On May 16, 2013, a panel of the Supreme Administrative Court in Bulgaria repealed the refusal of the Ministry of Finance to provide access to declarations of independent MPs to direct their full subsidy from the budget to a particular political party.
Case brief
Victoria Petrova v. Minsitry of Finance
Citation. Decision No. 6681/16.05.2013, case No. 13332/12 of the Supreme Administrative Court
Brief Fact Summary. In 2011, a public debate was held in the Bulgarian media about the transparency of political parties’ financing from the state budget. At that time, there were 17 independent MPs and the question emerged to which parties those independent MPs sent their attributed subsidy. By a Ministry of Finance Ordinance, the MPs can attribute their subsidy to a certain parliamentary group by only declaring belonging and not necessarily joining it.
In the Political Parties Act, there is a provision stipulating that the state attributes subsidies to the parliamentary represented parties on the basis of their seats in the Parliament. The sum attributed to each Member of Parliament (MP) is defined by Ordinance of the Minister of Finance and amounts to 200,000 BGN annually.
Synopsis of Law. According to the Bulgarian Access to Public Information Act (APIA), any information generated and held by public authorities is regarded public. According to the Personal Data Protection Act(PDPA) (following the EU Data Protection Directive), personal data is any information as regards an identified or identifiable natural person. According to APIA, information should be disclosed when the public interest overrides the interest for protection.
Facts. In summer 2011, three different media journalists – one TV (Victoria Petrova from bTV), another from a radio station (Ilia Valkov from Darik Radio) and the third from a print media (Pavlina Zhivkova from Banker weekly) filed similar requests for access to information to the Ministry of Finance. They demanded copies of the MPs declarations by which they had declared to which parties their subsidy should be attributed. The ground for the journalists’ requests was the public interest in knowing the political party preferences of each of the independent MPs. The Ministry of Finance refused access justifying that the declarations contained personal data. With the help of Access to Information Programme, the three denials were challenged in courts.
Issue. 1. Are data contained in the declarations protected personal data and 2. if so, does the public interest in disclosure override?
Held. First Instance Court held the declarations contained personal data. Supreme Administrative Court rules the public interest in disclosure overrides.
Discussion. The Supreme Administrative Court accepted that MPs are high ranking public officials. According to the established practice of the Constitutional Court, the level of personal data protection for these persons is much lower than the one for the private citizens. On another hand, the purpose of the PDPA is to guarantee the integrity of personality and personal life, while the affiliation of independent MPS is not connected with those. Moreover, the obligation to disclose MPs’ information derives from the fact that they are financed by the state budget. Consequently, MPs are public figures who are publicly identified with both their political affiliation and public sources expenditure.
“The Supreme Administrative Court judgment is essential for striking the right balance between the right to access information related to public figures and the personal data protection,” Alexander Kashumov, the lawyer in the case from AIP, commented.
The judgment will have a disciplinary effect for the administration which often unduly protects personal data of high ranking officials while the privacy of citizens remains unguaranteed.