![]() |
The information regarding the funding granted under the Culture Fund is public and does not fall within the scope of the APIA restrictions.
This was the conclusion reached by a panel of the Stara Zagora Administrative Court in a case brought by Petar Marchev against the refusal of the Burgas Municipality to provide the following information:
- Photocopies of the evaluation cards of the members of the Committee on evaluation of the projects submitted in the Third Session 2022 under Category 5;
- The evaluation according to the point system, developed for the Burgas Municipal Culture Fund, of Petar Marchev's film project for the musical "Shear Me If You Can";
- The evaluation card of the other two film projects and
- The minutes of the sessions of the evaluation Committee.
With Decision No. ЕД-483/1/24 February 2023 the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Tourism and Sport of the Burgas Municipality refused to grant access to the requested information. The grounds for refusal are that any information that citizens are entitled to receive in the framework of proceedings related to administrative services is excluded from the scope of the Access to Public Information Act (APIA), and the applicant has applied for funding in the procedure in question, therefore he is not entitled to receive more information than the one he was given when he was informed that his project was not approved.
The refusal was appealed with the support of AIP.
With Judgment No. 205/12 June 2023 of the Stara Zagora Administrative Court, the refusal was repealed and the case was remitted to the Burgas Municipality for a new ruling on the access to information request, alongside instructions on the correct interpretation and application of the law.
The court held that in view of the tasks, structure and functioning, activity, budget and financing of the Municipal Culture Fund as specified in the "Rules on the work activities of the Culture Fund of the Municipality of Burgas” adopted by the Burgas Municipal Council, there could be no doubt that the information requested was related to public life in the Republic of Bulgaria. The second prerequisite for qualifying the requested information as public information within the meaning of Art. 2, par. 1 of the APIA was also applicable – by obtaining it, the applicant would form an opinion on the activities of the obliged body in relation to the functioning of the Culture Fund of the Burgas Municipality and the expenditure of the Fund's resources.
The court held that there were no grounds to refuse the requested information as it did not fall within any of the limitations on the right of access to information under the APIA.
The court judgment is final.
***
There is an overriding public interest for Bulgargaz EAD to provide information on the negotiations and the agreed quantities of natural gas supplies from GAZPROMEXPORT.
This was the conclusion reached by the Vidin Administrative Court in the second case of the Civil Movement "BOETS"(Vidin), against the refusal of Bulgargaz EAD. The second argument of the company for refusing to provide a large part of the requested information was on the grounds that it constituted a trade secret.
The refusal was appealed with the support of AIP.
With Judgment No. 99/16 June 2023 of the Vidin Administrative Court, the partial refusal was repealed and the case was remitted to Bulgargaz with instructions to grant access to information on 7 of the points in the information request.
The court held that in this case there was evidence of an overriding public interest, and that there were numerous publications on the Internet pointing to such an interest. The measures taken by the Council of Ministers in the period in question (establishment of an Energy Crisis Headquarters), as well as the measures taken by the National Assembly in the immediately preceding period (establishment of an ad hoc committee whose report is available on the Internet) were also noteworthy. Not only has the presumption of an overriding public interest not been rebutted in this case, but evidence of such interest has been collected.
The court ruled that the decision was unlawful in its entire appealed part. The arguments given by the obliged body were merely theoretical as to the applicable legal provisions, but were not supported by any factual findings, not a single fact was set out, still less was any evidence adduced to justify the defendant's final conclusion. The decision was delivered in the complete absence of any factual basis for its adoption, which prevented the court from carrying out any verification of the facts and circumstances set out, since none were in fact set out. The grounds for issuing the administrative act are essential both for the exercise of the information requestor's rights of defence and for the court to rule on the arguments raised in the present case. The reproduction of the content of the legal provisions and their analysis without reference to specific findings of fact does not constitute a reasoning for the administrative act. It is not for the court to ascertain the content of the documents requested for the first time in the proceedings and to make an assessment of each of them as to the applicability of the Access to Public Information Act (APIA), still less to do so by incorporating all the information in the event that it is established that there is a need to provide the requested public information in the form of partial access, which is precisely what is established in the present proceedings.
The court judgment is final.
***
Where information relating to the environment is sought, the provisions of the Environmental Protection Act, which are special in relation to the APIA, shall apply.
This was the conclusion reached by a panel of the Sofia-City Administrative Court in a case brought by "Za Zemiata (For the Earth) – Access to Justice" against the refusal of the Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water (RIEW) – Stara Zagora to provide information on:
1. In connection with your announcement that the RIEW – Stara Zagora has imposed "18 penalty orders on thermal power plants from the Maritsa-East complex – 16 of them on TPP Brickel", we would like you to provide us with information about the penalty orders, the documentation related to them, including the penalty orders themselves, and for what period they were issued. We would like to know what action has been taken and what penalties have been imposed by these penalty orders, which of them have entered into legal force and what action has been taken to impose the penalties provided for therein.
2. We would like you to provide us with copies of all statements of administrative offence and penalty orders issued to TPP Brickel from 1 january 2022 until the date of this information request.
With Decision No. РД-16-42/21 November 2022, the Director of the Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water refused on the grounds that the requested information was not public within the meaning of Article 2 of the APIA, but can only be provided to other competent authorities under special laws.
The refusal was appealed with the support of AIP.
With Judgment No 3822/9 June 2023 of the SCAC, the refusal was repealed and the case was remitted to RIEW – Stara Zagora for a new reasoned ruling on the information request, together with instructions on the correct interpretation and application of the law.
The court held that where there is a special legal framework in place, the public body should comply with it. In the present case, however, in order to issue the contested refusal, the public body did not refer to any of the factual elements of the applicable legal norm, in view of which the contested refusal was unlawful, since the procedure and conditions for granting access to the requested environmental information are regulated by the Environmental Protection Act, which is special in relation to the general Access to Public Information Act. For these reasons, the contested act was repealed and the case was remitted to the public body for re-examination in accordance with Chapter 2 of the Environmental Protection Act.
The court judgment is final.
***
Where more than one request for access to information is made with the same application, in its ruling, the public body should provide clear and specific information on each of the points in the application.
This was the conclusion reached by the Blagoevgrad Administrative Court in a case brought by Nataliya Dimitrova against the refusal of the Mayor of the Blagoevgrad Municipality to provide information about the bicycle paths and playgrounds built in a park in the city. The Mayor's refusal was unsubstantiated, as it contained vague retellings of planned sites and sites under construction.
The refusal was appealed with the support of AIP.
==============================================
|
The publication is part of the project "Legal Help to Access to Information Cases", implemented by the Access to Information Programme, supported by a grant from the German Marshall Fund of the Unted States (GMF). The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the German Marshall Fund or their partners.