Law No. 241 of 7 August 1990
Chapter V Access to administrative documents
Article 22
1. To provide for transparency in administrative activity and encourage impartiality in its performance, any person who has an interest to safeguard in legally relevant situations shall have the right of access to administrative documents according to the procedures laid down by the present law.
2. An administrative document is considered to be any graphic, photographic, cinematic, electromagnetic or other representation of the contents of acts, including internal acts, produced by public administrations or used for purposes of administrative activity.
3. Within six months from the entry into effect of the present law, the government departments affected shall adopt suitable organizational measures to ensure the application of the provision referred to in paragraph 1, notifying the Committee referred to in Article 27.
Article 23
1. The right of access referred to in Article 22 applies with respect to the administrative bodies of the state, including special and autonomous bodies, public entities and the providers of public services, as well as guarantee and supervisory authorities.
Article 24
1. Right of access is denied for documents covered by State secrecy pursuant to Article 12 of Law 801 of 24 October 1977 and in the cases of secrecy or prohibition of divulgement otherwise envisaged by law.
2. The Government is authorized to issue, pursuant to Article 17.2 of Law 400 of 23 August 1988, within six months of the date of entry into force of the present law, one or more decrees governing the procedures for exercise of the right of access and the other cases of denial of right of access, considering the need to safeguard:
a) security, national defense and international relations;
b) monetary and foreign exchange policy;
c) public order, prevention and repression of crime;
d) the privacy of third parties, persons, groups and enterprises, assuring among other things that the persons affected can inspect the acts involving administrative proceedings knowledge of which is necessary to advance or defend their legal interests.
3. The decrees referred to in paragraph 2 shall further establish particular regulations to ensure that access to data gathered via computerized instruments shall take place in observance of the needs referred to in paragraph 2.
4. The individual administration shall be required to identify, in one or more rules to be issued within the following six months, the categories of documents produced by them or in any case in their possession that shall be precluded from access owing to the needs set forth in paragraph 2.
5. This shall be without prejudice to the provisions of Article 9 of Law 121 of 1 April 1981 as amended by Article 26 of Law 668 of 10 October 1986 and their implementing rules, or to any other provisions now in force that limit access to administrative documents.
6. The bodies indicated in Article 23 shall be entitled to postpone access to the documents requested as long as the knowledge thereof can prevent or severely impede the performance of administrative action. In any event access to acts preparatory to the formation of the provisions referred to in Article 13 shall not be permitted, save any laws providing otherwise.
Article 25
1. The right of access shall be exercised by examination and extraction of a copy of the administrative documents, in the way and with the limitations indicated in the present law. Examination of the documents is free of charge. Provision of a copy is subject only to repayment of the cost of reproduction, save for provisions in force concerning stamp duties and commissions for search and inspection.
2. Requests for access to documents must be motivated. They must be addressed to the administrative body that produced the document or that is in permanent possession thereof.
3. Refusal, postponement and limitation of access shall be allowable in the cases and subject to the limitations laid down in Article 24 and they must be motivated.
4. Once thirty days have passed since a request for access with no response, it is considered that the request has been refused.
5. Appeals against administrative decisions concerning right of access and in the cases envisaged in paragraph 4 can be made, within thirty days, to the regional administrative court, which shall decide in camera within thirty days from the expiry of the deadline for submission of the appeal, after hearing the attorneys of the parties who have so requested. The court' s ruling can be appealed, within thirty days of its notification, to the Council of State, which shall decide by the same procedures and with the same deadlines.
6. In case of total or partial acceptance of the appeal the administrative court, where the conditions exist, shall order the documents requested to be made available for examination.
Article 26
1. Without prejudice to the provisions concerning publication in the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana set forth in Law 839 of 11 December 1984 and its implementing rules, the directives, programs, instructions, circulars and all acts in general that make rules concerning the organization, the functions, the objectives, or the purposes of a public administrative body or in which an interpretation of legal norms is laid down or provisions for their application are dictated shall be published by the procedures envisaged in the individual regulations.
2. The annual reports of the Committee referred to in Article 27 shall also be published in the aforementioned forms, and in general the greatest possible publicity shall be given to all provisions for the implementation of the present law and to all initiatives designed to specify the right of access and make it effective.
3. With the publication referred to in paragraph 1, if such publication is complete, freedom of access to the documents indicated in paragraph 1 is considered to have been provided.
Article 27
1. A Committee on Access to Administrative Documents shall be instituted under the Office of the Prime Minister.
2. The Committee shall be appointed by decree of the President of the Republic at the proposal of the Prime Minister, after consulting the Council of Ministers. It shall be chaired by the Undersecretary of State for the Office of the Prime Minister and shall be composed of sixteen members; two of them shall be Senators and two of whom shall be Deputies designated by the Presidents of their respective Houses, four shall be chosen from among the personnel referred to in Law 97 of 2 April 1979 and designated by their respective self-government bodies, four chosen from among tenured professors in administrative law disciplines and four from among State and other public body managers.
3. The Committee shall be renewed every three years. New Parliamentary members shall be named when in the course of the three years the legislature expires or Parliament is dissolved early.
4. The costs for the functioning of the Committee shall be defrayed by the budget of the Office of the Prime Minister.
5. The Committee shall take care that the principle of full public knowledge of the activity of the public administration is put into practice, in observance of the limitations set forth in the present law; it shall draft an annual report on the transparency of the activity of the public administration, which it shall communicate to the Houses of Parliament and to the Prime Minister; it shall propose to the Government amendments to legislative and regulatory texts useful to achieve the broadest possible guarantee of the right of access referred to in Article 22.
6. All administrative bodies are required to communicate to the Committee, by a deadline set by the Committee itself, the information and documents it requests, with the exception of those subject to State secrecy.
7. In case of protracted failure to comply with the requirement referred to in Article 18.1, the measures envisaged therein shall be adopted by the Committee referred to in the present article.
Article 28 (1)
(1) Replaces Article 15 of Presidential Decree 3 of 10 January 1957.
Chapter VI Final Provisions
Article 29
1. The ordinary statute regions shall govern the matters disciplined by the present law in observance of the principles deducible from its provisions, which constitute general principles of the legal order. These provisions shall be directly effective with respect to the regions until the latter have produced laws of their own in this matter.
2. Within one year from the entry into force of the present law, the special statute regions and the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano shall adapt their legal orders to the fundamental rules laid down in the law.
Article 30
1. In all cases in which the laws and regulations call for notarial acts or attestations otherwise defined testified to by witnesses, the number of witnesses shall be reduced to two.
2. Public administrative bodies and enterprises performing publicly necessary services are hereby prohibited from requiring notarial acts in lieu of the substitutive declaration provided for in Article 4 of Law 15 of 4 January 1968 when it is a matter of demonstrating personal qualities, states or facts of which the person concerned has direct knowledge.
Article 31
1. The rules on right of access to administrative documents referred to in Chapter V shall take effect on the date of entry into force of the decrees referred to in Article 24.