The Right to Public Information and Its Abuse – Considerations Based on the Case Law of Administrative Courts

Abstract

Both the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and the Act of 6 September 2001 on Access to Public Information guarantee everyone wide access to any information on public matters, in principle, regardless of the purpose pursued by submitting the application for public information. Under the provisions of this Act, the entity providing public information is entitled to examine the interest of the applicant only in the case of processed public information, i.e. information for the production of which it is necessary to carry out certain activities on the information already held by the authority, i.e. when we are dealing with the preparation of information in a way “specially” for the applicant, according to the assumptions, criteria, etc. provided by him. Case law of administrative courts, however, going beyond the scope of the Act and reaching its axiological assumptions, created the concept of abuse of the right to public information. It has already become permanently present in the practice of applying the Act on Access to Public Information, and in fact boils down to examining the applicant’s intentions despite the lack of an express statutory authorization to do so. The article aims to discuss the concept of abuse of the right to information against the background of constitutional and statutory solutions and to attempt to define it on the basis of real factual situations in which it can be applied. The implementation of this task is supported by the analysis of the case law of administrative courts.