Oštro | 09/02/2022 Croatian - »Plan oporavka i otpornosti treba nam pomoći da što prije prebrodimo krizu«, kazao je premijer Andrej Plenković u travnju prošle godine predstavljajući Hrvatskom saboru sažetak Nacionalnog plana otpornosti i oporavka (NPOO) za 2021. do 2026. godine. »Želimo izazove pretočiti u prilike.« Read more...
El Independiente | 25/01/2022 Spanish - El grupo de trabajo para la reforma de la Ley de transparencia celebrará este jueves la reunión constitutiva una vez que ya han sido designados los 12 miembros que lo componen. La misión de este equipo será formular propuestas que contribuyan a mejorar la citada norma, aprobada hace ocho años durante la etapa de Mariano Rajoy y cuya modificación forma parte del contenido programático del pacto de gobierno firmado por PSOE y Unidas Podemos. Read more...
Público | 28/01/2022 Spanish - La celebración del día de la protección de datos se ve empañada este año por la cuestión de la elección de la Presidencia y su Adjuntía de la Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), cuyo procedimiento está profundamente reglado. Read more...
Madrid / Brussels, 28 January 2022 – Access Info has hailed today’s decision by the European Ombudsman that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with the CEO of Pfizer about Covid vaccine purchases are documents to which the public can request access. Access Info is calling for an urgent reform to ensure that the EU’s twenty-year-old access to documents rules are brought into line with the digital age. Rather remarkably, the European Commission had told Alexander Fanta, a journalist with netzpolitik.org, that because it does not register text messages, these cannot be requested. This refusal came to a
Madrid, 26 January 2021 – Access Info has called on the Spanish government to guarantee a transparent, merit-based process for selection of the head and deputy head of the Spanish Data Protection Agency. Concerns about this process have arisen after allegations surfaced that the two principal political parties (the PSOE and PP) had reached an agreement on who would get the posts (a governing PSOE candidate for the position of President, an opposition PP candidate for the Deputy President position). This brought a warning from the European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski, who told El País newspaper that “the EU
On 14 December 2021, The Right to Know Declaration 2021 was opened for endorsement at an event to discuss measurement of the right of access to information organised by Access Info Europe as part of the Open Government Partnership Global Summit. The Declaration is open for endorsement by civil society organisations, IGOs, governments, information commissioners, academics and other individuals, and will serve as an action agenda for the right to information community for 2022 and beyond. Organisational endorsements here / Individual endorsements here The Right to Know Declaration arose out of debates convened by UNESCO to mark International Right to
Sharm El-Sheikh - Transparency International, Access Info Europe, The Good Lobby, and the UNCAC Coalition strongly condemn the exclusion of prominent civil society organisations from participating in the 9th session of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) Conference of the States Parties (CoSP), currently underway in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The CoSP plenary on the morning of 15 December 2021 failed to overturn the unfounded objections by the Turkish government. Many countries from the European Union and broader Europe, Canada, the US and other regions spoke out in support of the affected NGOs. The barred organisations include Access Info Europe (Spain),
Madrid, 10 December 2021 – On International Human Rights Day, and as the Spanish Transparency Law celebrates seven years since it entered into force, Access Info has renewed the call for full recognition of the right to information in Spain, something essential to fix many problems with the right to know in practice. With work on the reform of the law starting in early 2022 as part of a commitment in Spain’s latest Open Government Action Plan there is a unique opportunity to guarantee a full right of access to information in Spain, as a human right. This would be
Madrid, 24 November 2021 – Access Info today welcomed the signature by Spain of the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents – the Tromsø Convention – fulfilling its commitment to do so under Spain’s current Open Government Partnership Action Plan. The Tromsø Convention was signed by Spain’s Representative to the Council of Europe, Manuel Montobbio, on 23 November 2021, in the presence of Assistant Secretary General Bjorn Berge. The commitment to sign and ratify the Tromsø Convention was secured by civil society, with active involvement of Access Info, as part of the co-creation of Spain's IV OGP
Madrid, 22 October 2021 – As negotiations get underway in Brussels on future regulation of the fishing sector, Access Info is calling on EU Member States to support increased transparency in fisheries control, in line with the proposals made by the European Parliament in March 2021. At stake is the reform of an existing rule, the controversial Article 113, which prohibits the European Commission from sharing fishing controls data with other persons, even with national and European parliamentarians, unless the relevant Member State has given express consent. Access Info has repeatedly criticised this problematic secrecy clause, which dates back to