Eksi Sozluk, one of Turkey’s most popular social media networks, on Thursday said it will challenge in court a government agency’s decision to block access to its website without giving any reason.
“No content was given as a basis for the decision taken by the Presidency’s Directorate for Security Affairs,” Eksi Sozluk said on Thursday and added: “We will apply all legal processes against the decision.”
Eksi Sozluk was blocked on Wednesday by decision of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, BTK. Since then, the platform has been trying to get information about the reason.
Although no content was cited for the decision, Eksi Sozluk was told by officials at the Turkish Presidency that the decision was made because, “especially after the earthquake, false information was given about the military and state institutions, the state was shown as desperate and it was determined that posts were aiming to create an atmosphere of chaos among the society.”
Eksi Sozluk added that officials had accused the social media platform of not reacting to “wrong and slanderous content”.
The platform has been a target of pro-government media outlets due to its posts on the earthquakes that were critical about the slow and ineffective response of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gpvernment.
The February 6 disaster has devastated Turkey’s south and southeastern provinces, killing more than 43,000 people and leaving millions without homes.
Critics say that President Erdogan’s government is using allegedly “slanderous” comments on the handling of the earthquake disaster to silence all criticism of its disaster management.
The government previously blocked most access to Twitter and TikTok and slowed down the internet, complaining about “misinformation”, as public anger mounted about the government’s response to the crisis.
Access to social media networks and the internet was fully restored a day later, following harsh criticism of the move. Critics accused the government of cutting off a key source of communication for relatives of victims, survivors and aid campaigners.
Eksi Sozluk is a collaborative hypertext dictionary working similarly to Reddit and it is one of the most popular Turkish social media platforms and most visited websites since 1999.
Montenegro adopted national legislation on the right of access to information while Albania improved the way citizens can track their FOI requests. Over numerous action plans, North Macedonia sought to improve FOI legislation, implementation and raise awareness. Serbia improved the amount and quality of information available on government websites, although attempts to reform the FOI law have hit obstacles in recent years. Croatian civil society noted that legal amendments, guidelines and trainings helped to increase the responsiveness of FOI officers while publishing a database on public authorities that are subject to FOI legislation was useful.
Despite having comparatively strong FOI laws according to the RTI Rating, these countries still face challenges in implementing the right of access to information to its fullest extent. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the challenges in implementing these laws.
Recently, BIRN found that access to information in the region worsened during the pandemic. For example, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia saw notable delays in response times to requests. Serbia even used its state of emergency to extend the time period for responding to access to information requests.
While BIRN journalists submitted 359 FOI requests in 2020, authorities in the region approved only 173 (48%) of them, and partially approved 15 requests with only technical information. Authorities also said they would answer more queries once the state of emergency was lifted. Despite the state of emergency restrictions, Serbian and North Macedonian institutions were most likely to provide full answers to their requests (53% and 47% of requests received full answers respectively) but no requests from BIRN journalists in Albania or Bosnia and Herzegovina received full answers. Administrative silence remains a major issue for the region. Even after repeated follow-ups from journalists, 160 (45%) requests received no answers at all. In fact, 80% of the requests sent to authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not receive an answer.
Notable denials of information occured in North Macedonia such as where political parties did not disclose information about their election campaign costs. Serbian authorities used privacy exemptions to deny access to documents relating to cases against alleged and convicted war criminals. According to BIRN, the restrictive FOI law and the authorities’ reluctance to provide information means journalists in places like Montenegro often use their sources and other connections to get the documents they need.
Western Balkan countries could consider a number of actions to address these issues through their OGP action plans including:
Organizing comprehensive, ongoing and effective training on records management and implementing freedom of information laws.
Proactively publishing all their decisions, records, spending and financial budgets free of charge. The data has to be available online, machine readable, and accessible for a broad audience.
Issuing sanctions such as financial fines for officials that reject requests, or who do not respond to requests within legal timeframes without proper justification.
Creating more opportunities for citizens to use published information, develop monitoring systems and provide feedback to citizens.
Where amendments to FOI laws in Western Balkan countries – such as Montenegro and Serbia – are proposed, they should ensure that the scope of publicly available information is made wider, that exceptions to access are narrowed, and that the process of making requests is made easier. They should not complicate access or legalise poor practice.
This year, OGP marks its tenth anniversary and OGP members have been encouraged to co-create ambitious commitments. As most Western Balkan countries will be co-creating their next OGP action plan, this year marks a unique opportunity to turn the needle for enhanced access to information. Whether it be working with civil society to strengthen legislative frameworks, or ensuring the effective implementation of progressive FOI legislation, the Western Balkans can reaffirm their commitment to the essential tools of open government.
Nearly 10 per cent of judicial institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina which responded to BIRN’s FOI request insisted that requests for access to information be submitted in person or by mail, while some offered fax as an alternative.
BIRN sent inquiries to 96 courts and prosecutors’ offices on how they receive requests for free access to information.
The majority, 51, said they allow inquiries to be sent in a variety of ways, including email.
But of the 58 who responded, two prosecutors’ offices and four courts said they do not look at inquiries sent by email, which is common practice in most state institutions.
In their responses they said that they receive such requests exclusively by mail or in person, citing the lack of an electronic seal law and the impossibility of establishing the identities of the persons sending requests by email.
Experts criticised this as a way to restrict access to information for citizens and journalists.
The editor of the Capital.ba portal and president of the Banja Luka Journalists’ Club, Sinisa Vukelic, said such an approach makes it difficult for journalists to work.
“The message they are sending is that they do not want to change, and the only conclusion that can be drawn from that is that they are looking for every possible way to be less transparent,” Vukelic said.
Making inquiries in person, or sending them by mail, takes up valuable time when working on a text and prevents journalists from doing the stories they would otherwise do, if judicial institutions were more open, he added.
When you receive information after ten days, it is often by then unusable from a journalistic point of view, Vukelic noted.
Besides creating obstacles to sending inquiries, journalists face non-responses or delays in obtaining information from the judiciary. BIRN’s inquiries were not answered at all by 38 judicial institutions, and of the 58 that did answer, their answers arrived after 14 days.
BIRN’s recently published annual Freedom of Information report concluded that FOI laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina are outdated and do not meet the needs and expectations of the digital age.
Furthermore, Bosnia remains the only country in the Balkans that does not offer access to public records in electronic form.
The region needs more proactive transparency, open contracting and political will to deal with freedom of information, FOI, speakers from the region and internationally told BIRN’s conference Platform B: Freedom of Information in the Balkans, held on Thursday.
Countries are still struggling with the slow implementation of FOI laws, political pressures and institutions’ unresponsiveness, while the first year of the global pandemic also saw excessive delays in responding to FOI requests, speakers at the event, at which BIRN’s annual freedom of information report was officially launched, agreed.
Ivana Jeremic, editor at Balkan Insight from Serbia, told the conference that 2020 was “extremely hard” in terms of getting any information from institutions in Serbia, making it difficult for journalists to do their job.
“I don’t know what to expect in future, but the trend is not optimistic, there is no will from institutions to implement our law, which is actually among the best laws in the world, but on paper.
Besides, people who are in charge [of FOI requests] at institutions are not educated enough on how to respond to those requests and there is also lots of pressure on them about which information should be made public and which not,” Jeremic said.
Kreshnik Gashi, managing editor of KALLXO.com and Author of the TV show Justice in Kosovo, told the conference that journalists and the general public face many problems when it comes to freedom of information in Kosovo.
“The law on the classification of official documents in Kosovo is not implemented by all institutions and as a result we have problems when documents are requested by various parties. One of the problems is whether or not the official is allowed to provide the document to the journalist or the party, as it is not clear whether that document is public or not,” he said.
“In consequence, all the required documents have to go through this process always, because there is no clarity on what is confidential and what isn’t”, he added.
However, there are signs that things might be changing for the better.
“I should mention as a very good model and practice that Kosovo has decided to open all contracts in public procurement, an action that has helped our work a lot and makes monitoring and reporting on public contracts management possible,” Gashi said.
Sandra Pernar, Senior Regional Coordinator – Europe, at Open Government Partnership, OGP, told the discussion that there are many similarities between the regional countries that are part of the initiative – implementation being one of them.
“In general for the region, I can say that the conclusion is very much the same as the one many [speakers] said several times today, and that is: there is not so much of a problem with bad regulation, it is really about the implementation. This is something that should be addressed,” Pernar said, adding that the region should pay more attention to proactive transparency, “which is obviously not there yet”.
The report’s findings were further discussed with other BIRN journalists, civil society members and public institutions’ representatives, which was followed by a Q&A session.
The report, Freedom of Information in the Western Balkans in 2020: Classified. Rejected. Delayed, which covers 2020, is part of BIRN’s ongoing project, A Paper Trail to Better Governance, with the main aim of exposing wrongdoing in government and public and private companies and among powerful individuals through country-based and cross-border investigations.
Besides analysing a total of 358 FOI requests submitted by BIRN journalists, the report also examines legislation, governments’ partnerships and progress in international organisations in dealing with transparency and open data, the work of regional public information officers as well as regional governments’ treatment of freedom of information during the pandemic.
Together with our partners, BIRN is launching a series of online and
offline events aimed to amplify the voices of strong and credible individuals
and organisations in the region that promote the core values of democracy, such
as civic engagement, independent institutions, transparency and rule of law.
As a primarily media organisation, we want to open space and provide a
platform to discuss and
reshape our alliances in light of the challenges facing democracies in
South-East and Central Europe.
This effort comes at a critical time when the region is seeing several
troubling trends: centralized power, reduced transparency, assaults on media,
politicized judiciaries, unchecked corruption, online violations and social
polarization – all amidst heightened geopolitical tensions and deep divisions
in Europe.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, Platform B event series will be organised
in accordance with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we
hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and
Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.
The Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.
Illustration: Marta Klawe Rzeczy
Opening event:
Digital Rights Falter Amid Political and Social Unrest: What Now?
Date: 1 July, 2021 (Thursday)
Time: 15.00, CET
At this event, BIRN and SHARE Foundation will discuss its annual digital rights report,together with other members of the newly established SEE Network, talking about the key trends concerning the digital ecosystem.
We monitored digital rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia and collected more than 1500 cases of online violations.
In Southern and Eastern Europe, where online disinformation campaigns
are endangering guaranteed individual freedoms, and while the decline in
internet safety has become a worrying trend, citizens with poor media and
digital illiteracy have been left without viable protection mechanisms.
The event participants will have an opportunity to discuss and hear reflections from representatives of: EDRi, Zasto ne?, Citizen D, Homo Digitalis, SCiDEV, Partners Serbia, Metamorphosis, Atina NGO, Media Development Center.
Second event: Freedom of Information in the Balkans: Classified,
Rejected, Delayed
Date: July 15, 2021 (Thursday)
Time: 14.00, CET
The global pandemic has been used as an excuse for many Balkan states
to not fully implement freedom of information laws, leaving the public in the
dark.
Transparency has been another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While on paper, freedom of information laws are up-to-date in almost
all countries in the region, implementation is patchy at best and has grown
worse since governments clamped down on the flow of information with the onset
of the coronavirus.
Together with journalists, public information officers and colleagues
from Open Government Partnership we will reflect on the findings of BIRN’s
tracking institutional transparency report and offer recommendations on how to
make our institutions open and accountable.
Registration form will be available here soon.
Events in August and in the fall will focus on investigative journalism
and gender justice.
Three times Bujar Sadiku put himself forward for the post of commissioner at Kosovo’s Information and Privacy Agency, where he serves as director. Three times the recruitment process collapsed. When it was advertised in April for a fourth time, Sadiku stood aside.
“I have tried three times,” he said.
The post of commissioner is vital to the implementation of laws regulating access to public documents and the protection of data privacy, but it has been vacant since 2019.
The first time it was up for grabs, the competition was scrapped after the British embassy, engaged by the government to improve transparency and keep politics out of public sector recruitment, said that none of the candidates was right for the job. Two subsequent attempts failed when lawmakers were unable to bridge their political differences to endorse a candidate.
And ordinary Kosovars are paying the price. Without a commissioner, Kosovo’s Law on Access to Public Documents and Law on the Protection of Personal Data cannot be implemented, leaving individuals unprotected from violations of their personal data privacy and journalists unable to challenge institutions which refuse to release information of public importance.
“We have an institution that has been unable to function for more than two years,” said Mexhide Demolli, executive director of the NGO FOL Movement.
All eyes on ruling Vetevendosje
Albin Kurti. Photo: BIRN/Urim Krasniqi
With the power to levy fines against offenders, the commissioner should play a key role in improving transparency in the public sector and protecting members of the public against invasions of their data privacy. But experts say the Agency is already under heavy political interference and all parties have an interest in who takes the top job.
Once again, MPs are currently interviewing candidates for the post, before a shortlist is submitted to a parliament vote.
But it will go ahead without the oversight of the British embassy, which pulled out in August last year after the collapse of the last recruitment process.
Flutura Kusari, an expert in media law who has monitored the recruitment process, said it was of great importance that lawmakers select someone with “integrity”.
“The Commissioner should be someone who has courage and who is independent because it is dangerous if this person is controlled by politicians,” Kusari told BIRN.
“Currently, the Agency is under political control; it does not act independently, numerous opinions it has issued violate international standards of freedom of expression.”
“The failure belongs to all political parties because they failed to find consensus,” she said. “But, so far, the blame should be on those parties which held power – PDK [Democratic Party of Kosovo] and LDK [Democratic League of Kosovo]. Now we have to wait and see what Vetevendosje will do,” Kusari said, referring to the current ruling party of Prime Minister Albin Kurti.
Meanwhile, the complaints are stacking up, said Demolli.
“We have many complaints from citizens whose personal data has been violated by different companies sending promotional messages to their phones,” she told BIRN. Without a commissioner, such companies escape sanction.
Illustration. Photo: BIRN/Urim Krasniqi
Journalists frustrated
The situation is also making life difficult for journalists, who have no one to turn to if institutions do not respond to or refuse requests for access to information.
“The most frequent manner in which requests for access to public documents are rejected by institutions is via silence,” said Kastriot Berisha, a member of the Kosovo Press Council, which gathers print and online media in Kosovo, and a journalist with BIRN Kosovo.
“Currently, we address complaints to the People’s Advocate, but he can’t force institutions to provide access to public documents, only facilitate it.”
Sadiku said the delays were damaging the Agency and costing the public.
“Many complaints are pending,” Sadiku told BIRN. “Each day the Agency remains without a commissioner implies delays in addressing the complaints. Many complaints could lose all meaning if they are not addressed in time.”
The chief justice of Poland’s Supreme Court, a presidential appointee, has asked the government-controlled Constitutional Tribunal to declare key elements of the law on access to public information as unconstitutional, which experts warn could bring about an end to government transparency.
Since being elected in 2015, the nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) government has suffered a series of scandals – some uncovered through the use of transparency laws – concerning the appointments of relatives and friends of PiS politicians to public office, as well as the favouring of friendly foundations, media and other institutions in the distribution of public funds.
Observers speculate that another intended effect of the request could be to shield from media scrutiny certain state companies, which PiS is increasingly using to achieve political ends, such as taking control of critical media.
It emerged Wednesday, via a personal tweet from Miroslaw Wroblewski, a lawyer and director of the constitutional law team at the office of the Polish Ombudsman, that Malgorzata Manowska, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, had formally requested on February 16 that the Constitutional Tribunal assess the constitutionality of several aspects of Poland’s law governing access to public information.
Manowska, who was appointed to her position last year by the PiS-allied President Andrzej Duda, claimed in her submission that the law doesn’t specify enough the scope of concepts such as “public authorities”, “other entities performing public tasks”, “persons exercising public functions” and “the relation to the exercise of public functions”. As a consequence, she wrote, the concepts are stretched too broadly in an illegal manner, meaning too many public bodies and officials are held accountable.
The chief justice also challenged the obligation of state bodies to provide information about public officials, “including their personal data and information belonging to their private sphere”, which she argued is both unconstitutional and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet this could also refer, potentially, to information about supplementary sources of income or conflicts of interest that exist among the official’s family.
Wroblewski took to social media to comment on Manowska’s request: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll remember this date [February 16] as the end of government transparency”.
Krzysztof Izdebski, from the open-government watchdog Fundacja ePanstwo, anticipates that public institutions which have been taken to court by journalists for not providing requested public information on time will now start filing requests to suspend their trials until the Constitutional Tribunal rules. “This request is also meant to have a chilling effect on citizens and journalists,” Izdebski commented.
Manowska was nominated to the Supreme Court by the National Council of the Judiciary, KRS, a body whose independence from the ruling party has been questioned by both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Polish Supreme Court itself. Although an experienced judge and former dean of the National School of Judiciary and Public Prosecution, she has also served as a deputy justice minister under Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, raising concerns about her independence from him and PiS.
In turn, the Constitutional Tribunal was the first body in the justice system that PiS sought to establish political control over when it took power, while its President, Julia Przylebska, is known to be a personal friend of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The report presents an overview of the main violations of digital rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia between January 31 and September 30, 2020, and makes a series of recommendations for authorities in order to curb such infringements during future social crises.
The global public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus exposed a new the failure of states around the world to provide a framework that would better balance the interests of safety and privacy. Instead, the report documents incidents of censorship, fake news, security breaches and concentration of information.
More than 200 pandemic-related violations tracked
At the onset of the pandemic, numerous violations of digital rights were observed – from violations of the privacy of persons in isolation to manipulation, dissemination of false information and Internet fraud.
BIRN and Share Foundation documented 221 violations in the context of COVID-19 during the eight-month monitoring period, the largest number coming during the initial peak of the pandemic in March and April – 67 and 79 respectively – before slowly declining.
The countries with the highest number of violations to date are Serbia, with 46, and Croatia, with 44.
The most common violation – accounting for roughly half of all cases – was manipulation in the digital environment caused by news sites that published unverified and inaccurate information, and by the circulating of incomplete and false data on social media.
This can be explained in large measure by the low level of media literacy in the countries of the region, where few people actually check the news and information provided to them, while the media themselves often publish unverified information.
The most common targets of digital rights violations were citizens and journalists. However, both of these groups were frequently also among the perpetrators.
Contact tracing apps: Useful or not?
The debate about the use of contact-tracing apps as a method of combating the spread of COVID-19 was one of the most important discussions in Croatia and North Macedonia.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, the Croatian government led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, proposed a change to the Electronic Communications Act under which, in extraordinary situations, the health minister would request from telecommunications companies the location data of users.
Similarly, Macedonian health authorities announced they were looking to use “all tools and means” to combat the virus, with North Macedonia among the first countries in the Western Balkans to launch a contact-tracing app on April 13.
Developed and donated to the Macedonian authorities by Skopje-based software company Nextsense, the StopKorona! app is based on Bluetooth distance measuring technology and stores data locally on users’ devices, while exchanging encrypted, anonymised data relevant to the infection spread for a limited period of 14 days. According to data privacy experts, the decentralised design guaranteed that data would be stored only on devices that run the app, unless they voluntarily submit that data to health authorities.
Croatia launched its own at the end of July, but by late August media reports said the Stop COVID-19 app had been downloaded by less than two per cent of mobile phone users in the country. The threshold for it to be effective is 60 per cent, the reports said.
Key worrying trends mapped
Illustration: Olivia Solis
Bosnia and Herzegovina saw a number of problems with personal data protection, free access to information and disinformation. In terms of disinformation, people were exposed to a variety of false and sometimes outlandish claims, including conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus, its spread by plane and various miracle cures.
Conspiracy theories, like those blaming the spread of the virus on 5G mobile networks, flourished online in Croatia too. One person in Croatia destroyed their Wifi equipment, believing it was 5G.
In Hungary, fake news about COVID-19 arrived even before the virus itself, said journalist Akos Keller Alant, who monitored the digital environment in Hungary.
Several clickbait fake news sites published articles about COVID-19 victims a month before Hungary’s first confirmed case. The Anti-Cybercrime Unit of the Hungarian police arrested several people for spreading fake news, starting in early February when police raided the operators of a network of fake news sites.
In Kosovo, online media emerged as the biggest violators of digital rights by publishing unverified and false information as well as personal health information. Personal data rights were also violated by state institutions and public figures.
In Montenegro, the most worrying digital rights violations concerned privacy and personal data protection of those infected with the coronavirus or those forced to self-isolate.
The early days of the pandemic, when Montenegro was among the few countries that could claim to have kept a lid on the virus, was a rare moment of social and political consensus in the country about how to respond, said Tamara Milas of the Centre for Civic Education in Montenegro, an NGO.
The situation changed, however, when the government was accused of the gross violation of the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data.
Like its Western Balkan peers, North Macedonia was flooded with unverified information and claims shared online with regards the pandemic. Some of the most concerning cases included false claims about infected persons, causing a stir on social media.
In Romania, the government used state-of-emergency powers to shut down websites – including news and opinion sites – accused of spreading what authorities deemed fake news about the pandemic, according to BIRN correspondent Marcel Gascon, who monitors digital rights violations in Romania.
In Serbia, a prominent case concerned a breach of security in the country’s central COVID-19 database. For eight days, the login credentials for the database, Information System COVID-19, were publicly available on the website of a public health body.
In another incident, the initials, age, place-of-work and personal address of a person infected with the virus were posted on the official webpage of the municipality of Sid in western Serbia as well as on the town’s social media accounts.
In the report, BIRN and Share Foundation conclude that technology, especially in a time of crisis, should not be seen as the solution to complex issues, be that protection of health or upholding public order and safety. Rather, technology should be used to the benefit of citizens and in the interest of their rights and freedoms.
When intrusive technologies and regulations are put in place, it is hard to take a step back, particularly in societies with weak democratic institutions, the report states. Under such circumstances, the measures applied in one crisis for the protection of public health may one day be repurposed and used against other “social plagues”, ultimately leading to reduced human rights standards.
To read the full report click here. For individual cases, check our regional database, developed together with the SHARE Foundation.
Five leading NGOs in Romania on Friday in an open letter condemned legislation tabled this week in parliament by an opposition Social Democratic Party MP – initially supported by the chief whip of the ruling National Liberal Party – that would reduce the state’s obligation to supply public information.
The legal amendment would make those requesting information liable to cover the financial costs of the process of collecting and releasing information, such as scanning and making copies of documents and other operations.
If the legislation is adopted, authorities could deny information requests on the basis of their volume – if the requested information or data exceeds 50 pages – or by invoking the request’s allegedly “malicious intent”.
The executive director of the Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, Cristina Lupu, told BIRN that the spirit of the proposed legislation suggested that “the person who requests information is seen as an enemy of the state, not as someone exercising a fundamental right”.
The CJI along with other human rights groups such as ActiveWatch and the Centre for Public Innovation has signed the open letter.
Some MPs are already backing away form the law change. Soon after the media raised the alert about on the legislation being tabled, the chief whip of the ruling centre-right National Liberals, Florin Roman, announced on Facebook that he no longer supported the initiative.
“I have made a written request to withdraw my signature for this draft legislation,” the MP said. He said he had changed his mind after receiving “signals” from various “people of good faith” who warned him of its potentially “abusive interpretations”.
He announced that his party would vote against the legislation in parliament, which substantially diminishes its chances of ever being adopted.
However, although it is in opposition, the Social Democrats still have the largest number of seats in parliament, and could still seek the support of smaller parties to get the amendment adopted.
In their open letter, the five NGOs said the proposed legislation would undermine transparency and curb rights to free speech and free access to information, highlighting that these rights are protected by the Romanian constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Lupu of the CJI warned that trust in the state recently “has diminished, and attempts to limit transparency are further reducing trust”.
She recalled that Romania’s government had temporarily limited access to information amid the COVID-19 pandemic by concentrating the supply of information in central institutions.
Lupu advocated boosting digitalization of the public administration as a way to optimize resources and overcome the logistical problems officials can face when responding to information requests, instead of refusing to answer them, or charging citizens for exercising their rights.
Romania is not the only country in the region experiencing the same worrying trend observed by Lupu. Activists across Central and Southeast Europe have warned of similar limitations on transparency in their countries, often under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a chilling effect on people’s right to information in Central and Southeast Europe, with many countries adopting legal measures which temporarily altered or even suspended obligations regarding the public’s right to information.
Thankfully, many of these measures have since lapsed with the end of the states of emergency and lockdowns, though there are other pieces of legislation in the works that could hinder people’s right to information.
On the annual International Day for Universal Access to Information, BIRN has released data showing dramatic drops in responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests by official bodies, either in time or in their entirety. BIRN keeps track of its FOI requests and produces reports on the topic, because the information gleaned from these requests enables it to produce investigative pieces and expose wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.
“In a world where COVID-19 has caused chaos and complexity, access to reliable and verified information is more important than ever… As these last few months have shown, public health requires transparency – whether this means statistics on the scale of the pandemic, or data on public spending. Access to accurate and trustworthy information ensures accountability for actions undertaken in response to the challenges caused by the virus, as the global community works to ‘build back better’,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, wrote on the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information.
Since the beginning of the year, the data shows that BIRN journalists have sent at least 366 FOI requests to various public institutions in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. So far, just 123 requests, or 33.6 per cent, have been answered, either fully or partially, while the remainder are either rejected or still not answered.
By comparison, between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, with slightly under half (408) approved; 224 were partially approved, meaning the institutions provided only technical information; and 221 requests were either rejected or no answer at all was received, despite repeated follow-ups from the journalists.
At the time, BIRN concluded that while FOI laws in the region are among the most liberal in Europe on paper, implementation of these laws is well below European standards – a situation that has deteriorated with the spread of the pandemic.
Public institutions that so far have been most likely to answer FOI requests are the Trade Ministry and prosecutors’ offices (Serbia), the Judicial Council (North Macedonia), the Kosovo Judicial Council and local municipalities (Kosovo).
BIRN also tests the transparency of public institutions by analysing their compliance with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and subnational governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. So far, four Balkan states have joined the OGP: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia.
Some of the commitments each state proposed in their Action Plans are related to: open data, anti-corruption, public procurement, developing e-governance, adopting laws to support transparency of public institutions etc. But despite their promise to be more transparent and open, these countries are still struggling to meet the commitments.
Albania, the oldest OGP member since 2011, has been shifting the OGP leadership from one institution to another, thus failing to fully implement its own commitments: fiscal transparency, public services, access to information, public administration and anti-corruption.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which joined OGP in 2014, has not moved a step forward in fulfilling the commitments. Independent published reports note no improvement.
Montenegro, which joined in 2012, is still facing difficulties on internal leadership to deal with OGP and track the developments of the already committed institutions.
Serbia, which joined the partnership in 2013, has the highest number of set commitments. From a total of 14, it failed to develop an IT system to support e-governance, and failed to implement proposed amendments to the laws that were supposed to improve governmental transparency.
All four countries have failed in becoming more transparent and digitally accessible. Publishing the latest updates on their websites, such as financial reports, ministry meetings minutes, or other current and important public documents, seems like too long a process to be ever fully implemented.
COVID measures
Citing the fight against COVID-19, authorities in a number of Central and Southeast European countries extended the amount of time that state bodies had to respond to FOI requests, which media watchdogs warned at the time was part of a worrying crackdown on press freedom since the onset of the pandemic.
“We are concerned that in some cases, the suspension or delay of FOI deadlines is being used to hinder media access to information and thereby shield the government from domestic scrutiny or criticism over its handling of the outbreak,” warned Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute (IPI).
Among those countries extending and suspending deadlines for FOI requests were Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, while Poland passed a law suspending the activity of courts that would rule on issues related to FOI requests.
Most of these laws have since been revoked as the states of emergency and lockdown ended, however experts are warning about other legislation in the pipeline that could have a similar detrimental effect on the right to information.
In Poland, for example, legislation has been proposed by MPs from the ruling party that would exempt officials from punishment for breaking the law if they did so as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization advises that, instead of absolving of liability, it is important to, among other things, produce conditions for better public oversight of the various public decisions made during the pandemic.
“This… recommendation could be implemented by facilitating access to public information via digitising, obliging institutions to proactively publish information online, shortening dates for information access etc… Yet the current government is not making access to public information easier, but complicating it further on the pretext of battling the pandemic,” Grzegorz Makowski, an expert at the Batory Foundation’s ideaForum, wrote.
In Montenegro, the government has been criticised for pressing ahead during the pandemic with proposed amendments to the Montenegrin Law on Free Access to Information that have raised serious concern among experts, who say that the majority of the proposed changes would have a negative effect and take Montenegro further away from international transparency standards.
BIRD Community
Are you a professional journalist or a media worker looking for an easily searchable and comprehensive database and interested in safely (re)connecting with more than thousands of colleagues from Southeastern and Central Europe?
We created BIRD Community, a place where you can have it all!
