Access to Information Programme | Information newsletter issue 11(23) November 2005

We Will Work Towards Better Access to Information in Europe
Helen Darbishire, Access Info Europe

Helen Darbishire is a founder and the executive director of Access Info Europe, an organization based in Madrid, Spain. She is the chair of the steering commitee of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network, of which Access to Information Programme is a founding member.

How did you decide to establish Access Info Europe?
The idea to set up Access Info Europe really came from a recognition that countries in Eastern Europe were doing better with access to information as a right than some countries in Western Europe. This doesn’t mean that in Eastern Europe the governments are more transparent but it means: if an individual citizen wants to request some specific information from a specific government body, which maybe is not already published, they have that right.

Where did the idea come from? On what basis?
It was a gradual process, definitely, but maybe two specific events determined it. One was in 2004, and even in 2003, the Justice Initiative wanted to do some monitoring and we were looking for civil society partners in Western Europe to monitor levels of transparency in one country in Western Europe and we couldn’t find NGO partners to work with. So, the first recognition was of a lack of civil society active in this area. Eventually, in 2004, we found a partner from Spain and a partner from France to do the monitoring as part of the fourteen-country comparative survey. We didn’t do the UK because the UK law was still not enforced at that point. What we found really to our surprise, I was really shocked actually, was how badly France, particularly France, preformed—because France has the law—and Spain, maybe not so surprising—because Spain does not have a full law. Clearly, there was a problem with the right to request and receive information in countries like France and Bulgaria, Rumania, and even Armenia performed much better. Now, it is clear that there are two reasons for this. One is, perhaps, the new laws in these new democracies are stronger. But also, because there is greater demand for information. And as we know, the demand for information drives the implementation of the FOI Law. So, that was the second recognition: lack of civil society and problems in practice.

In November 2004, the Justice Initiative had a meeting of people from all over the world discussing these issues in London—a meeting on FOI litigation. Again, it became very clear from those discussions that more activity was being done, litigating for freedom of information, in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in India and South Africa than in Western Europe. At the same time, in the last two years, personally speaking, I was living in the US and I saw the number of groups like National Security Archive, American Civil Liberties Union, and others very actively using the FOIA in the US to ensure that they could defend other civil liberties. We are living in a time when we have various threats to civil liberties, particularly as part of the war on terror, and I could see in Western Europe that we don’t have the same use of the existing legislation. Perhaps now, with the exception of the UK where we have a new law and we have people using it. So, that was another element in the picture that at a time when we need to defend civil liberties, we need groups requesting and getting access to information in Western Europe.

Has anybody assisted you in that initiative?
I discussed the idea with a number of people in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe, people like Gergana Jouleva from AIP, David Goldberg from Scotland, who I have also been working with closely on this project, and many other people in Europe. We discussed the need to create an organization, which would engage on access to information campaigns directly—promoting laws, using existing laws. And also, work to stimulate other civil society groups to use the access information law. So, it’s very much a dual mandate. One is to increase the quality of the existing legislation and to make use of it and also to stimulate other civil society groups to use the existing laws. Taking France as an example because we did the monitoring there, but I really believe that if there was a shift and more civil society groups started using the existing legislation, we could see a very rapid change in the situation. We have a good model now from the UK, where it seems that the implementation is very strong. In the first six months of the UK law, according to the central government statistics, as many as 70 % of the requests are being answered within the twenty days. That’s excellent. Of course, we have also very good models from countries like Sweden where the response times are very fast. But we have also heard these last couple of days in the conference here in Sofia that in countries like the Netherlands there needs to be a use of the law in order to really make it work. It’s not automatic that information is released even in northern European, more developed countries.

How do you see the cooperation between Access Info Europe and Eastern European FOI organizations?
This is going to be very interesting because the situation we have now is that the civil society groups with the strongest experience are groups like AIP in Bulgaria and other groups, who were at the conference in Sofia this week from all over Eastern Europe. They have a stronger experience that any civil society groups in Western Europe, much stronger. Already, in designing the campaign for the Spanish Freedom of Information Law, I’ve used all the lessons learned from this region and Latin America in how to start a campaign, how to include different parts of society. So, the campaigning experience, as well as the actual content of the law, would be very much drawing on experience from Eastern Europe. The launch of the campaign for the Spanish Freedom of Information Law we had Gergana Jouleva, Director of AIP, Bulgaria; Issa Luna Pla, Director of LIMAC, the Mexican FOI organization; Javier Casas, Director of the Access to Information office of IPYS in Peru; and David Goldberg from Scotland. So, we were presenting experience from some transitional democracies at the launch of the Spanish campaign. We are actually bringing people who could present net experience to Spanish NGOs. It’s a little bit sensitive because people from Western Europe don’t like to be taught lessons by Eastern Europeans. The good thing is that we have the facts from the monitoring. We have the statistics and we know that for example in the case of Spain that Spain performed worse than Bulgaria, or Rumania, or Armenia. They have to listen. The Spanish government has been taking the survey quite seriously and they were open to discussing improving of transparency with us.

What are the current projects Access Info Europe is working on?
At the moment, we are in the process of registering Access Info Europe legally under the Spanish law as a foundation. I expect the registration to be from January 2006. So, we don’t yet have any funds and no one is really working for it. At the same time, we have about a dozen founding members from across Europe and internationally. A lot of people are engaged in the process of setting it up, supporting the mission and the mandate of Access Info Europe. We also, in the last few weeks as we’ve begun to get established, have also been in discussions with a number of organizations working at an EU level—groups like Statewatch, based in the UK, who are involved in a campaign with the European Federation of Journalists and the European Consumers’ Organization to increase openness at the EU level. They are very interested in working with Access Info Europe as a way of sharing the national experience from around of world to improve access to information at the EU level. The other project that we would be engaged in 2006 is the beginning of the discussion of the civil society from across Europe on the new Council of Europe treaty on access to information. This would be a very important development because it’s absolutely vital that Council of Europe treaty, which would a binding legal treaty for all members of the Council of Europe, to state the highest possible standards. The problem we’ve got in Western Europe is that some of the laws are early access-to-documents laws not access to information laws. They don’t always cover all branches of government and they are limited to certain types of documents. So, if we really want to reach the highest standards, we have to expand the definition of the right of access to information. Furthermore, Access Info Europe will continue to be engaged in the Freedom of Information Advocates Network, sharing information. About 20-25 % of laws establish some kind of oversight body—ombudspersons, commissioners. These Information Commissioners will be meeting again for their fourth annual conference in Manchester, UK, in May of 2006. They are liaising with us, with the FOIANet to ensure that civil society participation in their discussions. So, that’s another area where we will be engaged.