240th Anniversary of the first FOI law

A nice little celebratory press release by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media:

OSCE media freedom representative marks 240th anniversary of first access to information law

VIENNA, 1 December 2006 - Marking the 240th anniversary of the world's first freedom of information act, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, encouraged those OSCE participating States which have not yet developed and enforced access to information legislation to speed up this process.

Forty five out of 56 OSCE participating States have adopted national laws giving specific rights to citizens and journalists to obtain information from government bodies.

The first access to information act took effect in the then Kingdom of Sweden and Finland on 2 December 1766. Since then, many democracies worldwide have adopted freedom of information laws and set up transparent principles of classification.

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