The Hungarian parliament has voted yes to plans to allow the government and other public authorities to charge a fee for the “human labour costs” of freedom of information (FOI) requests this week, as well as granting sweeping new powers to withhold information. It just needs the signature of President Janos Ader before it becomes law.
The bill, submitted by Minister of Justice László Trócsányi, was published on the government website just days before the vote, on 3 July, precluding any meaningful debate about the proposal. It is widely believed that through this initiative, governing party Fidesz is trying to put a lid on a number of scandals involving wasteful government spending, uncovered through FOI requests.
According to Transparency International, the bill “appears to be a misguided response by the Hungarian government to civil society’s earlier successful use of freedom of information tools to publicly expose government malpractice and questionable public spending”.
One provision of the bill allows public bodies to refuse to make certain data public for 10 years if deemed to have been used in decision-making processes, according to Index award-winning Hungarian investigative news platform Atlatszo.hu. As virtually any piece of information can be used to build public policies upon, this gives the government a powerful argument not to answer FOI requests.
The bill also allows government actors to charge fees for fulfilling FOI request. Until now, government actors could ask for the copying expenses of documents. From now on, they can ask the person filing the request to cover the “human labor costs” of the inquiry.
It is not yet clear how much members of the public will have to pay. “There will be a separate government decree in the future regarding the costs that can be charged for a FOI request,” Tibor Sepsi, a lawyer working for Atlatszo.hu, says.
Because the public has no means to verify whether these costs are well-grounded, and at some government agencies the salaries are known to be very high, the government might be in a discretionary position to ask prohibitive costs for answering the FOI requests, critics of the amendment say.
“The FOI requests usually ask for data that are already available somewhere in electronic format, therefore no government body can say that fulfilling a request involves gathering information,” says Tamás Bodoky, the editor-in-chief of Atlatszo.hu.
“It is unacceptable to plead for extraordinary workload and expenses when much of the requests refer to things that should be published in accordance with transparent pocket rules. This information should be readily available in the settlement of accounts and reports,” he adds.
The work of investigative journalists and watchdog NGOs is further complicated through another provision, regarding copyright. In some cases, the government will be able to refer to copyright issues and only give limited access to certain documents, without making them publicly available.
While the bill will make life harder for those making FOI requests, Sepsi also points out that the situation is not as bad as it may initially seem: “The government will have half a dozen of new ways to reject vexatious FOI requests, but on the implementation level, ordinary courts, the constitutional court or the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Authority will have the power to keep things under reasonable control.”
Nevertheless, Hungarian and international NGOs working for the transparency of public spending and government decisions are protesting against the bill. An open letter, signed by the groups Atlatszo.hu, K-Monitor, Energiaklub Szakpolitikai Intézet and Transparency International Magyarország Alapítvány has been sent to the Minister of Justice Trócsányi, to the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Authority, as well as the MPs whose votes decided the fate of the proposal.
“We believe the government would do the right thing if – instead of rolling back on transparency – it would increase the so-called proactive disclosure, meaning that it would publish the information regarding its functioning in electronic format, without a request. We can provide international examples where this can be achieved simply, without extraordinary costs. This would increase not only the transparency of public spending, but the number of FOI requests would also decrease significantly,” the letter argues.
After the vote, a group of 50 opposition MPs pledged to ask the constitutional court to review the text.
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Hungarian journalist Tamás Bodoky founded the investigative news website Atlatszo.hu to promote a free press in Hungary, a country where journalists and news organisations face recently introduced media taxes, a proposed internet tax for citizens, smear campaigns and police-run office raids. Bodoky has brought together a range of crowd-sourced approaches to empower citizens in the face of this deteriorating situation for human rights, including tools to allow for anonymous reporting of corruption, to help investigate freedom of information requests (and refusals), and MagyarLeaks, a Tor-based whistleblowing service. Last year Atlatszo.hu was put on the government’s NGO blacklist, but Bodoky continues to run the site, as well as workshops to help keep investigative journalism in Hungary alive. He is the recipient of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Digital Activism.
Atlatszo.hu is calling on all those who believe that the independence of journalism in Hungary is under threat. All those who agree that politics and business interests have sunk their claws into everyday life. All those who know that taxpayer money is vanishing. We are calling on you to help us let the world know the truth.
Almost four years ago Atlatszo.hu pledged to tackle the uphill battle represented by these challenges.
As a watchdog NGO for investigative journalism, we set out to promote transparency and freedom of information in Hungary.
Atlatszo.hu – “atlatszo” means transparent in Hungarian – produces investigative reports, accepts information from whistleblowers, files freedom of information requests, and commences freedom of information lawsuits in cases where those requests are refused.
We are only a small group of journalists, lawyers and IT-specialists. But since the beginnings we have won more than 60 percent of FOI lawsuits we initiated. In fact we have been so successful in the courtrooms that in 2013 the governing majority introduced a bill to curtail FOI legislation which was dubbed “Lex Átlátszó” by the Hungarian press.
Looking back to 2011, when Atlatszo.hu was founded, I remember that many journalists dismissed the effort and were quite sure it wouldn’t last. We ignored these critics. We were confident that this was the way to go; to position ourselves outside the mainstream media, and to seek out alternative communication channels — because all of the main journalistic platforms were and still are severely constrained.
In Hungary, domestic journalism has come to represent the interests of local oligarchs. Multinational media firms are busy appeasing the political and economic powers that be. The advertising sector is a powerful censorship instrument – too often used to exert pressure. And every year since we started, the situation has become dramatically worse.
Now, the ruling political elite is pushing out its full arsenal. From business regulation to media control. From forcing personnel changes to diverting media outlets by prescribing countless directions. State funded public media has been reduced to a propaganda tool.
Most recently, the Hungarian government sparked a row over the foreign funding of local NGOs. The row has escalated to the extent that even groups advocating simple environmental concerns, or campaigning against corruption, are now being targeted. The only tangible reason to be found is that the government doesn’t appreciate funding going to any organization it doesn’t fully approve of.
I look at all of this, I look at my country, and I say one simple thing. I say Atlatszo will not be defeated. Hungary can have a fair and just democracy. Yes, it still can be done.
Thank you.
Journalist Tamas Bodoky (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Photographs revealing the identity of police officers can now legally be published in Hungary.
A recent ruling of the Hungarian Constitutional Court means that news organisations can now publish unaltered photographs showing the faces of police officers without gaining prior consent
Since 2007, the Hungarian Judicial System considered the personal privacy of police officers to hold greater importance than them being published in the public interest.
Hungarian journalists regularly masked the faces of the police, or manipulated the image so that the officers could not be identified.
The Constitutional Court ruled that if the photograph is taken in a public place, shows the subject in an unbiased manner, and there is clear public interest involved in distributing the picture, then it can be published without the consent of the officer.
People “working together with foreign intelligence services” have been labelled “traitors” by Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen. The comment comes after news site index.hu published a series of investigations exposing how Ukrainians and Russians are using fraudulent techniques to get Hungarian citizenship, and then travelling in Europe with Hungarian passports. The incident follows a spate of cases of government censorship and intimidation over the past year, tracked by Index on Censorship‘s media freedom mapping project.
Earlier this month, two Hungarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who received money from the Norwegian government under a 20-year-old deal to help strengthen civil society in the poorer parts of Europe, were raided by police officers from the National Bureau of Investigation.
Ökotárs and Demnet are just two NGOs who have recently come under attack in Hungary. A government “blacklist” of the 13 “most wanted” organisations was leaked in May. The total number of groups under investigation is at 58 and growing, and includes human rights and watchdog organisations like the Roma Press Centre, Labrisz Lesbian Association and Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU).
A campaign has been launched by a group of Hungarian volunteers through the site Blacklisted Hungarians, encouraging the international community to show their support for the case on social media by using the hashtag #ListMeToo to share content and media coverage.
In addition to this, rapper László Pityinger, known as Dopeman, is at the centre of an ongoing criminal investigation, after he kicked the detached head of a statue symbolising the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The rapper spoke at a demonstration arranged by political group Szolidaritás last October, during which the audience toppled and decapitated the statue.
He will be represented by HCLU. Dalma Dojcsák, the group’s political liberties program officer and freedom of speech expert, told Index they are trying to convince the police that Pityinger has not committed a crime.
“The police officer conducting the investigation implied that they think the same, but the prosecutors may force the case through the system until it gets to trial. We don’t know if it is going to happen,” Dojcsák said.
“In Hungary, prior, direct censorship is rare — it only happens in public service media that is ruled by the government. However, self-censorship is common among journalists, out of fear of legal procedures and losing state financed advertisement,” she added.
