Official secrecy: Criticism of the border and veto clause

2023-10-07 00:53:00

With the agreement between the black-green coalition on the abolition of official secrecy, the haggling over the necessary two-thirds majority for implementation has begun. In total, around 250 laws need to be changed. Because the FPÖ rejects the project, the focus is on the SPÖ. Their constitutional spokesman Jörg Leichtfried appeared ready to talk.

He has already registered any requests for changes to the proactive information obligation. According to the current draft, all 1,834 communities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants should be spared this. This would only affect the 259 largest municipalities.

Criticism of this limit also came from experts yesterday. Mathias Huter from the “Freedom of Information Forum” spoke yesterday of a “foul” on citizens of small communities. After all, they would have to “take on their mayor” in order to obtain information that other mayors were obliged to release on their own initiative. The administrative lawyer Peter Bußjäger spoke of discrimination. For the 3.4 million residents of small communities, there is a critical differentiation according to which they “have less right to information than those in the city or in larger communities.” For constitutional lawyer Heinz Mayer, “the worst thing” is that, despite the abolition of official secrecy, “the authority that has the information” is left to decide on a confidentiality obligation.

For Huter there is also a “devil in the details”. In the government’s draft, each federal state can prevent the law from being changed in the future. This is like an “eternity clause”.