SUMMARY

A citizen presented a request for access to information addressed to the Presidency of the Government to know the Official means of transport used by the President of the Government in his displacements outside his status as head of the Executive, between January and May 2019, broken down by means and dates.

Presidency of the Government did not respond to the request for access to information

When the complaint was filed, the Council of Transparency and Good Government considered it, arguing that there are several precedents on the matter, all of them estimated, in which it was reasoned that the purpose of the Law is met by providing this information, since it affects the use of public funds, without applying the limits or causes of inadmissibility contemplated in the Transparency Law.

The Presidency of the Government, not agreeing with the resolution of the Transparency Council, filed a contentious-administrative appeal. The judgment in the first instance dismisses the appeal and gives reason to the Council’s resolution.

The ruling considers that the cause of inadmissibility invoked by the State Attorney’s Office does not apply: "We are not therefore dealing with a request for information for the disclosure of which a prior reprocessing action is necessary" as well as that: "It is difficult to understand that the Presidency of the Government lacks information on the private travel of the President of the Government in official air media, whose existence it does not deny, and that it does not know which Administration has it.".

Finally, the judgment also does not assess any damage to national security and public security, limits alleged as a basis for the refusal of information. The sentence says: "the information may not imply any prejudice to the security of the State or to the integrity of the authority that moves taking into account that it is a matter of events that have already occurred, that it is not classified information and, finally, that the movements are public knowledge in most cases given their media coverage".

An appeal against this ruling may be lodged with the National High Court.