LATEST - In Brief

The classified information law prevents access to information and it allows any public institution to hide its activity. By means of one single order, any ruler may classify anything and the classification order is itself classified.

Georgiana Iorgulescu, executive manager of the Juridical Resource Center in Romania, comments: "This law is purely Stalinist. I think Romania is the only country in Europe which has still got restricted information as concept. This belongs to the 50s".

Many NGOs sued state institutions that wouldn't obey Law 544/ 2001 on access to public information. Most of the times, information of public nature is obtained in court, but sometimes not even the judges get access to information classified by ministries, even if it is about public funds.

The amount of such classified information is huge. In 2004 and 2005, for instance, the Romanian Interior Ministry classified 265 documents.

Georgiana Iorgulescu thinks the solution would be to keep only the secret of state concept and do away with the "restricted information" one. And she argues: "There must be settled very clear criteria to classify a document as secret of state and decide on the classification years." (...) (D.D.)

Articol disponibil la adresa http://www.ziua.net/display.php?id=240674&data=2008-07-25