The Parliament of Macedonia adopted the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Character in February 2006. NGO activists made some effort to make some quality changes to the proposed law and as a result some essential recommendations were accepted and implemented in the law.
Although three months have past since the adoption of the law, the Commission for protection of the right for free access to information was established only last week. According to the law, the Commission should have been appointed by the Parliament of Macedonia a month after the law was passed. According to government officials, the Commission will become operational from September this year, when the implementation of the law itself must start. It means that citizens can refer to the Commission if they think that their right to have access to information of public character is violated. On 11 May 2006 the Commission had a constitutive session and presented its tasks. In this respect, a lot of activities for raising awareness must be conducted in cooperation with NGOs in order to promote the new institution and support the successful implementation of the law.
The most important task of the Commission is to provide guidance and procedures for a proper implementation of the law. Moreover, the Commission must publish a list of institutions that represent information holders. After that, the holders of public information must appoint an official FOI person in charge of dealing with FOI requests.
Several NGOs are working on the monitoring of the implementation of the FOI law and conduct raising awareness activities. So far, NGOs articulated and sustained activities have had results. Hopefully, their efforts will also speed-up the process of creating an proper environment for an efficient FOI implementation in Macedonia.
EDRi-gram : Freedom of Information Act in Macedonia (18.01.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/macedoniafoia
(Contribution by Bardhyl Jashari, EDRI-member Foundation Metamorphosis - Macedonia)