(1)
Everyone shall be entitled to seek, receive and impart
information. This right shall not be exercised to the
detriment of the rights and reputation of others, or to
the detriment of national security, public order, public
health and morality.
(2) Citizens shall be entitled to obtain information from
state bodies and agencies on any matter of legitimate
interest to them which is not a state or other secret
prescribed by law and does not affect the rights of others.(1)
•
Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary,
secondary and tertiary schools, 2002/03: 77.6
•
GDP per capita (PPP US$) (HDI), 2003: 7,731
•
Total population (millions), 2003: 8
•
Total fertility rate (births per woman), 2000-05:
1.2
•
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births),
2003: 15
•
Net primary enrolment ratio (%), 2002/03: 90
•
HIV prevalence (% ages 15-49), 2003: <0.1
[<0.2]
•
Undernourished people (% of total population),
2000/03: 11
•
Population with sustainable access to an improved
water source (%), 2002: 100
Source:
UN Development Program, Human Development Reports
Data
In
1996, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Article 41
of the Constitution gives a right to information to any
person, however, the right needed to be set out by legislation.(2)
There were a number of lower court cases that rejected requests
by citizens and NGOs to obtain information.(3)
The
Access
to Public Information Act was enacted in June 2000.(4)
The law allows for any person or legal entity to demand
access to information in any form held by state institutions
and other entities funded by the state budget and exercising
public functions. Requests can be verbal or written and
must be processed within 14 days.
Information
can be withheld if it is personal information about an individual,
a state or official secret, business secret, or pre-decisional
material. Restrictions must be provided for in an Act of
Parliament. Information relating to preparatory work or
opinions or statements of ongoing negotiations can be withheld
for 2 years. Partial access is required but has not been
widely adopted.
Unusually,
there is no internal appeals mechanism. There is no also
independent oversight body. Denials can be appealed to the
regional court or the Supreme Administrative Court. There
were 123 decisions in the Supreme Administrative Court between
2001 and 2005. In 2004, the court ruled in several significant
cases limiting the trade secrets and preparatory documents
exemptions, the application of the Classified Information
Act, mute refusals, and began requiring that documents be
released following a decision, rather than referring the
case back to the public body for reconsideration. One problem
has been obtaining contracts with private corporations.
In 2005, the SAC ruled that requestors had no right to a
contract between the state and Microsoft. The Access to
Information Programme (AIP), which litigated many of these
cases, reported that these resolved some of the existing
weaknesses with the text of the Act.
Minor
fines can be levied against government officials who do
not follow the requirements of the Act.
Government
bodies have a duty to publish information about their structures,
functions and acts; a list of acts issued; a list of data
volumes and resources; and contact information for access
requests. The Minister of State Administration must publish
an annual summary of the reports. Bodies are also required
to publish information to prevent a threat to life, health
or property.
There
were 49,653 registered requests in 2004, down from 67,712
requests in 2003.(5) As in previous years,
a large number of the requests were verbal (over 38,000).
A
2004 monitoring project by AIP found improvements over previous
years. Overall, they received information in 60 percent
of the cases, up from 38 percent in 2003. The number of
tacit denials declined from 21 percent down to 12 percent
and there were only two cases where they were not able to
submit oral requests. They also found that awareness of
the law was improved and that all the institutions had appointed
officials and adopted internal rules and most had created
registers.(6)
The
AIP recommended a number of changes to the Act and government
policies including requiring open meetings of collective
bodies, obliging institutions to make drafts of regulations
publicly available, apply the APIA to monopolies, establish
a public interest test, conform the exemptions of other
legislation in line with the APIA, protect whistleblowers,
and establish effective penalties for violations of the
APIA.
The
Parliament approved the Law
for the Protection of Classified Information in April
2002 as part of Bulgaria's efforts to join NATO.(7)
It created a Commission
on Classified Information appointed by the Prime Minister
and four levels of security for classified information.
The law provides a very broad scope of classification authority,
allowing everyone who is empowered to sign a document to
classify it. There are requirements to show harm for some
provisions but there are no overriding public interest tests.
The law revoked the 1997 Access
to Documents of the Former State Security Service Act and
Former Intelligence Service of the General Staff Act
which regulated access to, and provided procedures for,
the disclosure and use of documents stored in the former
State Security Service, including files on government officials.(8)
It also eliminated the Commission on State Security Records
set up under the 1997 Act. A regulation now establishes
access and the right of individuals to access their files
created by the former security police is currently unclear.
The Constitutional Court upheld the provisions that abolished
the law on access to former state security files and created
a register of classified documents in 2002.(9)
There are also ongoing problems with the access to all of
the files of the former security services. Few have been
turned over to the National Archives. In January 2005, the
government proposed to amend the act to make it easier to
destroy documents including the files of the former secret
police without declassifying or releasing them and giving
the public bodies more control over documents. The provisions
were withdrawn following public criticism that it would
allow the mass destruction of important files about Bulgarian
history.(10)
Under
the Administration Act, the Council of Ministers must publish
a register of administrative structures and their acts which
is defined as "all normative, individual and common
administrative acts." The register must be on the Internet.
In 2002, the regulation was amended to limit the Acts published
to only those relating to exercising government control.(11)
Bulgaria
signed the Aarhus Treaty in 1998 and ratified it in December
2003. A new Environmental
Protection Act was approved in 2002.(12)
The new act provides for less automatic disclosure and more
exemptions than the previous law from 1991.(13)
The
Personal
Data Protection Act, which came into force in January
2002, gives individuals the right to access and correct
information held about them by public and private bodies.(14)
The Commission for the Protection of Personal Data was created
in 2003 to oversee the act. The law was amended in 2004
to include an absolute exemption on individuals accessing
their own records if officials find that it might harm national
security or reveal classified information.(15)
16 June 2004
Bulgaria - The Access to Information Program:
Fighting for Transparency during the Democratic Transition
Changes in the information regime in Bulgaria have been
slow and incremental since the fall of the communists in
1989. But the work of the Access to Information Programme,
an NGO that has been at the forefront of the freedom of
information movement in that country, has succeeded in opening
up what was once one of the most secretive and authoritarian
states in Eastern Europe.
21
JANUARY 2003 BULGARIA:
Dispute Erupts over Andreev Archive
The
Bulgarian online news resource, novinite.com
reports that the Sofia police, on orders of the district
governor, have helped the newly formed State Commission
on Information Security take over the offices of the so-called
Andreev Commission, which was set up after the fall of communism
to look into the dossiers compiled by the communist special
services and expose their collaborators.
Evgeni
Dimitrov, the deputy chairman of the Andreev Commission,
protested the forceful takeover indicating that he had not
been notified about the governor's order and would protest
before the Supreme Administrative Court. The Andreev Commission
was to be dissolved after the government adopted a new law
on classified information in April.
3.
See Gergana Jouleva, Bulgaria- The Access to Information
Programme: Fighting for Transparency During the Democratic
Transition, July 2002. Available at http://www.freedominfo.org/case/bulgaria1.htm
4.
Access to Public Information Act, http://www.aip-bg.org/library/laws/apia.htm.
Amended by Personal Data Protection Act and Protection of
Classified Information Act. See the Access to Information
Programme Homepage for detailed studies and reports on freedom
of information in Bulgaria. http://www.aip-bg.org/index_eng.htm
5.
2004 Annual Report for the Public Administration.
6.
Access to Information Programme, Access to Information
in Bulgaria 2004 Report, 2005.
7.
Law
for the Protection of Classified Information, Prom.
SG. 45/30 Apr 2002, corr. SG. 5/17 Jan 2003. For a review,
see Alexander Kashumov, National Security and the Right
to Information, 2003. Available at http://www.freedominfo.org
12.
See Access to Information Programme, The Current Situation
of the Access to Public Information in Bulgaria 2002; How
to Get Access to Environmental Information - Handbook http://www.aip-bg.org/pdf/env_hndbk_eng.pdf
"Despite
constitutional guarantees for freedom of the press,
the Bulgarian media landscape is plagued by political
control; manipulation of advertising, especially
at local and regional levels; and pressures on
the press from the government, private owners,
and criminal organizations. . . . The Access to
Information Program reported problems with accessing
information, frequent denials, and unanswered
requests, particularly from minorities. The European
Commission alleged that weak legislation is hindering
the independence of the Council of Electronic
Media (CEM), the broadcasting regulatory authority."
"While
freedom of information laws provide for public
access to government information, there were restrictions
to such access in practice. The NGO Access to
Information Program reported approximately 140
cases where government institutions denied access
to information throughout the year."
1)
Voice and Accountability: 0.58
2) Political Instability and Violence: 0.13
3) Government Effectiveness: -0.08
4) Regulatory Burden: 0.60
5) Rule of Law: 0.05
6) Control of Corruption: -0.04
