU; Dra. Laura Tejedor Fuentes, Profesora periodismo de datos y transparencia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Dr. Manuel Sánchez de Diego, Profesor de Derecho de la Información de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Simona Levi de X-net; Carlos E. Jiménez-Gómez “Experto TIC, sociedad de la información y justicia abierta” IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, USA.