Non-admission and requirement of re-elaborating before the right of access to Public information

Abstract

The main aim of this work is to analyse the most controversial questions which have been raised in courts, regarding the causes of non-admission of applications based on the right of access to public information and, specially, the one linked to the necessity of a later re-elaborating action. The legitimacy for the effective invocation of this cause was revised in a groundbraking decision of the spanish Supreme Court, given after a resolution of the Council for Transparency and Good Governance.
From its analysis follows that judicial interpretation assumes the change of model operated by the transparency act, and the ensuing consideration of the right of access to public information as an example of «expansive right», which leads to an unavoidable restrictive interpretation of the causes of non-admission. Regarding to the specific cause based on the need of a re-elaboration action, the accepted criteria settle a due non-admission decision when the applications would force the elaboration of an «ad hoc» report to be granted, notwithstanding the assumption that any grant of the exercise of the right of access requires a minimum processing work, considered as tolerable. It is maybe still soon for positive and categorical assessments about this issue; being necessary more case-law production in order to delimit more clearly the outlines of all the non-admission causes, which are indeed formulated as legal indeterminate concepts.