Transparency laws in Europe: a comparative study using the right to request public information
In the past decades, most European countries have implemented Freedom of Information Acts or Transparency Laws. However, these pieces of legislation do not guarantee the same rights in all countries. Each European country has its own Transparency law and, in some cases, some regions within one country also have different regional laws. In practice, this means that European citizens do not have an equal right to access information. This is extremely relevant in an area like Europe, in which countries have many financial, social and political ties with one another. Most European citizens share the right to live and work in other states, yet they do not have the same rights when it comes to knowing information about their governments because there is no common transparency legislation. The aim of my research project is to understand the differences between European countries regarding the right to access public information by sending the same information requests to several states and comparing the answers. The results will be published in an essay and shared online to make them available to the public. They will be useful to understand which European countries are more transparent and set good legal standards for others to follow.
