EUR;CoE;EU;CECC;JCCJ;WCCJa) Hungary / b) Constitutional Court / c) / d) 19-07-2013 / e) 21/2013 / f) On the annulment of court decisions concerning the refusal of publication of the report on the Hungarian State Opera’s economic audit / g) Magyar Közlöny (Official Gazette), 57/2012 / h) .
Keywords of the systematic thesaurus:
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Fundamental Rights - Civil and political rights - Right to information.
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Keywords of the alphabetical index:
Public data, right to know / State Opera / Audit, report, preparatory.
Headnotes:
The right to access and disseminate data of public interest is violated when access is refused on the basis that the public data requested was to form the basis of a later decision and the examination of its content was not taken into consideration.
Summary:
I. The editor-in-chief of the transparency website www.atlatszo.hu asked the National Resources Ministry for access to a report by a ministerial commissioner on the audit of the Hungarian State Opera two years ago. Both the ministry and lower courts refused to comply with the request to provide data. The applicant then turned to the Constitutional Court, requesting annulment of the court decisions.
On the basis of the Act on protection of personal data and public access to data of public interest, a request for data was submitted to the Ministry of Human Resources. The applicant requested the publication of the report on the audit of the Hungarian State Opera. The Ministry concerned rejected the request, on the basis of the preparatory nature of the document and because decisions on the Hungarian State Opera had yet to be made.
The applicant took the case to court but it was dismissed. The ordinary courts declared lawful the refusal of a request for publication of the report made by the Ministerial Commissioner on the audit of the Hungarian State Opera.
II. The Constitutional Court reviewed the ordinary court decisions having regard to the right to have access to and to disseminate data of public interest. It noted the more robust protection afforded to these rights by the Fundamental Law, by contrast to the former Constitution. Under Article 39 data relating to public funds and national assets are considered to be data of public interest.
The Constitutional Court noted that the courts should not only have examined the legal title of the refusal of data service but also the content of the reasoning. It held that the right to access and disseminate data of public interest is violated when access is refused for the reason that the public data requested was to form the basis of a later decision and the examination of its content was not taken into consideration.
The Constitutional Court also observed that when the lower courts passed their decisions they did not fulfil these constitutional requirements. It therefore annulled the decisions. It did not state an opinion regarding the final result of the case; the courts which had passed these decisions needed to draw conclusions from this decision in the concrete case.
III. The following Justices attached dissenting opinions to the decision: István Balsai, Egon Dienes-Oehm, Imre Juhász, Barnabás Lenkovics, Béla Pokol, László Salamon, Mária Szívós.
Hungarian.