The Commission for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information and the State Administrative Inspectorate HELD a one-day workshop “Right to Administrative Surveillance”, on March 12, at the Club of MPs, in order to prepare changes and amendments to the Law on Free Access to Public Information. Besides the representatives from the Ministry of Justice and the organizers of the event, an active part was taken by the representatives of the General Secretariat of the Government, university professors – expert on the issue, representatives of the non-governmental sector, the OSCE Mission in Macedonia, as well as from the Embassy of Great Britain in Macedonia.
The conclusion of the debate was that it is necessary to precisely define the status of the Commission for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information in order to strengthen its position. By these changes, the Commission would be positioned as an independent organ that would autonomously monitor the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Public Information and will start violation procedures, same as the other regulatory bodies in the country.
It was suggested that the authorizations of the State Administrative Inspectorate should be determined more precisely, as an institution specialized for surveillance.
The Deputy Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Ibrahimi, stressed that the practice showed that is a need for changes and amendments in some legal provisions. Some of the institutions that are still closed for issuing information and efforts are needed to fight these barriers. Part of these institutions did not understand that the transparency is the priority in the work of the state organs, local self government organs and the other public organizations, said Ibrahimi.
The President of the Commission for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information, Janko Nikolovski, said that the administrative surveillance in the execution of the decisions will contribute to elimination of the silence of the information holders – the most often excuse for avoiding the Law on FAPI.
The Director of the State Administrative Inspectorate, Dimitar Georgievski, stressed that the provision in the Law that determines the administrative surveillance is to widely defined.
The Professor Borce Davitkovski said that the State Administrative Inspectorate should in the future contribute to the implementation of the Law on FAPI, especially in the part that concerns the application of the Law of General Administrative Procedure. According to Professor Davitkovski, the changes of the Law must be made all together in order to provide a more efficient protection of the right to free access to public information by the Commission.
