Free Access to Public Information: Enforcement, Appeals and Judicial Review. A Comparative Perspective from Cee Countries

Abstract

FOIAs were adopted in Central and EasternEurope rather late after the regime changes. Afteradopting the laws, however, there are still manypowerful forces that are working against extensiveaccess to information – they can be static - opaqueadministrative practices, general inaptitudeor the lack of sufficient human and materialresources – or active – agents that resist opennessdue to private interests, or agents that useinstitutional scenarios to prevent public scrutinyover corruption and incompetence. The paperapproaches the jurisdictions from Hungary, Poland,Czech Republic and Romania, emphasizing thetopic of enforcement mechanisms provided by theFOIAs. It is a follow up of an article published twoyears ago in the same journal.