You can seek access to restricted information held by state institutions, but only if you need it for a specific purpose.
Restricted information
Public authorities may limit access to information:
- if the information is classified by the level of secrecy, in accordance with the law regulating data secrecy;
- if the information is a business or professional secret, in accordance with the law
- if the information is a tax secret, in accordance with the law
- if the information is protected by regulations governing the area of personal data protection
- if the information is protected by regulations governing intellectual property rights
- if access to information is limited in accordance with international agreements
Public authorities may limit access to information if there are grounds for suspicion that its publication would:
- prevented the effective, independent and impartial conduct of judicial, administrative or other legally regulated proceedings, the execution of court decisions or punishments;
- prevented the work of bodies that perform administrative supervision, inspection supervision, or legality supervision.
Public authorities will limit access to information regarding all procedures conducted by competent authorities in preliminary and criminal proceedings for the duration of those proceedings.
The restriction system contains information that, according to its content, belongs to a certain type of information that is protected by special regulations, which is the case with classified information, and access to which can be limited or allowed depending on the result of the test of proportionality and public interest
Limited access to certain information can be prescribed by:
- law
For example, information concerning the private life of an individual, confidential information concerning criminal investigations or documents on state security marked as classified.
- head of the state institution
In this case the head of the institution should explain that there is a need to limit access to the information.
Request
You can request access to information of any public institutions, even if that information is classified. Your request might be denied if the information you ask for is limited by law or is classified data.
Access to classified data is granted to persons who need it to perform tasks within their scope and who have been issued with a Certificate of Completion of a security check (certificate), which should be applied to officials for information and other persons participating in the process of resolving requests for access to information.
Fees
If the information that you are interested in is ready and available and does not require the collection of any additional data by the authorities, it should be provided free of charge. However, the state may require you to cover the fees necessary to find or copy the information you are looking for. Such fees should not exceed the costs of collecting the information.
Refusal & Explanation
The mere fact that a certain piece of information is classified as confidential does not mean that the public authority should issue a decision rejecting the request for access to information.
The public authority is mandatory to carry out the procedure and apply the provisions of the Act on the Right to Access to Information and make a decision on the availability or on the denial of the requested information.
Before making a decision, the public authority should consider whether there are parts of the information that are not classified, for example only one part of the information is classified with a certain degree of secrecy. In the case of the existence of parts of information that are not classified or for which there is no other legal restriction, the public authority should enable the right to access that information.
Criteria
Whenever a state institution or a court considers whether access to information should be granted or denied, they must balance your rights and interests with other interests protected by the concealment of the information. Therefore, they must evaluate:
- the public importance of the information you would like to receive
- your purpose and reasons for requesting the information
- the potential harm that could be done to the rights of other persons or other important interests if the information is disclosed
When a public authority resolves a request for access to information requesting information that is classified with a certain level of data secrecy, it is necessary to initially check whether that information is classified by law or any other legal instruments.
If certain information does not meet the conditions prescribed by special regulations, in that case it cannot be classified information.
If, after carrying out the test of proportionality and public interest, the public authority has determined that the interest of protecting the secrecy of data prevails over the public interest of providing access to information, it is obliged to issue a decision.
example State authorities may provide an environmental NGO access to general information about a planned wind power park, but might refuse to provide access to technical information in the interest of protecting industrial secrets. However, an absolute denial of access to information in this case would clearly be disproportional.
How to complain
Read more about how to complain where you have been denied access to restricted information.