Civil society and the right to access to state-held information: responses to recent European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions
The CMCS and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union co-organized, with the support of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, a workshop to address landmark ECHR decisions on access to state-held information.
The workshop is co-organised by the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU/TASZ); with the support of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media; and in cooperation with the Departments of Legal Studies, Public Policy and Environmental Sciences and Policy at the Central European University.
The workshop will follow on recent landmark freedom of information decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in two Hungarian cases. 1 It aims to discuss these precedents, explore how civil society might best respond, and consider how research might contribute to a better understanding of the impact of these decisions.
The workshop will include stakeholders from civil society organizations, academics and researchers, and policy makers, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe.
The major objectives of this workshop are:
- to convey the new case law and interpret these judgments in order to provide guidance on how Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (full text) can be used by civil society organizations in accessing state information;
- to analyze both judgments in the context of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Access to Official Documents (full text; more info) in order to establish whether this instrument complies with the new ECHR case law;
- to explore civil society strategies for the dissemination of the court ruling and FOIA procedures, and broad strategies related to the possible utility of FOIA claims for NGO work;
- to develop a research agenda for further exploration of the impact, viability and usability of these decisions, and plan future social science research activities.
1 The case Társaság a Szabadságjogokért (TASZ) v. Hungary (Application no. 37374/05), judgment of 14 April 2009; and the case Kenedi v. Hungary (Application no. 31475/05), judgment of 26 May 2009.