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The Council for Transparency and Good Governance has ordered the Ministry of Health to make known the names of the committee of experts referred to by the director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, Fernando Simón, as in charge of advising the Government on the management of the coronavirus pandemic, considering that the right to data protection is not violated and, on the contrary, it favors the control of public activity by citizens in "relevant decisions", according to the resolution to which Europe had access Press.

With this decision, the Transparency Council has positioned itself in favor of a lawyer who on May 6, the day Simón refused at a press conference to make the composition of the expert committee public, asked the Ministry of Health to report on the number of people who made it up and identify them with names and surnames.

Specifically, the Council has given a period of 10 days to the Ministry headed by Salvador Illa to forward this information to the lawyer, a decision that puts an end to the administrative procedure, but that can be appealed during the following two months before the central courts of the contentious-administrative of Madrid.

The Transparency Council has rejected the argument made by the General Directorate of Public Health to withhold said information by stating that the fact that the names, surnames and number of experts who have performed functions within the framework of the management are made public of the pandemic does not violate the right to the protection of personal data.

"Not only does it not threaten the personal data of those affected, but it also contributes to the control of public activity and that citizens know the process of making relevant decisions regarding public health, especially in extraordinary situations, such as that produced by the Covid-19 pandemic ", has maintained the Transparency Council in its resolution.

They are not "senior or managerial staff"

The General Directorate of Public Health, in a letter dated September 29, denied this information to the lawyer "for reasons of data protection", alleging that the members of the expert committee are "public personnel who are not considered to be high-ranking officials. nor management personnel ".

It was then that the lawyer went to the Transparency Council to force the Ministry of Health to hand over this information.

"The truth is that if the list of experts is not provided to me or to the Transparency Council, we will never know if what is indicated to me by the claimed entity is true," he said.

In addition, the lawyer argued that "it is certainly surreal to maintain that the members of an expert committee are not formally senior positions or managers (...), because in good logic and at a practical and real level they are people who occupy a prominent position, of consultation and decision, in a pandemic whose information is of public relevance ".

The Transparency Council has answered that it does not consider applicable "the limit of data protection invoked by the Administration" because being "merely identifying data related to the organization, operation or public activity of the required body", the Ministry of Health , "the right of access to public information prevails."

"All information belongs to the citizen"

In this regard, he has cited a 2017 ruling of the Madrid contentious-administrative courts to highlight that the right to information is not only "essential" in democracy, but that "public administrations are financed with funds from the taxpayers and their main mission is to serve citizens, so all the information they generate and possess belongs to the citizen ".

The Transparency Council has also wanted to point out that "reporting on the number of experts cannot be considered contrary to that right (to the protection of personal data), as it is a mere numerical data without identification of any natural person", and that it is irrelevant whether or not the experts hold a senior position.

He has also criticized the fact that the Ministry of Health was delaying the legally established deadlines to answer the lawyer, since the answer did not arrive until September 29 and the request was made on May 6, and that it did not make allegations before the Council of Transparency.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

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