What is the meaning of classified information under the Act on the Openness of Government Activities?

According to the Act, all documents received by an authority become in principle public when the authority has received them. This also applies to applications for fuel subsidy. Anyone can request information on applications. An application for fuel subsidy may, however, in addition to public information, contain classified information, which will not be not published or passed on from the authority.

If the applicant considers that there are trade or professional secrets in his/her application (according to the Act on the Openness of Government Activities) § 24 (1) (20)), the applicant may state in his/her application which information (s)he considers to be business secrets, and on what grounds the applicant considers this information to be confidential. In this way, the State Treasury receives information about which information in the application that the applicant himself considers to be trade secrets. According to the law, however, the State Treasury has final decision-making power on the extent to which the document should be classified.

All fuel subsidy decisions are in principle public. If a decision has specified information that the applicant has stated in the application to the State Treasury as trade or business secrets, the decision may also partly contain information that has been stated as classified.

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