Bence Gáspár Tamás, journalist of index.hu requested access to data on investments related to Metro Line 4, including data on direct and indirect effects on employment and information on environmental effects.
He also requested public interest data that is necessary in order to prove that medium-term economic and social benefits are in proportion with the spend funds. The Capitol Municipality refused access to the requested data, therefore the journalist has initiated legal proceedings. The HCLU will take on the legal representation of the journalist at Court on January 31st.
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.
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.
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.