O acesso à informação do poder legislativo: o caso de Espanha

The article deals with the constitutional and legislative grounds for the right of access to information in the sphere of public governance in Russia and Germany from a comparative perspective, its content and restrictions are subject to consideration. The thesis that the interpretation of the given right in national legal systems is significantly affected by international and supranational legal regulation is substantiated. However, the degree of such regulation penetration in Russia is rather lower than in Germany. The right of access to information in the public governance sphere is suggested having a dual nature - the right guaranteeing freedom for the individual (status negativus), and the right to participate in the state affairs governing (status activus). Such an approach to the nature of the right of access to information in the public governance understanding offers grounds to a broader understanding of a citizen's information aspiration, where aspiration satisfaction does not depend on the fact whether the requested information affects the citizen's rights or not. A comparative analysis of the constitutional guarantees of the right of access to information indicates that under the Russian Constitution they are represented more widely in comparison with the German Fundamental Law guaranteeing everyone free information recipience only from sources accessible to public. In this respect, access to information in the sphere of public governance regarding its intraadministrative official nature turned out to be outside the constitutional guarantees framework. At the same time, legislative and enforcing interpretation of the right in question guarantees in Germany tends to their continuous broadening while in Russia both legislative and judicial practice neither complement nor expand constitutional guarantees but concretize them in terms of setting restrictions on the right of access to information. Comparison of the right restrictions both in Russian and German legislation authenticates legal determinacy deficiency of the Russian legislative approach. Moreover, Russian approach in relation to adoption and judicial interpretation of the restrictions of the right of access to information concerning public administration activities is notable for unilateralism which is expressed in the absolutization of the idea of the protection of any restricted access information. In this respect, the use of the German experience in application of a weighing interests' method to conflicts resolution between the right of access to information and other constitutional rights deserves special attention aimed at improving Russian legislation and judicial practice in the sphere under consideration.

The relevance of the study: Several factors combine to explain this situation, including the poor equipment of farms and the lack of supervision and strong support from the public authorities. In addition to these factors, the lack of security of land tenure is a major problem facing farmers [1]. This problem of land rights is exacerbated by women's poor access to farmland despite the fact that they make up a very large part of the agricultural labor force. Mali is a country whose economic structure is strongly dominated by the primary and tertiary sectors. In 2017, the contribution of the primary sector accounted for 38.34% of GDP, with a large share for agriculture (19 % of GDP). In 2019, it is estimated at 38.43% of GDP [2]. Malian agriculture remains largely dependent on rainfall. It is characterized by low agricultural yields. Problem of the research. Low access to agricultural property rights is a source of demotivation for women who paradoxically constitute the main agricultural workforce. This lack of a consecrated and explicitly recognized right to land ownership reflects the lack of incentives for women and would explain in part the low productivity and low total agricultural production. Subject of the research: women's right of access to agricultural property and its impact on the country's production. The aim of this paper is to reveal the problems women's right of access to land. The following tasks: is to identify the legal arsenal relating to land law directly and to women's right of access to land ownership and to highlight the practical, social and customary difficulties encountered in the implementation of this right. Subsequently, it is necessary to highlight the link between this poor access to agricultural property rights and the low level of agricultural production in Mali. Methods. To deal with this theme we had adopted a feminist and critical posture. The novelty the adoption of the feminist posture helps us to understand women's discourse in a context marked in practice by the implicit denial of women's right to access agricultural land ownership. The paper concluded that he critical approach makes it possible to go beyond this observation to try to understand the relations of force and power between men and women in the particular context of the country. As the result women's right to access land ownership is a recognized and inalienable right in Mali. However, sociological, customary and religious constraints make the implementation of this right on the ground problematic. As a result, despite their significant weight in the agricultural labor force, women have little access to land, farms, inputs and equipment. The corollary of this situation is their low agricultural yield and their low contribution to agricultural value added.

In this paper, the discussion on the right to access justice was analyzed and reviewed to actualize the right to claim a trial, which is the basic right of the people. In the modern sense, the content of the meaning has been expanded as an active right to substantially guarantee legal services even for the socially and economically weak, breaking away from the passive right to freedom or defense that there should be no state interference or restrictions in exercising the right to claim a trial. In other words, the right to access justice is not only guaranteed the right to a fair trial that can be easily used by anyone but also acquires a broad meaning that demands that the right to a quick and efficient trial be guaranteed to a practical level by saving the time and cost of the trial. Accordingly, today's well-guaranteed right to access justice is an important indicator for evaluating the realization of the rule of law or the rule of law. Furthermore, to guarantee and realize this, there are not a few factors to be carefully considered at the national level, and to improve the overall judicial system, the public and private interests should be properly punished. Countries around the world are making great efforts to expand access to justice. Still, in Japan, laws on legal assistance (legal structure) were enacted and implemented in civil lawsuits, and the ｢Comprehensive Legal Support Act｣ was passed in 2004, which was implemented nationwide regardless of civil and criminal areas. This does not just integrate the legal structure in civil and criminal proceedings, but it is important to provide information on legal services and support the people by establishing a network with related organizations to expand access to justice. On the other hand, it is worth noting that the provision of legal services and information supported by public funds using the concept of 'legal support' instead of 'legal aid' is not a beneficial measure by the state, but rather an expression of the ideology of reforming the judicial system that realizes 'rule of law' by emphasizing that it has the status of the sovereign as a subject of basic rights of the people or order formation of a democratic rule of law. In Korea, if an integrated law is to expand such access to justice, it is possible and necessary to prepare a system that can receive state support and judicial services in case of lack of wealth or legal knowledge to actualize the right to claim a trial of the people, who can hold the fundamental right to trial. In addition to improving the legal system at the national level, it is worth paying attention to the activation of cooperative networks with other related organizations and the establishment and operation of the Judicial Support Center, a public corporation equivalent to an independent administrative corporation. In Korea, the Korea Legal Aid Corporation is established and operated with the contribution of the Ministry of Justice, and in Japan, it is a corporation under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, but the fact that the Supreme Court is closely related to the judiciary and is defined as a corporation that applies the General Regulations Act of Independent Administrative Corporations according to the constitutional view of separation of powers. It is believed that it reveals the organizational legal issues that take into account the meaning and function of judicial access rights. In the future, it is necessary to review the organizational structure and operation of the Korea Legal Aid Corporation in consideration of the purpose and function of its establishment. Lastly, the autonomy or independence of the judicial administration system is considered to be an important factor in improving the judicial system for the realization of such judicial access rights.

Information Access Rights in FOIA and FOISA Fit for Purpose?

The right of access to public information is one of the most fundamental political rights granted to citizens under Art. 61 of the Polish Constitution. In the Act of 6 September 2001, not only was the procedure for providing the public information specified, but also some detailed rules on obliged entities. In practice, the right to access public information not only enables citizens to take mature political decisions, but also prevents the abuse, corruption, nepotism or waste of public funds. The transparency of public administration actions forces its representatives to behave by the book and to respect the rules governing a democratic state of law as well as human rights. Undoubtedly, the full implementation of the right of access to public information may not be possible in urgent and unexpected scenarios such as a state of emergency or martial law, but any restrictions should always be introduced in a proportionate manner and only to the extent necessary to protect other (more important) goods and values. The epidemic threat facing Poland in March 2020, followed by the state of the epidemic and the accompanying activities of the broadly understood legislator, have significantly impacted the implementation of the openness principle and the right to access public information in the country. Simultaneously, doubts were raised not only due to the scope and nature of these changes, but also because of their constitutionality. In order to obtain a full picture of these threats to the implementation of the law in question, one must take into account possible decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal (with positive or negative effects) in cases that will be ruled on soon. The analysis that we present is aimed not only at determining whether the functioning of the state in the epidemic regime justified the need to limit the constitutional right of access to public information, but also – in a broader systemic context – at demonstrating that the transparency standards existing in our national model need to be strengthened, not weakened.

In general, information on government research grants is covered by FOIA only if it is in possession of a government agency. Increasingly, citizens and policy-makers look to science to help solve pressing national and international problems relating to such matters as health, environmental quality, and defense. It's no surprise, then, that federal government is primary funder of university research in United States.1 With federal money comes an interest in policy implications of research, and scientists are regularly asked to contribute to development of governmental policy. In recent years, however, several widely publicized cases of fraud have raised questions about accountability in research, especially federally funded research.2 For scientists, promotions and better jobs depend to a great extent on publications in scholarly journals. The pressure to produce high numbers of publications can tempt researchers to fabricate findings.3 Peer review of grant proposals and of manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals is of little help because peer review is designed to assess quality of a piece of research, not to uncover fraud.4 Fraud is most likely when scrutiny of research process is least.5 Many scienlists zealously guard their data and lab notebooks6; for most part, scientists are accountable only to other scientists. However, as Justice Brandeis once said, sunshine is best of disinfectants. If members of public (including journalists and scientists) had a greater right of access to information about federally funded research, fraud would be less likely. Increased openness leads to increased accountability. In addition to inhibiting fraud, a freer flow of information about science and technology might have other benefits. For example, many believe that increased scrutiny by press and public could help avert incidents such as accident at Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant7 and destruction of space shuttle Challenger.8 This article examines extent to which Freedom of Information Act,9 designed to increase accountability among public institutions, enables access to information about federally funded university research. The topic clear relevance to journalists who cover science or higher education. But it also relates to much broader debate about access to government information generally,10 as well as about control of science information.11 Scientists often are unwilling to communicate to public via news media.12 And when scientists do talk to reporters, they often attempt to exert tight control over nature of communication.13 Although journalists who cover science rarely take an adversarial stance toward their sources,14 journalists and scientists sometimes differ over access to information.15 In such cases, a reporter may turn to FOIA to try to obtain information that a scientist been unwilling to provide. Background United States citizens have no constitutional right of access to information about government-funded research. Although information-gathering been linked to ability to exercise First Amendment rights,16 Supreme Court has never intimated a First Amendment guarantee of a right of access to all sources of information within governmental control.17 In absence of a clear First Amendment right, court said that determining what kinds of information must be available to public is clearly a legislative task.18 Accordingly, public access to governmental information hinges on what former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once called the tug and pull of political forces in American Society.19 In 1966 those political forces produced FOIA, which created a strong legal presumption that information about federal activity should be available to public. A series of amendments in 1974 strengthened act, which been principal legal instrument used by citizens seeking access to information about federally funded university research. …

Chapter 4 analyses how England’s environmental information regime, set out in the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR), have guaranteed the right of access to environmental information. The chapter focuses on how the EIR reflects or fails to reflect the core elements of the right. The chapter analyses the various aspects of the EIR regime: the scope of the EIR; the requirements imposed on users seeking to submit requests for access to environmental information; the obligations imposed on a public authority in responding to requests for environmental information; the power granted to public authorities to levy charges; the ability of public authorities to withhold environmental information from disclosure; and the review procedures available to users to challenge the decisions of public authorities and their treatment of requests. The chapter identifies that England’s conceptualisation of the right reflects the environmental protection aims and identity-blind conceptualisation of the Aarhus Convention. The chapter concludes that the Aarhus Convention has had a normative impact on how the right is conceptualised and guaranteed in England.

Openness of public life is a pillar of civil society development Openness of public authority is a key condition for the functioning of democracy in the state, it is a fundamental value of the rule of law and a multiplier of social control. The essence of the right to public information in the Polish legal system is the fact that it is regulated in the Basic Law. Establishing the right to public information on the pages of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland enabled the citizens to its direct application. According to Article 61 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, the activities of public authorities in Poland are open and every citizen has the right of access to information. The concept of openness of public life and the right of access to information are understood as a citizen’s privilege to information on matters relating to the activities of government, the implementation of public tasks and the functioning of the state. Access to public information is also one of the forms of civic activity, which contributes to the development of democracy at both local and central level. In Poland, the continuation of the principle of openness and the right of access to public information, regulated by the Constitution, is provided for in the Act on Access to Public Information of 6 September 2001. The act defines what constitutes public information, distinguishes entities obliged to provide it and presents forms of providing access to and requesting public information. A review of Polish academic literature reveals a multitude of studies on openness of public life and access to public information. However, it also indicates the lack of exhaustive titles, constituting an analysis of this matter on the basis of the law of the Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the aim of this article, which has a source character, is to present the way of regulating access to public information, including both constitutional and statutory level. The starting point for the solutions in this study will be the contents of the constitutions of the Member States and the laws regulating access to public information in their current wording. The research will also include literature analysis. Due to the adopted concept, the subject of comparison will be selected issues that provide answers to the questions of whether access to public information has been regulated in the provisions of the constitution and how the notion of public information is defined in the law, as well as whether the statutory regulations constitute a development of the constitutional norms.

For centuries, libraries, archives and museums from across Europe have been the custodians of our rich and diverse cultural heritage. They have preserved and provided access to the testimonies of knowledge, beauty and imagination, such as sculptures, paintings, music and literature. The new information technologies have created unbelievable opportunities to make this common heritage more accessible for all. Recently, the European Commission commissioned a ‘Comité des Sages’ to make recommendations on ways and means to make Europe's cultural heritage and creativity available on the Internet and to preserve it for future generations. In the United States the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) endorsed a number of principle recommendations to its members regarding the digitisation of cultural heritage. Both the Comité des Sages and the ARL emphasize the added value of digitisation. The Comité underlines that the digitised material can in itself be a driver of innovation and can be at the basis of new services in sectors such as tourism and learning (Comité des Sages 2011) and the ARL stresses the added value for researchers (ARL Principles July 2010). For over a century, libraries have participated in successful resource sharing cooperatives that have made content widely accessible. According to both the ARL and the Comité, the same spirit should govern commercial digitisation activities. In the best of all possible worlds, there would in our view be some level of free access to all content, with only special value-added services restricted to a subscription model. A landmark in the discussion about Open Access to information is the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Referring to this Declaration, people often put emphasis on recent research publications. But the following is also one of the objectives of the Declaration: “encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet” (Berlin Declaration 2003). Therefore, in the spirit of the Berlin Declaration, the ARL encourages its members’ libraries to grant all non-commercial users “a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship”. And: “If fees are to be assessed for the use of digitised public domain works, those fees should only apply to commercial uses” (ARL Principles July 2010). In our view, cultural heritage institutions should make public domain material digitised with public funding as widely available as possible for access and reuse. The public sector has the primary responsibility to fund digitisation. The involvement of private partners, however, is encouraged by ARL as well as the Comité des Sages. Private funding for digitisation is a complement to the necessary public investment, especially in times of economic crisis, but should not be seen as a substitute for public funding. As we can see from these reports there are a number of arguments in favour of digitisation and also of providing maximum accessibility to the digitised cultural heritage. In this paper we will investigate the legal aspects of digitisation of cultural heritage, especially public domain material. On the basis of these we will make an inventory of policy considerations regarding reuse. Furthermore, we will describe the conclusions the National Library of the Netherlands (hereafter: KB) has formulated and the arguments that support these. In this context we will review public-private partnerships and also the policy of the KB. We will conclude with recommendations for cultural heritage institutions concerning a reuse policy for digitised public domain material.

This article describes the workshop on Food Security and Women's Access to Natural Resources, held in January 1997 in Mumbai, India. The workshop was organized jointly by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Indian Association of Women's Studies. The aim was to examine the food security situation in Maharashtra and Gujarat states in the west, the initiative to build alternative institutions, legal changes augmenting industrialization, and how traditional rights to common property resources can be legalized and how the poor can have access to new resources. The workshop organizers were unable to obtain experts on some topics. Core discussion centered on changes in industrialization, natural resources, gender and food security; access to natural resources and poverty alleviation programs; initiatives to create food security; and laws related to access to land and water. Discussions revealed the alienation of small and marginal farmers, landless laborers, and artisans from their livelihoods and survival strategies for these disenfranchised groups. The design of drought eradication and water conservation programs did not permit women and men working at construction sites to have access to the program assets. Case studies revealed situations in which women won the right of access to community water and then negotiated for land in lease. The women used landowners to negotiate credit and access development program assets, but normal channels of the National Bank of Agricultural Research and Development could have provided these benefits. Participants discussed how governments can be held accountable and how public funds could be used to revamp poverty alleviation and asset creation programs. All agreed that macrolevel development should give priority to agricultural development and legal constraints or problems. Five follow-up activities are identified.

In this paper, I analyze several traditions of data protection to uncover the theoretical justification they provide for the right of access to personal data. Contrary to what is argued in most recent literature, I do not find support for the claim that the right follows from the German tradition of “informational self-determination” or Westin’s idea of “privacy as control”. Instead, there are two other less known theories of data protection which do offer a direct justification for the right of access. First, American scholars Westin and Baker developed the “due process” view according to which access helps to expose error and bias in decision-making, thereby contributing to correct decisions and allowing the people who are affected to be involved in the decision making. Second, in what I call the “power reversal” view of access, Italian legal scholar Rodotà argues that, in particular when seen from a collective point of view, the right enables social control over the processing of personal data and serves as a counterbalance to the centers of power by placing them under the control of democratic accountability.

The text deals with the complementarity of information rights with respect to the active electoral right, using the example of the right of access to public information and the right to protection of personal data. These two information rights well reflect the most relevant aspects of an individual’s information status. At the same time, these rights interestingly interact with the exercise of the active electoral right. The article explains the concept of “information rights” and the concept of the sovereignty of the people, and identifies the obligations incumbent on public authorities to ensure the exercise of information rights and the active electoral right. From the analyses carried out, there are strong interactions between the right of access to public information and the active electoral right. The situation is different in the case of the right to protection of personal data. The analysis makes it possible to claim that the relationship between the right of access to public information and the active electoral right as political rights is more intense due to the goals set for them. The right to protection of personal data belongs to personal rights. Its exercise involves complying with a number of procedures for processing personal data and securing personal data in technical and organizational terms. Procedures defining the principles of personal data processing are currently described primarily in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The joint application of the Election Code and personal data protection procedures is not easy, and the Polish regulation in this regard is sometimes unclear and insufficient.

Transparency, as the principle of the availability of information on the organisation, processes, and decision-making of public authorities, is becoming increasingly important in contemporary governance. It enables the functioning of democratic processes and the accountability mechanism, the exercise of individual rights, as well as the overall effectiveness of the public sector. Consequently, a satisfactory level of transparency and openness is beneficial for the functioning of democracy and public administration as well as for the individual and for community development. However, the necessity to convert political and administrative principles into legal form has stimulated a trend of adopting legislations on the right of access to information (RTI). The first contemporary RTI Law was adopted in the United States in 1966 (Freedom of Information Act), while currently more than 100 countries grant their citizens the RTI. The process was induced by the spreading democratisation and anti-corruption processes as well as by the diffusion of the good governance concept, with user-oriented public administration and an increased use of information technology (e-government). The content of the laws and the best examples of RTI provisions have been widely discussed and determined in various model laws. The recognised RTI standards include, among others, the principle of maximum disclosure, a broad scope of application (public administration, judiciary, legislature, public sector), the definition of information (any written or recorded data), a limited list of exceptions that are subjected to the public interest test, the flexibility of the procedure, as well as the right to appeal and sanctioning by independent institutions.

Introduction In the UK, the FOIA is not the only law providing access to information held by public authorities. There are many rules requiring authorities to make inform - ation available, many of which are described in the following chapters. The most significant of these are the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). The EIR provide a right of access to environmental information held by public authorities. They are the ‘Cinderella’ right to information – they tend to be ignored in favour of their better known relation. In the UK they were brought into force on the same day as the right of access under the FOIA and, under standably, attention at the time focused on the Act. Indeed for most authorities, the FOIA is much more significant. Government statistics for 2017 show that across all monitored bodies, only 3% of requests were handled under the EIR. However, the EIR is much more significant for some authorities – the proportion of requests dealt with under the EIR by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was over 31%. Outside central government, a significant proportion of information requests made to local authorities is covered by the EIR, given councils’ role in planning, waste disposal and other activities designed to manage local impact on the environment. The EIR have their origin in a European directive and an international agreement so regulations providing access to environmental information have been adopted in other European countries. Scotland has adopted its own regulations on environmental information just as it has its own FOI Act. Outside Europe, access to this information is normally covered by the main FOI law. It is important for FOI officers to be able to identify when to apply the EIR rather than the FOIA. There are many similarities, but also significant differences between the two laws. In particular, it is important to apply the right law when information needs to be withheld for any reason. Why do we have EIR? Unlike the FOIA, which is purely UK legislation and over which the government had a choice, the EIR had to be implemented as a result of a European directive. This in itself was designed to give effect to a previous agreement called the Aarhus Convention, named after the city in Denmark where it was reached in 1998.

Access to information is a bedrock principle of contemporary democratic governments and their public agencies and entities. Access to information depends upon these public institutions to document their activities and decisions. When public institutions do not document their activities and decisions, citizens’ right of access is ultimately denied. Public accountability and trust, in addition to institutional memory and the historical record, are undermined without the creation of appropriate records. Establishing and enforcing a duty to document helps promote accountability, openness, transparency, good governance, and public trust in public institutions. A duty to document should therefore be a fundamental component of access to information legislation and records and information management practices.This article begins a discussion on the concept and practice of a duty to document. Using Canada as a case study, this article's main aim is to help illuminate the importance and implications of a duty to document in both access laws and records and information management policies to help ensure good governance practices.