MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IMPROVES FREE ACCESS TO INFORMATION

#62Ministry of Justice improves free access to information

Act No. 211/2000 Coll. on free access to information and on amending and supplementing certain acts, as amended (hereinafter referred to as "the Act") is awaiting changes. Following the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and re-use of public sector information (recast), the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic is moving towards the implementation of the requirements resulting from the Programme Declaration of the Government of the Slovak Republic.

The legislative process LP/2021/727 concerns several parts of the previous modification of the Act. The Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic, as the submitter of the amendments, proposes changes in particular to:

1. a new definition of the obliged person;
2. clarification of the definition of "information";
3. the provision of the obligation of the territorial self-government to publish information;
4. the introduction of mandatory publication of information on candidates for public office, as well as on public officials themselves;
5. confirmation of the obligation to publish all amendments to compulsorily published contracts, as well as the abolition of the exemption for non-disclosure of their annexes and the extension of the time limit for the compulsory publication of contracts;
6. reviewing and extending the regulation of other restrictions on access to information (control, intellectual property, sensitive information);
7. extending certain time limits on the part of the obliged person, while maintaining the original time limit for the processing of requests for information;
8. clarification of the procedure for deciding on an information request at first instance and in appeal proceedings; 

and others.

We believe that the present proposal will eliminate the often good-looking but ineffective outcomes of the application of the current Act. As lawyers, we are left to hope that the adopted amendment will reflect the practical shortcomings of the current regulation and the expert discussions that highlight them.