FOI in Ireland and Europe: Progress and Regression

Abstract

There has been a high level of activity in the development of standards concerning access to public sector information in Europe in recent years. At domestic level, freedom of information (FOI) legislation has been introduced to the overwhelming majority of member states of the European Union and to a number of former Eastern bloc countries. Freedom of Information has also increased its impact at supra national level, both in terms of progress towards the development by international bodies such as the European Union and the Council of Europe of FOI norms for their Member States and with respect to the opening up of access to documents of the international institutions themselves. There is, however, considerable variation in the content and scope of the various FOI measures introduced. The aim of this paper is to assess the scope and operation of two contrasting examples of recently introduced or proposed FOI measures, namely the Irish FOI Act and the proposed Regulation on Access to Documents of the European Institutions. The overall theme of the paper is that strong FOI measures are needed to combat the tendency toward secrecy in public administration in Europe but that even where access measures are relatively strong in their formulation, their effectiveness can be limited through under-funding or more direct interference with the operation of the access scheme.