2023-05-26 06:12:56
Federal, Flemish and local authorities regularly refuse to provide citizens and businesses with administrative documents that are legally public. This is what De Tijd and Apache report this Friday, following an investigation carried out in collaboration with Le Monde, Follow The Money and Die Welt. In the vast majority of cases, the regulatory bodies seized by the complainants agree with them when the latter challenge a government decision.
For 30 years, the publicity of the administration has been enshrined in the Belgian Constitution. Therefore, government documents are normally available for consultation. Publicity is the norm, secrecy the exception. A government can, however, deny a request from a citizen or business, but only when a person’s privacy is at stake or a file is incomplete.
De Tijd and Apache examined 330 opinions and decisions of the competent regulatory authorities at the federal and Flemish levels and found that these rules were violated.
Administrations at fault in 80% of cases
At the federal level, a third of the complaints concerned the tax administration, alongside 29 other offenders such as the FPS Justice and the SNCB. There “Commission for access to and reuse of administrative documents”, which is only empowered to issue opinions, proved the administrations wrong in 80% of cases. Often, their justifications were not concrete enough.
At the Flemish level, half of the complainants always have access to information, sometimes even before the competent authority takes a decision. Appeals to the Conseil d’État are successful for the plaintiffs in half of the cases. Local governments also seem to overlook requests or use the privacy argument too quickly due to a lack of administrative power.
Finally, the federal ministers also gave 9 times out of 10 too limited access to the files. Those of the Council of Ministers will however be actively made public in the coming months, assured Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open Vld) in a reaction.
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