The Parliament Voted a Bill Drafted by the IJC in the First Reading Which Will Facilitate Media Access to Information of Public Interest

The Parliament voted in the first reading the bill nr.47 for amending and supplementing the Law on access to information on Thursday, 28 July , drafted by the experts of the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) and registered as legislative initiative by a group of MPs: Vladimir Hotineanu, Mihaela Spatari, Aliona Gota, Stefan Creanga, Ion Balan and George Mocanu.
 
The bill proposes the optimization of the procedure of registration requests for information in a special Register for accounting. At present, these requests are registered together with the petitions. At the same time, it is stipulated to shorten the deadline for providing official information from public authorities, from " not later than fifteen working days from the date of request registration (established by the current legislation) to at most ten calendar days. The bill's authors also consider that tougher sanctions are necessary for breaching the Law, advocating for amending the article 71 of the Contraventional Code.
 
The DP MP, Raisa Apolischi, chairperson of the Legal Committee for Appointments and Immunities informed the MPs that only two members of this Committee voted for the examination of the bill in the plenary session of the Parliament. The Government didn't support in its notice the idea of establishing a register of applications with information request, motivating that "it would be an expensive proposition". In reply, the MP George Mocanu mentioned that the so-called " expenses" would reduce to the purchase of "a notebook for 10 lei", if it is written registration or " adding a new file in the computer if it is electronic registration".

The provision on the reduction of deadlines of presentation of information for press also aroused contradictory discussions. In Raisa Apolischi's opinion "too short deadlines" could result in disputes. The authors propose the deadlines to differ in the case of providing information for press from those provided for the examination of petitions. The speaker Andrian Candu agreed that " in 30 days that information doesn't matter anymore", if we treat the request for information for press, having the same criteria as for petitions.
 
The bill's authors will need additional arguments in the second reading to convince the MPs that the operative access to information of public interest is an inevitable condition for the development of a democratic society.
 
The campaign "A better law for the journalists, a more informed citizen" is possible thanks to the generous support of the American Nation offered by the USA  Agency for International Development (USAID). The expressed opinions belong to authors and don't necessarily reflect the position of USAID or USA Government.