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General Civic Access (known as “FOIA”)

  • Last update: March 04 2024

General civic access is subject to Article 5, par. 2 of Italian Legislative Decree 33/2013, according to which anyone has the right to request data and documents held by the Ministry which are additional to those subject to mandatory publication, in compliance with the limits relating to the protection of legally relevant public and private interests, pursuant to Article 5 bis of the abovementioned legislative decree.

The request is free of charge, does not have to be justified and may be submitted using the general civic access request form; alternatively, it may be sent:

  1. To the office holding the data and/or documents, the addresses of which can be found in the subsections Office organisation and Telephone and e-mail
  2. To the Office for Relations with the Public via the e-mail addresses FOIA@esteri.it and urp.foia@cert.esteri.it

In the presence of other interested parties, the Administration must notify them of the request. The other party may oppose the disclosure of the data or documents by filing a request for opposition; if the Ministry nevertheless decides to grant the request, they may file a request for reconsideration.

In cases of total or partial refusal or failure to reply, the applicant may submit a request for reconsideration to the Head of Prevention of Corruption and Transparency, through the Office for Relations with the Public and also via the email addresses FOIA@esteri.it and urp.foia@cert.esteri.it. The time limit for deciding on the request for reconsideration is set by the rule at 20 days, unless the refusal or deferral is related to the protection of personal data, in which case the Head of Prevention of Corruption and Transparency takes action after hearing the Data Protection Officer, for which the time limit is increased by a further 10 days.

Against the administration’s decision or, in the event of a request for reconsideration, against that of the Head of Prevention of Corruption and Transparency, the applicant may appeal to the Regional Administrative Court pursuant to Article 116 of the Administrative Process Code referred to in Italian Legislative Decree 104 of 2 July 2010.