On July 3, RA Administrative Court started hearing the suit of Freedom of Information Center (FOI Center) versus the National Assembly of Armenia.
As we have reported, on November 22, 2012, the FOI Center sent an inquiry to the National Assembly, asking to inform whether the NA Chairman’s decrees are placed on the parliament’s website, www.parliament.am, and to provide the copies of the decrees, adopted in the first 6 months of 2012. Since the NGO did not receive a reply, it re-sent its inquiry on December 5, 2012. In its email, sent on the same day, the NA informed that it needed additional time for answering the request, thus it would provide the information in 30 days. Meanwhile, the NA submitted the information only on March 4, 2013, i.e., three months later. Moreover, the information was not full: according to the FOI Center, copies of twelve decrees of the NA Speaker were missing. On March 7, the FOI Center made another request to the parliament demanding the copies of the missing documents. In its March 18 reply, the National Assembly stated that the documents cannot be provided since they contain personal data about the employees. At the same time, the parliament did not justify sufficiently its refusal. On April 22, the Administrative Court submitted into consideration the suit of FOI Center versus the National Assembly. The plaintiff demanded the Court to hold that its right to receive information was violated and to oblige the parliament to provide the requested 12 copies of the NA Chairman’s decree (see YPC Weekly Newsletter, April 12-18, 2013).
At the July 3 hearings, the Court demanded from the respondent the copies of the twelve decrees (without the confidential personal data) for its consideration.
The next court session will take place on August 7.
