Freedom of Information (FOI) laws are supposed to be a universal feature of democratic governance. Today, all 27 European Union member states formally grant citizens the right to request government documents and data.
On paper, this right embodies one of democracy’s most basic principles: the state is answerable to the people. Yet across Europe, a strange paradox has emerged. While every country has adopted FOI legislation, almost none can show whether those laws actually work. Europe has Freedom of Information but not the information needed to prove it.
Rights Without Measurement
FOI laws allow citizens, journalists, researchers, and civil society groups to request documents and hold governments accountable. But transparency cannot exist without evidence. Without clear statistics on how many requests are submitted, how many are answered, and how quickly, it is impossible to assess whether governments are complying with their own laws. And that is precisely the problem.
Across the European Union, there is a stark imbalance in how states handle and report on FOI requests. Only a small number publish systematic, nationwide annual statistics. Most provide either fragmented, partial, or nonexistent data. As a result, citizens have little way of knowing whether their legal rights are being meaningfully respected.
The UK
Ironically, the strongest example of FOI accountability in Europe now sits outside the European Union. The United Kingdom recently marked the 20th anniversary of its Freedom of Information Act. Since 2005, the UK government has published detailed quarterly and annual FOI statistics, offering a rare level of transparency about transparency itself.
The numbers are revealing. In 2024 alone, the UK government received 83,000 FOI requests. Only 76 percent were answered on time. In 2023, 81 percent were answered on time. In 2022, the figure was 86 percent. The trend shows a clear decline in performance. Statistics like these matter. They allow the public to evaluate whether FOI rights exist only in theory or function in practice. They also expose weakening accountability, delays that directly hamper journalism, research, and scrutiny of those in power. Without such data, this deterioration would remain invisible.
Ireland
Within the European Union, Ireland comes closest to the British model. Ireland treats FOI rights not merely as a legal entitlement but as a measurable public service. The current Irish FOI Act came into force in 2014, and the Irish Office of the Information Commissioner publishes comprehensive nationwide data.
In 2024, the Irish government processed over 41,000 FOI requests. These statistics are publicly available and track outcomes and performance. The number of requests is growing every year, a sign that citizens actively use the system. Yet across the rest of the EU, this rise is almost impossible to track because most countries lack a single centralized national dataset.
Scandinavia
Sweden and Finland, both with long traditions of openness, do publish quantitative data on FOI requests. However, the reporting occurs at the level of individual ministries and agencies.
The result is fragmentation. Information is scattered across public bodies rather than centralized or categorized nationally, making comparisons difficult and obscuring the bigger picture.
France and Germany
The situation becomes more troubling when looking at the EU’s largest and most influential states. France and Germany, often seen as leaders within the Union, set a poor example.
France’s Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA) publishes annual activity reports. But these reports do not show the total number of FOI requests made nationwide or how many were successfully answered. Instead, they focus primarily on disputes and referrals, statistics that are largely meaningless without the broader context.
Germany’s record is even thinner. Although it has had a federal Freedom of Information Act since 2006, the government has never released a consolidated national report detailing how many FOI requests are received or answered each year. Some individual federal institutions publish their own figures, but the data is selective, incomplete, and inconsistent.
The Rest of the Union
Other EU states follow similar patterns. Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium publish information on complaints or oversight decisions but omit comprehensive nationwide reporting on total FOI requests and response rates.
Across Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, the situation deteriorates further. Public FOI statistics are largely a black hole. Countries such as Poland, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic states all have FOI laws on the books, yet provide minimal to nonexistent nationwide data on how their governments actually perform in handling requests.
In these countries, citizens have legal rights but no way of knowing whether those rights are respected.
Paradox at the Heart of European Transparency
The result is a deep contradiction. FOI rights are widespread across the European Union, yet evidence of their implementation and real-world operation remains inadequate or absent. Without consistent annual national data, it is impossible to assess whether access-to-information rights are improving, stagnating, or quietly eroding through administrative delay and non-compliance. Transparency cannot be assumed; it must be measured.
As debates over accountability, democratic trust, and institutional legitimacy intensify across Europe, this absence of basic FOI statistics becomes increasingly indefensible. The consequences are not abstract. Journalists, researchers, civil society organizations, and policy analysts rely on these mechanisms. Without reliable data, it is difficult to compare performance across institutions or states, identify systemic bottlenecks, detect trends, or determine where reforms are needed.
A right that cannot be tracked is a right that can be ignored. If the European Union truly wants to claim leadership on democratic transparency, it should begin with something simple: count the requests, publish the numbers, and prove that Freedom of Information actually exists.
Umar Rathore
Journalism Student
