Court case BA-1S/27/2022 – Court Ruling (Slovakia, 2025)

On 23 October 2021, an individual submitted an access request to the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic under the Slovak Freedom of Information Act (Act No. 211/2000 Coll.; “Freedom of Information Act”). The request concerned documents exchanged in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Shiksaitov v. Slovak Republic (applications nos. 56751/16 and 33762/17). The request covered all submissions made by the Slovak Republic to the ECtHR, all submissions made by the applicant in those proceedings, and all annexes attached to those documents. The Ministry partially granted the request. It disclosed certain government submissions but anonymised parts of the documents. It refused to disclose the applicant’s complaint in full, parts describing the facts of domestic criminal proceedings, file numbers of domestic cases, information relating to the applicant’s financial claims for just satisfaction, and all annexes attached to the government’s submissions. The Ministry relied mainly on Section 11(1)(d) of the Freedom of Information Act (information relating to court decision-making) and Section 9(1) and (2) of the same Act (protection of personality, privacy, and personal data). The requester appealed within the administrative procedure. He argued that the Ministry had misapplied the statutory exceptions, failed to consider partial disclosure, and did not properly explain which legal grounds applied to which parts of the withheld information. The Ministry dismissed the appeal and upheld its original decision. The requester then brought an action before the Administrative Court in Bratislava, seeking annulment of the Ministry’s decisions and a remittal for new proceedings. The Administrative Court in Bratislava annulled the Ministry’s decision and remitted the case for further proceedings. The court held that the Ministry had partly applied the Freedom of Information Act correctly but had committed a legal error in refusing access to the anne