Three months ago laws supposed to make the authorities more transparent came into force. In spite of bureaucratic difficulties in implementing the legislative norms, journalists do say that information of public significance has become more accessible

The Mayor of Zaporizhya, Oleksandr Sin has prohibited journalists from attending the weekly meetings with the heads of departments within the City Council. He claims that officials are scared to tell the truth so as not to attract journalists’ attention

The Office of the Verkhovna Rada has refused to provide information about the income of all National Deputies, citing the Law on Personal Data Protection as their grounds. More than two months after the Public Information Act came into effect, public officials are in no hurry to disclose information

Over 50 civic organizations making up the partnership New Citizen have issued an appeal expressing concern over the effective sabotage by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Law on Access to Public Information

STB’s journalist Serhiy Andrushko had tried to find out what the meeting was which had prevented the President from carrying out his promise to allow journalists to visit his residence Mezhyhirya, given at a press conference on 4 June 2010 and to date not kept

Journalists who have long been trying to get the President to reveal his sumptuous residence uggest that the select group of journalists invited were shown far from all that Viktor Yanukovych owns

Media specialists criticize the lack of transparency and accessibility of nformation about media owners and say that the relevant legislation is inadequate.

"“Although Article 6 of the Law on Access to Public Information stipulates that income declarations of National Deputies and members of their families do not constitute information on restricted access, these documents do contain personal data of members of their family and other information which the law has stated is information on restricted access”

The SBU [Security Service] has decided to question another 16 people, all employees of the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the Occupation Regimes “Tyurma na Lonskoho” in Lviv regarding their work with historical documents

NGOs stress the need for important amendments to legislation to enable the Law on Access to Public Information to function as it should. They have put forward draft bills to rectify key problems

Considering that a peaceful gathering timed to coincide with Journalist Day and intended to remind the President of a promise made on television a full year earlier and not kept, was banned by the court, the events were surely of public importance.

On Sunday 5 June, the civic movement Stop Censorship issued a call to journalists to gather at Mezhyhirya to monitor how the court ruling banning their planned peaceful protest action will be implemented

Serhiy Leshchenko writes about President Yanukovych’s promise to show journalists his residence at Mezhyhirya and on the efforts of the local Village Head and a judge to prevent journalists from reminding him a year on that the promise has not been kept

One year after Yanukovych’s promise to show journalists his reportedly sumptuous residence Mezhyhirya came to nothing, a peaceful protest near Mezhyhirya had been planned. On Saturday, the Village Head of Novi Petrivtsi obligingly for a court ban. The court proved equally obliging

The Media Law Institute expresses grave concern over a new and highly dangerous law which could jeopardize freedom of speech and of the media in Ukraine and calls on the President to use his power of veto

All knew that resistance would be fierce... Hennady Kostyukov, Mayor of Kramatorg, has refused to provide a copy of his income declaration to journalists

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine [CVU] have given a negative assessment of the authorities’ readiness to implement the Law on Access to Public Information which came into force on 9 May.

On 19 May 2011 the hearing took place into the law suit lodged by the Media Law Institute against the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada over the lack of response to a formal information request back in September 2010.

The newspaper Segodnya [Today] decided to test how the new Public Information Law which came into effect on 9 May 2011 worked in practice, and on a subject dear to the hearts of those in power and close to the pockets of the Ukrainian taxpayer

17 May saw the first law suit lodged against alleged breach by the head of the Transcarpathian Regional Council of the Law on Access to Public Information which came into force on 9 May 2011