Special Report: Transparency on a Bumpy Road—Denmark

Koch, Pernille Boye; Gottrup, Rikke; Gøtze, Michael

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76460-3_15

Pernille Boye Koch⁶,
Rikke Gottrup⁷ &
Michael Gøtze⁸

Part of the book series: Governance and Public Management ((GPM))

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Abstract

The Nordic countries are often inherently associated with openness and transparency as far as public administration is concerned. Openness is part of the stereotype Nordic “brand”. The brand is not surprisingly promoted by Danes with a tendency to take credit for being a pioneer within the field of open administration although history does not fully confirm that claim. Actually, the world’s first Freedom of Information Act is the Swedish one. Even when confronted with historical facts, however, Danes continue to claim that Denmark is a frontrunner in the battle against closed doors within the administrative house. In this respect, Danes suffer from not only from an occasional Freudian slip but from recurrent Freudian slips.

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Notes

1.
Justitsministeriet (The Ministry of Justice). (2017). Redegørelse om offentlighedsloven (2017-report on the Danish FOIA), hereafter “the 2017-report”.
2.
Knudsen 2007.
3.
Koch and Knudsen 2014, pp. 57 et seq.
4.
Finansministeriet 2006.
5.
White paper no. 1354/1998.
6.
White paper no. 1537/2013.
7.
White paper no. 1443/2004 and White paper no. 1537/2013.
8.
Koch and Knudsen (2014).
9.
Ibid.
10.
Access to Public Administration Files Act 1970 and White paper no. 1510/2009.
11.
Andersen 2013.
12.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters (Aarhus Convention), 1998.
13.
White paper no. 1510/2009.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Bill no. 90, 2010.
16.
Politisk aftale mellem regeringen, Venstre og Konservative om en ny offentlighedslov, 2012.
17.
Politiken May 2013, Kristeligt Dagblad May 2013 and Jyllands-Posten May 2013.
18.
Danmarks Radio June 2016a.
19.
The Danish Parliamentary Ombudsman 2016.
20.
Danmarks Radio June 2016a.
21.
Danmarks Radio November 2016b.
22.
Cp. Danish FOIA section 7 (1).
23.
Cp. sections 3, 4, 5 and 6.
24.
Op. cit.
25.
Cp. section 9 (1).
26.
Cp. section 9 (2).
27.
Ombudsman Statement from 1991 in case no. 1991-244-512.
28.
Ombudsman Statement from 18 February 2011 in case no. 2010-3082-601.
29.
The 2017-Report, op. cit., p. 228.
30.
In May 2016 the Danish association of the 98 Danish municipalities (Kommunernes Landsforening) recommended in a letter to the Justice Department a change of the Danish FOIA making it possible to reject applications of access to information from people without special interest if the application takes more than ten hours to process and thereby making a justification of a special interest more important when applying for access to information. See 2017 Report op. cit., p. 225.
31.
Ombudsman Statement from 13 July 2016 in case no. 16/00774.
32.
2017-report, op. cit.
33.
Cp. section 40.
34.
Cp. section 15.
35.
Cp. section 17.
36.
Case C-127/08, Balise Metock et al.
37.
The Danish Ombudsman, Annual Report 2008, p. 328 et seq. Our translation of the conclusion on item IV p. 341.
38.
Cp, section 19.
39.
Cp, section 20.
40.
Cp, section 21.
41.
Cp, section 21 (4).
42.
Cp, section 22. This is a new exception, which entered into force with the new Access to Information Act in 2014. See the arguments for this exception White paper no. 1510/2009, p. 443 and p. 486.
43.
Cp, section 23.
44.
Cp, section 24.
45.
Cp, sections 26 (4) and 26 (5).
46.
Cp, section 27.
47.
Cp, section 27 (2).
48.
Cp, sections 28 and 29.
49.
Cp, section 28. In some instances there is also a right to access to finalized internal professional assessments if this information is part of a case concerning a Bill, which has been presented in parliament, or a report, plan of action and so on that has been published; see section 29.
50.
Cp, section 30.
51.
Cp, section 31.
52.
Cp, section 32.
53.
Cp, section 33.
54.
Cp, section 34. There are exceptions to this obligation, for example, if the partial disclosure entails misleading information.
55.
Cp, section 14. The principle of extended openness also applies to cases that are exempted from the right of access to information in accordance with the exemption provisions in sections 19–22; see section 14 (2).
56.
The Danish Ombudsman 2017.
57.
Cp. section 20.
58.
White paper no. 1510/2009.
59.
White paper no. 1510/2009 and Bill no. 144, 2013.
60.
Cp. section 20.
61.
It is not possible, however, to say in how many of these situations rejections would also have been expected under the former Danish FOIA. See the 2017-Report, op.cit., pp. 118–122.
62.
Ombudsman Statement from 27 October 2014 in case no. 14/03573.
63.
In this case: from the Intelligence Service to the department in the Ministry.
64.
Ombudsman Statement from 19 June 2015 in case no. 15/01675.
65.
2017-Report p. 233.
66.
Ombudsman Statement from 27 October 2014 in case no. 14/03573.
67.
Cp. section 36 (2).
68.
2017-Report p. 200.
69.
Bekendtgørelse om betaling for udlevering af dokumenter mv. efter lov om offentlighed i forvaltningen

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Authors and Affiliations

Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Pernille Boye Koch
Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark
Rikke Gottrup
Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Michael Gøtze

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Pernille Boye Koch
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Rikke Gottrup
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Michael Gøtze
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Correspondence to Pernille Boye Koch .

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Editors and Affiliations

Center for Good Governance Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca, Romania
Dacian C. Dragos
Faculty of Administration, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Polonca Kovač
Department of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Public Administration, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Albert T. Marseille

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Koch, P.B., Gottrup, R., Gøtze, M. (2019). Special Report: Transparency on a Bumpy Road—Denmark. In: Dragos, D.C., Kovač, P., Marseille, A.T. (eds) The Laws of Transparency in Action. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76460-3_15

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76460-3_15
Published: 21 July 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76459-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76460-3
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