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session 10 1949 is something that I've been working on for a very long time I actually got interested in the topic already before the regulation was adopted I was then working on my PhD for almost twenty years ago and then since then this is the theme that has some have been coming back to me over and over again in different sort of roles and formats I have a background as a civil servant in in the Minister of Justice and Finland which basically means that handling information requests is something that I've been doing in a national capacity for many years and I know that it's a very difficult task even when you're dealing with the detailed legislative framework as we have in Finland but also a sort of read relatively strongly anchored tradition of transparency legislation but I've also been involved in managing the 1049 framework for a very long time when I was working in Finland I was the representative of the Finnish government and their working group on information which meant that I've been handling many of the information requests director to the council for many years and also when regulation 1049 was up for review you know there is a sad story of negotiations that lasted for a couple of years and never came to a proper closure I was the Finnish representative in those negotiations so in that sense during that time also saw the dynamics of this issue we will see that this is an area where national traditions very much play in but you also learn to know the many people that work in the institutions and you many of them are extremely good people interested in in promoting transparency and finding solutions that are not only in line with the greater ambitions of this framework that is democratic participation turning administration more legitimate you have all these ambitions than death in the preamble of regulation 1049 but also concerned about finding practical solutions that can be managed and that are not overwhelming on the institution's who need to deal with them on a daily basis during that time I was also involved in quite a few of the court cases that went on during that ten-year period because the Finnish government was quite active in intervening in court litigation that time so I've been involved in in writing many of those pleadings and then since then I've become an academic again as I work as a professor I lead a research group of seven people who looks into transparency in the EU and while doing that research I've done quite a lot of applications again directed to the EU institutions for documents that are relevant for my research for research done by my researchers and that has also turned into a court case which is now before the General Court which is wonderful because of course every EU law academics should have a court case in their own name I have one which is very genuinely produced by by my research against the European Parliament and also a few court cases that are before the European Ombudsman relating to documents that we would have wanted to have for our research but which we didn't get for one reason or another now today the the title that I got it's is broader and when I saw it I was a little bit concerned at first I was thinking whoops because the European Convention is something that we don't actually talk all that much about in the 1049 context we talked far too little about it in the 1049 context so I'm actually very thankful for this invitation to sort of look into the issue from a slightly broader angle and while preparing I actually got so excited about it that I recruited another researcher just to look at the issue of what the European Convention should bring into our understanding she will start next fall so thank you for that idea as well because I saw that in fact there are a lot of issues in there that we haven't properly considered so sort of what I've planned to do now I've been asked to set the scene and that's what I what I hope to do I plan to talk a little bit about the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and then the European Convention on Human Rights the jurisprudence some of the core ideas objectives and standards that come from the European Convention and then come back to regulation 1049 where I see that the implementation of the regulation could and also should be improved where the big problems are and finally I would want to talk about harm because harm in fact is the core concept behind 10:49 and a great deal of foi Freedom of Information legislation in general in the sense that the basic logic usually is that everything is accessible everything should be in the open unless disclosure will result in harm so of course considering that harm and evaluating that harm is where what abate basically everything comes down to and that is made may be where I have some concerns when it comes to current institutional practices especially since we're stuck with with the regulation that is becoming rather outdated which is then filled with with other ways of managing issues instead and not all of these are all ways that transparency minded good and then actually finally I think all of this will then contribute to sort of I won't be able to stay for tomorrow when we have a panel discussion about where things should change but I hope to sort of lay out my own agenda for change where where I see the matters that would need to be addressed this is this framework so basically I think before we start talking about regulation 1049 or access to documents in detail I think it's good to keep in mind that what we're basically talking about is the principle of openness and the principle of openness is not only about access to documents access to documents is extremely important but it has other forms as well we've got access to documents which we find in article 15 and we also find that in the Charter of Fundamental Rights but it's also linked to publicity of procedures so you also need to know how decisions are being taken and that is I think something that is often forgotten that for individuals looking for documents I I know many researchers for example who would be very interested in knowing more that they EU and getting access to documents but it's difficult if you don't understand how the procedures work so it's very much linked to that as well then we've got the question of communication and these are often sort of I think they're often a little bit mixed that there is sometimes a tendency to think that as long as you have a good communication policy you don't need access to documents but these I see as completely different issues of course the institution's should have good communication policies as well but it's different issue from public access and I want to come back to that later and then finally we also have good data management which is also linked to access to documents in the sense that that information needs to be easily obtainable and I think that is an area where the institutions have a great deal of work to do that often you see request for information being denied simply because it seems that the institutions don't necessarily know whether they have the document or not or simply that you see that finding this information is extremely cumbersome for them because they're assistants don't seem to be operating all that well so it's also definitely tied to the question of public access now regulation 1049 it's it's been in force for quite many years already and as I mentioned they've been to Commission proposals attempting to revise this regulation it's partly because there is a great deal of case law on the regulation already many cases brought by individuals by NGOs by researchers and so forth which have developed our understanding of the regulation but also showed where perhaps more specification might be needed another issue there is that we've got a new treaty in force we've got the lisbon treaty which is no longer a new treaty who has already been enforced for quite many years but one of the specific background assumptions of this treaty was making the EU more transparent if you look at any of the political speeches given around the time when the treaty was ratified and approved the issue of transparency was very high on the agenda and there was an assumption that the EU would become more open and there is of course some difficulty there when we have secondary legislation regulation 1049 is older than the treaty and the treaty hasn't or the regulation hasn't been updated to correspond to the new treaty framework so that's another issue which the institutions have then needed to manage in other ways and where in fact the court has done some of the updates especially in the area of legislative transparency and that's something I want to return to later a final point relating to the Lisbon Treaty then of course also relates to the Charter of Fundamental Rights which became legally binding on the inst at the same time and the links that it makes with the European Convention on Human Rights which in fact would also create additional reasons for looking into the legislative framework once more I know that there are many of these issues there are issues that you will come back to in detail during the following two days but I try to make a list of issues that I've found have been particularly contested while they while the regulation has been implemented a key issue relates to legislative transparency there are some issues there that have been challenged before the court access to member state positions in negotiations legal advice has been legal advice given in particular in the context of legislative procedures is something that has come up repeatedly and also the question of space to think how much that should be protected in particular in the legislative context another issue relates to the definition of public interest and public interest is of course it's a it's a core issue in the regulation because when assessing an application the institution's usually would also need to consider whether there is a strong public interest in disclosure there is fairly little in the court's case law on what this public interest in fact means and it has remained largely undefined which makes it quite difficult for individual applicants to in fact refer to this public interest because nobody seems to know what exactly it means apart from linking to the broader objectives of transparency that the regulation builds on the question of data protection and privacy is is a key issue and there you of course immediately see a clash between public access and transparency on the one hand and then the interest of protecting privacy and data protection on the other we have issues relating to in particular investigations and there I think the broader issue or one of the broader issues there is that under 1049 the institutions have in fact needed to deal with a lot of applications that are more closely tied to private interest to individual files cases that individual people have pending or companies have pending for example before the European Commission which in fact are not public interest files in the sense that regulation 1049 understands them these are more cases of access to one's own file people who for example need information about what's in their file for the purposes of defense and the logic there is is slightly different access to one's own file is the right that we find in the Charter but it's a separate right and yet quite often that is the right that is perhaps not properly protected there is no privileged access to one's own file under the individual procedures and therefore many individuals try to get access to their own information through regulation 1049 and make very big requests for information which is something that the court has needed to consider as well and and from that comes an understanding of general presumptions which is something that the court has developed which basically creates areas in India especially in the area of investigations where the institutions can presume that documents will not be made available this is the policy that I I have serious problems with but it's it's exists there and I also see the issue with very large applications coming in that don't necessarily have a public interest dimension as an issue that would need to be tackled somehow one of the big issues also relates to court documents there we have court jurisprudence in the background but there is relatively widespread concern about the lack of access to court pleadings this is an area that has developed in case law and which you will hear more about today then of course regulation 1049 is not the only piece of legislation that deals with access to documents we've got hundreds and hundreds of pieces of secondary legislation that also make reference to 1049 and/or that have general references to professional secrecy for example without necessarily explaining how the two issues are compatible how do you combine issues of professional secrecy with access to documents and since of course new legislation has been adopted this amount of secondary legislation that deals with access to documents questions as well has been increasing and there are elements many pieces of legislation where you in fact see additional elements to 1049 or elements that are not easily combined with what 1049 tells you about access to documents and there we see problems emerging with these different sort of general rules in 1049 and these specific rules included another legislation how they should be put together many national administrations also tackle 1049 issues and I think this is an increasing problem or challenge at least I get many inquiries from national authorities wondering what legislation in fact is applicable you start from a sort of basic assumption that for the EU institutions it's 1049 and therefore administration's it's their own national legislation but that is not quite that explicitly cut and that is the sort of limitation that is is often difficult to manage there are further issues that could be added to this list international relations security for example but I actually didn't put them there even though we've had quite a lot of litigation on those issues as well simply because I feel that in the area of international relations for example jurisprudence has been going to a rather positive direction and I didn't see that very much as a problem anymore it probably is a challenge still but less less relevant to me personally than many of the other issues on this list now why what the Charter be relevant for any of these the obvious answer of course is that the Charter of Fundamental Rights includes an article on public access to documents that's the easy answer it's very much the same as article 15 on the in the treaty on the function of the you anyway but there is an article on that but in addition to that it includes other helpful references that a sort of more Pro transparency minded person could build an interpretation on and I think they're in fact duplicating article 15 is it has more to it than just repeating it simply because it does uplift access to documents to a fundamental right and with that recognition also comes something that is recognized in the final articles of the Charter which is the authorities general obligation to promote the observance of fundamental rights so it's not enough to be passive you actually have a positive obligation to do things that access to documents and I think this is easy easily forgotten that it's not just that you sit still and you wait for citizens to approach you but you in fact have a positive obligation to take measures in order to make this right a reality and then of course in the Charter in the end you will always be familiar with this but there are provisions stressing the equivalence of rights recognized in the Charter and rights recognized in the European Convention on Human Rights but also other international agreements and I think this is an element that we really have not considered seriously and I remember that during those three years or something that we spend on trying to revise regulation 1049 I cannot remember that we would have discussed jurisprudence from the European Court on human rights more than in one occasion there was one element in the regulation where arguments about this rest respect jurisprudence came up and that is the context of discussing privacy and greater protection and I'll come back to that but I think there are issues reaching beyond that where this truth brilliance would be very relevant it is interesting that there are cases that have been pending before the Court of Justice the case of brought by Professor Bessel Inc is one example but also cases relating to day through protection in particular to demikhov cases where arguments about the European Convention and the relevant jurisprudence we're very strongly brought up by the applicants but the court never really sort of took them up and they're they're not incorporated in the court's ruling so in that sense I hope this is something that would become stronger in in the future and I think there are instances here where we can see that the protection that the EU is currently offering I think falls below the standard that the European Convention would in fact require and one element there relates to the whole idea of considering public access in a very strong democratic society dimension and what the democratic society requires from public access in order to be real this reaches beyond the european convention system this is an example from the Human Rights Committee which I also find very interesting because it has this same idea of positive obligation proactive policies it's very clear on the point that states in this case should proactively put in the public domain information and they should make every effort to ensure easy prompt effective and practical access to such information so again the same idea you can't just wait passive you have to go out and make information easily obtainable and be proactive not just about responding to access to documents requests but also making that information available so that in many cases perhaps these applications are not even needed and I think this sort of links with the idea in article 51 of the Charter as well the idea that authorities have a positive obligation to make information available now in the European Convention we don't actually have an article saying public access to documents it wasn't thought of at the time when the Convention was created created but this is an area where we've seen huge developments during the past years and in particular for a year ago when the court addressed a big case brought by there actually two of them but the latter one is the more significant one brought by Hungarian human rights organizations where the court very clearly says we have a right of access to documents emerging in the convention system it's based on some of the articles in the convention itself the articles on receiving and imparting information is there basically freedom of expression and this is the matter that has been the subject of gradual clarification in the convention case law over many years so there is a clear development and now we see the court in fact referring to a right of public access to documents as well and here again very clearly in this case law also in other cases but also here the court again creates an obligation on authorities to say you must you must apply the convention in a way that makes it right makes these rights practical and effective not theoretical and illusory so you also have to be concerned about your implementation practices these rights do not need to exist only on paper that you actually have to be able to gain access to this information based on the legal framework there is a new convention no longer that new eight-years-old convention signed in 2009 under the Common Council of Europe / framework which is now being ratified by States it's now ratified by 8 States and it will enter into force when there are nine ratifications so hopefully soon but quite a few of the EU member states have signed and some of them have already ratified so as of them there will be in fact a convention addressing the public access question specifically and there you can have a look at it it's it's a detailed convention I think there is at least one issue here that I would want to lift up which is the question of public interest because it seems that in this convention there is one fundamental difference with with the current regulation 1049 and that is the the duty to consider public interest in relation to all documents and that that is an issue where I feel that the current regulation is clearly outdated we have a public interest test but it doesn't apply to all the exceptions and I think this is one more indication of sort of of us in the EU needing to to make sure that the public interest test would need to apply to all exceptions irrespective of their substance now I mentioned the one of the new cases one of the Hungarian cases and I know that in a certain in several ways the European Convention system is different from from the logic of 1049 and then of course you have to think about the ways in which or sort of what parts of this could be easily applied in the EU context and since some of these logics are different not everything might be easy to sort of transplant in the context but I think something that is interesting in this case for example is that the Human Rights court sets a sort of four stage threshold criteria for right of access to state held information I think these are useful pointers useful issues to think about when you're responding to to a request the first one relates to the purpose of the information request and there the court says you should think about the sort of the purposes for which it were being made and I think this is this brings me back to the question of public interest privately interest issue which is something that the EU institutions have needed to tackle repeatedly that we get a lot of information requests which in fact are not about public interests but more private interest and and I think this is an issue that would need to be clarified in the legal framework the issue is not I think simply to say you cannot do private interest requests under 1049 simply because in that case there is no avenue for making these requests the the way of addressing this issue is making sure that there is also another new for a private interest requests and that these are appropriately tackled somewhere else but in a way when you're thinking about the logics of 1049 it does have a purpose and that is private interest related information making that publicly available then the court talks about the nature of the information that is being sought and again brings in the public interest test is this something that where disclosure would provide transparency on the manner of conduct of public affairs on matters of interest for society as the whole and allow participation in public governance by the they get large that also I think links partly with the previous question then the court has been relatively big on the role of the applicant and I think this is again something that would be difficult to apply in the EU the court in Strasbourg has often looked into who has been applying and saying that journalists NGOs academic researchers also more recently bloggers and users of social media have a very special function because their watchdogs of the society and have a meet to sort of and have a role in making information available this is would be difficult and in our system which which clearly builds on the idea that anyone can make a request and you don't need to reason it but of course also links with the idea of public interest and freedom of expression and making those grounds more explicit and then the court talks about whether the information is ready and available and I think more the from the point of view that if it is ready and available and then there really is no excuse for not handing it out and this links with the questions of data management because I think often we might face a situation and the EU institutions were where information is not readily available but this could be linked to simply management systems not being all that up-to-date and then of course the question is should this be an excuse that it's not readily available and I think in a way the way I read the courts reasoning is it's not offering this as an excuse but more as the reason to make it available if it's ready and available but I think it's a useful reminder of also the need to make your data management systems up to date and also design them from the point of view that information is also in practice easily available and then again as in all jurisprudence from the human rights court the court applies a test for for looking into whether and interference with rights under the Convention have been justified this is three stage test that everyone familiar with the convention will we'll know but the court looks into whether the restrictions have been prescribed by law whether there are pursued in one or more legitimate aims for example the protection of interests of others that's typical in a for example data protection system that you'd need to do a balancing between the rights of those whose information is being made available and and the public interest in making it available and then finally the court considers whether it would be necessary in a Democratic Society and I actually think the final point is extremely important and something that we should think much more about in the EU what is the function of public access in a democratic society where I think we have a risk of turning slightly too bureaucratic from from time to time and think too much about the interest of the administration and too little about the Democratic aims of the regulation now having said this I'd like to come back to where I feel in particular that the implementation of the regulation could be improved and also should be improved with with all of that in my mind and I think it is obvious that the regulation does build to a certain extend on a different logic and there of course one question is whether this logic is so stasis sustainable whether these differences are justified are there perhaps something that we would need to consider getting rid of when looking at the regulation if it's ever open for review again but that there are elements as I said which would be difficult to apply for example looking at the role of the applicant which is clearly forbidden under the current regulation but there are many still there are many of these general principles that I think would seem applicable in particular the need to evaluate the information for the purposes of public access in democratic society and I think it is in particular here that I feel that the institutions sometimes do fail rather miserably and this also shows in chosen Court jurisprudence in particular in the area of legislative matters then there is the question of public interest which is very strong in in in Strasbourg jurisprudence there are definitely as I said would would see a need to introduce these issue to all exceptions and also do more differentiation between public interest and private interest which would need to be tackled somewhere else outside this regulation there are two instances where I feel that the EU regime in particular falls under false clearly below the European Convention standards and and the the clearest example is the issue of privacy as I said this is something that that the institutions did consider when looking at in the context of revising 1049 and there we basically have a few lead cases from the Court of Justice especially the case of Bavarian lager which creates the system where individuals are required to basically give their contact consent to handing out any of their information and this is something that I doubt that the Strasbourg Court wouldn't would accept because the court does make a clear difference between the sort of private sphere of individuals and there for example there are professional activities there is the very clear case law from the court looking at public figures politicians people look operating in professional roles also celebrities and questions relating to their private life and their public life and there the court has been very clear that public figures should not be able to censor the press for example in the name of privacy and that professional issues relating to their professional activities should be made public and also that these are the type of people if you have a public function if you're a member of the Parliament for example you should be able to foresee that when some information relates to your work your professional activities acts that are related to the use of public funds for example you should be able to assume that that information can become public and there is a public interest in that information there are several relevant EU cases pending that are very interesting in this area there is the the MEP project which looks into the use of MVPs of expenses there is another one relating to commissioners expenses which again I think are very clearly related to their public functions the use of public money where I do not see that privacy or private life is an issue and then again when there is something that is genuinely related to people's private lives for example how they wish to spend their salary it's a private issue and then of course that should be protected but there are elements that we I think our of privacy reaches too far to issues that are not related to privacy at all but public functions that should be publicly available another issue that I've been worried about for many years relates to court documents and that's another area where we see one of these general presumptions that I mentioned earlier basically saying that all court documents relating to pending litigation should be secret and the problem there is that there is really a legal Avenue for making these requests either there is some new case law on this the briar case and you will hear more about that later today but I think this is a very sort of fundamental issue we in democratic societies it's a key principle that you have public free and fair trials and now we have a european court that basically litigates in secret and that is the big issue that the fact that there might sometimes be a public hearing doesn't do away with this problem because most of us will not have a chance to travel to Luxembourg and hear hear these cases and and for this reason I've been looking at the rules of of the European Convention or the European Court on human rights and how it deals with its own litigation documents and it seems that they do apply exactly the same principle of openness that they would apply to everything else the idea there is that everything should be open and then if there is a harm if there is a reason not to disclose everything then you refuse disclosure but the main principle is that these documents should be publicly available and it's a part of the idea of having public a public court public proceedings and public as well and this is something that I would I think certainly would would require work in the EU now as well another issue that has surfaced I think increasingly relates to the Aarhus convention that is an international obligation that the EU has relating to environmental information and making that available and we've got many reports from the Aarhus convention compliance bodies which say that the EU is not up to up to the standards and we're not applying the Aarhus convention correctly so that is an area and that is also an area where you see that the relevant secondary legislation in the year is slightly conflicting as well so it's difficult to manage there is some better case law on this but still is this an issue that would need to be tackled quite urgently and I think definitely services there is an outside body telling us we're not up to the standards another issue that I've been looking at recently relates in particular to agencies because agencies manage huge amounts of information and also huge amounts of public information requests and I think an interesting area that I've been looking at recently relates to all these different procedures of authorisation and approval that the agencies are involved in where individual companies have an obligation to submit information about their products for example for the purposes of receiving an authorization under or an approval from from an EU agency and there of course the issue is that these information these documents that private companies need to produce include vast amounts of commercially extremely sensitive information which obviously not only the big audience but also their competitors are very interested in getting their hands on and and there is a great deal of discussion about this also pending court cases Ombudsman cases on this practice it's an extremely important area of managing risks not only health risks for example but also competitive risks but also an area where we do have great public interests being involved in this information becoming available agencies have tackled this issue in many different ways one of these is is a development that I am concerned about which I see as a sort of new ownership rule which basically indicates that agencies have entered very long discussions with private companies on what they consent on becoming public so in a way these companies have become the actress that decide on public access more or less on behalf of the agencies themselves this is not the way the public access regime should work it's always the institutions is always the agencies who are in charge of making these decisions but this also I think I have understanding where the agency is trying to manage this issue because it's a very hot issue and it's a very big Public Interest issue and I'm obviously I'm not even sure whether this is an issue that the agency should be tackling themselves this is an emerging area that that would need to be looked into and where we do have also conflicting legislation in the sense that the agencies have special rules in their founding regulations which are not always in line with 1049 and also creates questions of how how this should be managed in practice then we have as I mentioned in the beginning questions again on the applicability of EU legislation or a national legislation which I also see as a sort of growing problem in cases of shared management for example in agency's management bodies you very often have national authorities sitting so they they are a part of the decision-making structures of an agency but they are also national authorities and often very uncertain about what rules they should in fact be applying when receiving requests for information should they go for their national rules or are they prohibited from applying national legislation because of the provisions of EU legislation in particular rules of professional secrecy another issue that came up just last week I was asked about databases because there are many EU databases that national authorities in fact have access to and that are they are able to use so would those then need to count as national documents in the sense that these are documents that can be made available by national civil servants yes they are documents and information that are with the knee you agency and it's a database that is maintained by by an EU agency so again a question of definition there where does the sort of limit go between EU law and national law in our case it's always usually a question also of a more restrictive new regime and a more liberal national regime and then of course national authorities being concerned about breaking a year rules of professional secrecy one more big area that I see relates to publicity of procedures and they're an area that I've been writing about quite a lot recently relates to legislative procedures which is an area that the European Ombudsman has been very interested in recently also an area where we see court cases pending the big question there relates to trial eggs and making trial of documents available this is one example of an area that isn't really properly addressed by the legislative framework which we have a Treaty of Lisbon which says that is sort of procedure should be open and then we have a regulation which has sort of relatively open-ended principles but nothing very detailed about the stage of discussions or what areas should be in fact protected so what we see is that we have a great deal of institutional rules we've got rules of procedure interesting inter institutional arrangements made between the institutions on how they wish to apply the rules but the legislative framework as such doesn't really properly address this question and this is an area where I see quite a lot of room for improvement I it's it's it's time to the question of joint register which I think you will talk about tomorrow so I just want to flag that out as an area where I would want to see some progress then a key issue I think to remember is that public access is not about communication there are two separate issues and I think for example with the trial okay issue we're very easily tempted to say we don't need public access as long as we communicate if as long as there is a proper communication policy in place but they're not the same thing and there is a very fundamental difference between the two in the communication policy it's the institution that is in church it's the institution that controls the information and decides when it's made available and how it should be written for the purposes of communication in a public access regime the idea is that it's the citizen that is in charge that citizen decides what information it means what is important and also the idea is that you go for the genuine documents that are not modified for communication purposes but are the real documents that form the basis of discussion and that is a very fundamental difference you cannot replace public access with communication and then the question of good data management and I think this is an area where we really would need to see much much improvement because information in the EU really is not easily available and I know many researchers that simply struggle with the fact that they don't even find the information that would be publicly available because the registers are not working and the Commission for example doesn't even have a comprehensive register where you could find documents the council is much better on this issue but even there you need to know quite a lot about the document in order to find it off and Google does a better trick then then then a formal register and and this is an area we've got some of my own cases pending relating to to documents that I haven't been able able to find this is my final slide and it relates to to the question of Carmen and and this is something that I've been thinking about a great deal when writing during the past month in particular about legislative matters and transparency and for that purpose I did make several requests for documents and I also studied quite in detail the argumentation of institutions when they are responding to individual requests in this area this is the matter that the court has addressed in several leading cases Jericho is one that leads to relates to legal advice and the second one accessing for Europe relates to publicity of member state positions where I think the court has been very clear on saying harm is very difficult to demonstrate in the context of legislative matters but still when when you studied the argumentation and also I've made interviews with with policymakers with people working in the institution there is a great deal of concern about transparency slowing down things and transparency making things making matters work less effectively a feeling that the institution's need to be protected from civil society and the institutions need protection from citizens which are a sort of outside distraction also those saying well if we open up these procedures it would then mean in practice that the Commission proposal will not be approved which I think is a terrible argument to be making a legislative procedure is there for the purpose of debate and looking at different alternatives and I think we're sort of it's a very dangerous road to go down on if we start thinking that citizens are a distraction and institutions need protection from them I do understand that there are legislative files for example that are specifically urgent that you need legislation on on something that needs to be urgently addressed or that you have an instance where for example the court has annulled a piece of legislation that needs to be replaced and then there of course is a need for urgency but I'm not sure whether that is such an overwhelming argument that you can do use that for the adoption of legislative documents overall and of course in individual responses by institutions you see some of the institutional thinking but I think this is relatively widespread and it's the mindset that I'm tremendously worried about I don't know what will be needed to change it but I think it also links with the court's case law from from Strasburg which I talked about earlier the idea of public interest and the idea of democratic society and the idea is that public access has a vastly important role in democratic society that we shouldn't undermine by making arguments that I think in that type of discussion should not be flying thank you [Applause]