Report from the Scientific Conference “Twenty Years of the Act on Access to Public Information – Summary and Perspectives of the Statutory Regulation of the Right to Public Information”, Warsaw, October 28, 2021

Abstract

The online conference was organized by the Department of Administrative Law of the Institute of Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences to commemorate Professor Teresa Górzyńska, pioneer and promoter of the right to information in Poland, who died in 2013. In the report, the author focused on several fundamental problems arising in the practice of applying the Act of 2001 on access to public information: is there a need for a new act regulating the fundamental principles of the right to information, does the Act of 2001 deserve a positive assessment of how administrative courts interpreted basic concepts contained therein, how to counteract the abuse of the right to information, how the mutual relationship between the right to information and personal data protection has developed, whether the right to information can replace the procedural rights of citizens, whether an additional information access control authority (ombudsman) is needed, should there be a payment for access to information.