The Verkhovna Rada has failed to support a draft law which would have obliged high-ranking public officials carrying out State and local self-government functions and members of their family to declare income and expenditure

The Law on Personal Data Protection, passed in June 2010, has come into force and human rights groups continue to warn of its grave consequences for freedom of speech and of access to information

The civic campaign New Citizen, supported by over 30 civic organizations, has issued the following statement about the crucial Law on Access to Public Information which was supposed to be passed this month

Given the number of infringements to the Verkhovna Rada Regulations, the use of one such regulation to potentially stall vital draft laws is less than convincing

The first instance court has rejected historian Hennady Ivanushchenko’s suit seeking to be reinstated in his post as Director of the Sumy Regional State Archive following his dismissal on rather questionable grounds

In stating that historian Ruslan Zabily was in position of documents stamped “secret”, the Head of the Security Service, Valery Khoroshkovsky saw fit to ignore the fact that the Soviet stamp “sekretno” has no relation to Ukraine’s state secrets

The drafts are the result of "political agreements" and Olena Bondarenko from the Party of the Regions is promising that they will be passed by a mjaority in parliament

Well-known historian of Holodomor 1932-1933 and the liberation movement, Hennady Ivanushchenko has been dismissed from his post as Director of the Sumy Regional State Archive on less than convincing grounds.

They call for maximum coverage of the process of amending and supplementing the Tax Code, as well as discussion of the positive and negative impact of the Code’s adoption.

Head of the VRU Committee on Freedom of Speech, Andriy Shevchenko stresses the need before its final reading to improve the inadequate definition of the concept of “false information” and review reinstatement of the authorities’ right to demand compensation for expenses.

After much lobbying and deliberate delays, the resolution is ready for voting. As can be seen, it makes fairly hard-hitting statements regarding concerns over the elections, the role of the Security Services, freedom of speech and others.

Final consideration of the bill was deferred originally for a week to enable negotiations with the Party of the Regions with this clearly a compromise to avoid the law being rejected again

According to its Director, lack of openness regarding financial information leaves civil suits as the only way of teaching officials to respect the public’s right to information

While even access to information about Ukraine’s murkiest elections in 5 years was carefully doctored in Ukraine, several Members of the European Parliament in Brussels were fed a quite different line - literally.

The appeal regarding the draft Law on Access to Public Information asks that the issue of when this vital law will be adopted be raised at the highest level during the EU-Ukraine Summit

According to a statement from the Research Centre of the Liberation Movement, the Sumy regional authorities are putting pressure on the head of the local archives, historian Hennady Ivanushchenko

A government which conceals information about its expenditure and activities; which doctors laws and uses enforcement and regulatory bodies, the courts, etc, to serve its own ends, will not balk at using similar methods against foreign investors.

The President’s Administration has refused to state how much was spent on the celebrations of President Yanukovych’s birthday in July, claiming that this information does not pertain to either the President or his Administration

On the eve of the EU-Ukraine Summit, journalists and civic activists are calling on the European Council to remind the Ukrainian government of its obligation to the Ukrainian public and international organizations

Taras Shevchenko, Director of the Media Law Institute has provided this daming legal analysis of the draft Law “On amendments to some legal acts on ensuring access to public information put forward by two Party of the Regions National Deputies