Article
61 of the Constitution
provides for the right to information and mandates that
Parliament enact a law setting out this right.(1)
(1)
A citizen shall have the right to obtain information on
the activities of organs of public authority as well as
persons discharging public functions. Such right shall
also include receipt of information on the activities
of self-governing economic or professional organs and
other persons or organizational units relating to the
field in which they perform the duties of public authorities
and manage communal assets or property of the State Treasury.
(2) The right to obtain information shall ensure access
to documents and entry to sittings of collective organs
of public authority formed by universal elections, with
the opportunity to make sound and visual recordings.
(3) Limitations upon the rights referred to in Paragraphs
(1) and (2), may be imposed by statute solely to protect
freedoms and rights of other persons and economic subjects,
public order, security or important economic interests
of the State.
The
Act allows anyone to demand access to public information,
public data and public assets held by public bodies, private
bodies that exercise public tasks, trade unions and political
parties. The requests can be oral or written. The bodies
must respond within 14 days.
The
law sets out categories of public information including
internal and foreign policy, information relating to the
structure of legal entities, operational activities of public
organizations, public data such as official documents and
positions, and public assets. There are exemptions for state
secrets and confidential information as protected by a law,
personal privacy and business secrets.
Appeals
of denials of access are made under the Code of Administrative
Procedure initially internally and then to a court. The
Office
of the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection (Ombudsman)
has also been active in promoting the law as a means for
improving legal structures.(3) The Ombudsman
called for greater transparency in his 2004 report, stating
that it should be given priority over the privacy of public
officials.
The
real heart of the Act is the duties placed on public bodies
to publish information about their policies, draft legislation,
legal organization, principles of operation, contents of
administrative acts and decisions, and public assets. The
law requires that each create a Public Information Bulletin
to allow access to information via computer networks.(4)
Collecting public authorities are required to hold open
meetings and create minutes or recordings of the meetings.
Poland enacted the Classified
Information Protection Act in January 1999 as a condition
for entering NATO.(5) The Act covers classified
information or information collected by government agencies
the disclosure of which "might damage interests of
the state, public interests, or lawfully protected interests
of citizens or of an organization." The Act creates
two categories - state secrets and public service secrets.
State secrets can be designated as Top Secret or Secret,
public service secrets can be designated as confidential
or restricted. Most state secrets shall be classified for
fifty years while some information relating to spies and
informants and information from other states can be classified
for an unlimited time. Confidential information is classified
for five years while restricted can be classified for two
years. A student from Warsaw Technical University was arrested
in April 2004 after he discovered that 12 used hard drives
that he had bought contained secret information from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and sold the drives to newspaper
NIE, which published information on the foreign minister
and excerpts of meetings.(6) In January
2006, Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski announced that
the government was going to declassify all remaining files
of the Warsaw Pact.(7)
A
law creating a National
Remembrance Institute (IPN) to allow victims of the
communist-era secret police access to records was approved
by Parliament in October 1998.(8) President
Aleksander Kwasniewski vetoed the law, saying that it should
allow all Poles, not just the victims, to access the records
but his veto was overridden and he later signed the law.(9)
The IPN took control of all archives of the communist-era
security service and those of courts, prosecutors' offices,
the former Communist Party and other institutions. Since
February 2001, Polish citizens have been allowed to see
their personal files compiled by communist authorities before
1989.(10) Around 14,000 people have made
inquiries. In February 2005, journalist Bronislaw Wildstein
published a list of 240,000 names of agents, informers,
and victims (but not identifying who belongs in which category)
from the IPN on the Internet.(11) The
list reportedly has became the most popular search on the
Polish Internet.
The
Screening Act, which allows a special commission to examine
the records of government officials who might have collaborated
with the secret police, was approved in June 1997, but its
implementation was delayed until November 1998, when the
Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the Act was constitutional
except for two provisions. There have been some allegations
that the information is used politically.(12)
Poland
signed the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information in
June 1998 and ratified it in February 2002. The Law on the
Protection of the Environment allows for access to information.(13)
"Public
access to government information is provided for
in the Constitution and in the Law on Access to
Public Information; and in practice, the Government
provided such access for citizens and non-citizens,
including foreign media. Refusals of requests
for information must be based on exceptions provided
in the law related to government secrets, personal
privacy restrictions and propriety business data.
Refusals may be appealed."
1)
Voice and Accountability: 1.13
2) Political Instability and Violence: 0.35
3) Government Effectiveness: 0.47
4) Regulatory Burden: 0.64
5) Rule of Law: 0.51
6) Control of Corruption: 0.16
