State institutions do not comply with legal obligations to provide information

2024-03-07 10:23:00, Aktualitet CNA

A survey conducted by "Monitor" on the website and on social networks shows that from the experience of the participants, state institutions respect the legal obligations for transparency and providing information to the public.

The question posed in the survey to the participants was "From your experience, do state institutions respect the legal obligations for transparency and information?".

50% of the participants answered that Albanian institutions ignore the public's legal right to information. 42% of the participants answered that they are selective in the information they provide, while only 8% of the voters said that the institutions are correct in respecting the obligation to inform.

In Albania, the first law on the right to information on official documents was adopted in 1999, while in 2014 the law that is currently in force, "On the right to information" was adopted (last amended in 2023) . The law stipulates that every institution must have a coordinator for the right to information, as a point of contact where the public must send requests for information and receive answers to them.

However, most citizens and professionals who have exercised the legal right to request information from public institutions know that in many cases this obligation is not enforced.

From the experience of journalists, it happens very often that institutions do not give any response to requests for information, without even bothering to send a rejection response. In many other cases the provision of information is refused, based on arbitrary classifications of confidential or classified information.

The legal guarantee for compliance with the law on the right to information is the Commissioner for the Right to Information and Protection of Personal Data. Any citizen or subject who thinks that their legal right to receive information from institutions has been violated has the right to complain to this institution.

Last year alone, the Commissioner for the Right to Information issued 52 decisions in which the complaints of citizens and subjects for violation of the right to information were accepted in full or in part. The commissioner ordered the institutions to provide the requested information, while in some cases he fined the persons responsible for providing the information or the owners of the institutions.

However, it is difficult to say to what extent the Commissioner's decisions have been further implemented by the institutions. The law gives the parties the right to appeal decisions to the Administrative Court. But, even in the case when the decisions are not appealed, the Commissioner does not have any direct binding instrument for the implementation of his decisions, with the exception of imposing fines on public officials who violate the legal obligations to provide information or refuse to implement the Commissioner's decisions.

The revised law last year provides for fines up to 300,000 ALL, however, in practice, fines greater than 50,000 ALL have not been applied to date./Monitor