Hungary was the second country after Norway to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents, the Council of Europe said in a statement on Saturday.
Twelve European countries, including Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, and Sweden signed the world’s first treaty on access to information at a meeting of Ministers of Justice held in Tromso, Norway on June 18 last year. For the treaty to come into effect, at least ten of the countries that signed it must also deposit the ratification documents. Hungary ratified the convention on January 5, the Council of Europe said.
The convention is the first international legal means to stipulate that all official documents must be made available to members of the public. The convention states that transparency of the operation of official organisations is a key condition of good governance and a measure of democracy.
With this headline shouldn’t the story be on Pestiside?
@Abácsi: Ha! Good one! Potential punchline: The government thought it would only apply to Hungarians seeking access to Norwegian public documents.
As sexy as Hungarians are purported to be, I do not think the
Hungarian Government should expose “pubic” parts to just
anybody even if other nations are eager to bare their private parts
officially. Or: is “pubic access” an inside path Politics.HU writers use
to expose information?
I wonder how this agreement impacts all those things the current Communist MSZP/SZDSZ government classified secret. Obviously, these are brute attempts to cover up corruption and have nothing to do with security and Hungarian national interest.
It concerns me that Fidesz supported the recent revision of secrets law to make it even stricter and to punish even those who would expose criminal wrongdoings classified as secret.
Is there a Fidesz supporter who can give me rational explanation for Fidesz’s support for this crazy law?
One can ask why there was not a flood of un-classifications by the Fidesz Government 1998-2002?
These things tend to take its own life.
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This law has nothing to do with those things that has been classified secret, but things that are not explicitly declared secret should be possible to access for the public (not pubic, Eric (You still do not see it?)).
The key-sentence here is:
“all official documents must be made available to members of the public”
non-official documents, like security classed documents are still not available.
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I think this EU-compromise is less than what Sweden has had for several hundred of years.
In Sweden for example, I can ask the Tax Office to get access to my neighbour’s or the PM’s tax filings for the last 5 years.
Every year the papers are full of info on which well-know, and not so well-knows people in Sweden earned most, paid most tax or paid least tax compared to how rich they are.
When I told this to my wife, her comment was just – ‘Sweden is more Communist than Hungary ever been!’
I do not think Tax Filings will be ‘official documents’ to made ‘pubic’ in the rest of the EU.