Non-compliance of the Hungarian freedom of information act with international treaties

The impact of the Tromso Convention in Hungary

Abstract

Hungary had ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents (also known as the Tromsø Convention) in 2009, which has entered into force in 2020. The national legislator recodified the regulation on freedom of information in a new act, called Infotv., in 2011. Compliance with the Convention was achieved neither in 2011, nor at the amendment of the Infotv., nor after that the Convention came into force, thus it can be presumed that the Hungarian regulation does not meet the requirements of the Tromsø Convention. Furthermore, the courts at law and the Constitutional Court have been avoiding to scrutinise and compare the rules set out in the Convention with those of the Infotv. This paper aims to compare selected rules of the Convention with the Hungarian norms: In some cases, the Infotv. does not contain specific rules, even though the case law complies with the Convention, in other cases the Hungarian rules have either handicaps, or are in conflict with the Tromsø Convention’s opposite rules on the same subject. The paper also examines the relation of personal data to freedom of information, and states that the regulation on personal data may comply with the Convention, but is not as flexible as it should be, regarding the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The paper concludes that a comprehensive review of the Infotv. is necessary.