Information Freedom wins in Gripen-case

Following today’s first instance decision of the Capital Court, the Ministry of Economy and Transport is ordered to make public their list of fulfilments approved until 11.09.2008 by the Offset Committee with regard to the Gripen fighter-jets. The Court emphasized, that since public funds - which are of public interest - are involved, the fact that contracting partners are citing business secrets is, by itsself not enough to withhold the information from the public.

Premise:

HCLU’s Legal-aid Service took on representation of Zsófia Gergely, journalist of origo.hu in the lawsuit she initiated against the Ministry of Economy and Transport.
The journalist wanted to find out what compananies’ fulfilments were approved by the Ministry of Economy and Transport with regard to the offsets of the Gripen-acquisition worth approximately 200 billion forints.

Since the Ministry withheld this information, the journalist had to turn to the Court, which ruled that the data has to be made public.

 

Share

Related articles

The HCLU Wins 100 Billion Lawsuit

In September, 2006 the HCLU has sued the Ministry of Finance for denying to make public the information relating to the 100 billion forint deficit in the 2006 budget. Last October the Metropolitan Court has ruled in favor of the HCLU and in it's first instance decision has declared the requested data to be of public-interest.

Read more »

Report on a FOI lawsuit against the Atomic Energy Authority

The HCLU together with seven other environmental and legal defence NGOs sued the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority (HAEA) as it has refused to present data of public interest. The first court hearing was on 25th February 2005.

Read more »

The state, too, can access my phone records?

In its judgement, the Court of Justice of the European Union has declared the Data Retention Directive invalid. Based on the Directive, service providers were keeping phone records and other personal data for 6 months. We have decided to undertake the lengthy process of actually eliminating this European law in Hungary.

Read more »