Summary of the report The entire report is available at this link In 2024, we continued our intensive efforts to protect the right to information, strengthen transparency in public life and support civic engagement. One of the most important events was the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which found that the refusal…
Madrid, 16 June 2025 – Access Info Europe today announces the launch of the Helen Darbishire Award which celebrates those who have used their right to information to have a positive impact on society. The Helen Darbishire Award (previously the Access Info Impact Award) recognises those who have significantly leveraged their right to information to…
The Polish anti-SLAPP bill includes a number of important mechanisms that could effectively limit the abuse of legal proceedings against journalists and activists. However, the criteria proposed for applying key safeguards are too restrictive to be effective in practice – even in classic SLAPP cases – and do not take into account the realities of…
Together with over 300 other organizations from across Europe, we have signed an open letter on the Hungarian draft law on “transparency in public life” addressed to the President of the European Commission and the Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and the Rule of Law. The proposed law is yet another attempt to restrict freedom of…
Interventions On June 12, 2017, a law came into force in Poland, according to which institutions should correspond with each other exclusively by electronic means. We have noticed, as an association, that the public institutions with whom we correspond often reflexively respond with a traditional letter. It’s the power of habit, which costs taxpayers a…
Citizens are constitutionally entitled to observe and record plenary sessions of the Sejm and Senate [the two chambers of the Polish parliament]. Arguing such rights with the Marshal’s Guards barring a citizen from entering, however, is another matter altogether. The Senate Marshal, Mr Stanisław Karczewski, published on the Senate’s website a statement claiming that [opposition]…
Interventions In July 2016 Warsaw hosted a NATO summit. As there were multiple estimates regarding the cost of organising the event, we decided to send a request for public information to its main organiser, the Ministry of National Defence. We asked for disclosure of the report that the Ministry submitted to the prime minister after…
As we have been dealing with the transparency of political parties’ activity for quite a while, the time has come now for a short review. What have we managed to achieve? There is no clear-cut evidence of how (if at all) parties’ attitudes towards the right to information have changed. Nonetheless, it can be stated…
