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Law No. 299 Of 25 November 2015 For The Modification And Completion Of The Law #. 109/2007 For The Re-Use Of Information From Public Institutions

Original Language Title: LEGE nr. 299 din 25 noiembrie 2015 pentru modificarea şi completarea Legii nr. 109/2007 privind reutilizarea informaţiilor din instituţiile publice

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LEGE no. 299 299 of 25 November 2015 to amend and supplement Law no. 109/2007 on the re-use of public institutions information
ISSUER PARLIAMENT
Published in OFFICIAL MONITOR no. 898 898 of 3 December 2015



The Romanian Parliament adopts this law + Article I Law no. 109/2007 on the reuse of information from public institutions, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 300 of 5 May 2007, as amended, shall be amended and supplemented as follows: 1. Article 1 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 1. -The purpose of this law is to regulate the conditions of publication and reuse of existing information in public institutions, including in order to create new information products and services. " 2. Article 2 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 2. -(1) This law regulates the legal framework of the reuse of documents in the possession of public institutions that the latter have created within their own public activity and which may subsequently be used for commercial purposes or non-commercial. (2) The provisions of this law are without prejudice to provisions Law no. 677/2001 for the protection of persons with regard to the processing of personal data and the free movement of such data, with subsequent amendments and completions. " 3. in Article 3, points a) and c)-f) shall be amended and shall read as follows: "" a) the documents whose making available constitutes an activity which exceeds the activity of the public service of the institutions concerned, as defined by law, provided that the activity of the public sector is transparent and be able to be the subject of an appeal; ........................................................................... c) the documents art. 12 12 para. ((1) of Law no. 544/2001 on free access to information of public interest, with subsequent amendments and completions, as well as documents to which public access is excluded or restricted, according to the law, including for reasons concerning the personal nature of the data and parts of documents accessible under those regimes containing personal data whose reuse has been defined by law as incompatible with the laws on the protection of individuals with regard to processing of personal data, as well as for reasons related to the confidentiality and protection of statistical data, defined by law, as well as those relating to trade secret; d) documents held by public service broadcasters and their subsidiaries, as well as by other bodies and their subsidiaries which perform public broadcasting and television broadcasting services, to the extent that it is brought intellectual property rights; e) with the exception of university libraries, documents held by educational and research institutions, such as, but not limited to schools, universities and research institutes, centres or research and development resorts, including organisations established for the transfer of research results to the extent that intellectual property rights are affected; f) documents held by cultural institutions, other than museums, libraries and archives; " 4. In Article 3, after letter g), three new letters, letters h)-j) are inserted, with the following contents: " h) documents to which access is expressly restricted under the law, including cases where citizens or businesses must provide proof of special interest in obtaining access to documents; i) parts of documents containing only logos, moods and insignia; j) the documents resulting from the activity of the State Treasury units related to the operations ordered by their clients, except in cases where the documents are requested by public entities for the scope of their tasks public. " 5. In Article 4, point 3 of letter a) and letter b) shall be amended and shall read as follows: "" 3. any legal person other than those referred to in point 1 or 2, which was established to carry out activities of public interest without an industrial or commercial character and which are at least in one of the following situations: is financed in a majority proportion of public funds, is in subordinated or under the control of a public institution referred to in 1 1 and 2 or at least half of the members of the board of directors, the management or supervisory body shall be appointed by such a public institution; b) document-any information content or any part of such content, regardless of the form of data storage; " 6. In Article 4, after letter e), seven new letters, letters f)-l) are inserted, with the following contents: "" f) machine-readable format-a structured file format so as to enable software applications to identify, recognize and easily extract specific data, including individual statements of fact and their internal structure; g) open format-a file format that is independent of the platforms used and which is available to the public, without any restriction likely to prevent the reuse of the documents in question; h) formal open standard-a standard which has been established in writing and which contains specifications on the requirements as to how to ensure the interoperability of information systems; i) university-any institution in the public sector that organizes higher education, according to the provisions art. 114 of the National Education Law no. 1/2011 , with subsequent amendments and completions, at whose graduation university degrees are awarded; j) personal data-the data defined in art. 3 lit. a) of Law no. 677/2001 , with subsequent amendments and completions; k) marginal cost-the directly related cost and generated strictly by the collection, preparation, reproduction, making available and dissemination of documents for reuse; l) trade secret-any information that, in whole or in part, is not generally known or is not easily accessible to people in the environment who ordinarily deal with this kind of information and who acquires a commercial value by the fact that is secret, for which the legitimate holder has taken reasonable steps taking into account the circumstances, in order to be kept in secret mode; the protection of trade secret operates as long as the previously stated conditions are met in a manner cumulatively. " 7. In Article 5, after paragraph 2, four new paragraphs are inserted, paragraphs 3 to 6, with the following contents: "" (3) Where the documents are reused by a public institution for its commercial activities outside the scope of its public charge, for the provision of the documents necessary for the activities in question shall apply the same fees and conditions as valid for other users. (. Public institutions may permit unconditional reuse or may impose, where appropriate, a number of conditions. (5) The conditions in question must not necessarily limit the possibilities of reuse and should not be used to restrict competition. (6) In the case of documents on which libraries, including university libraries, museums and archives hold intellectual property rights, if the reuse of this type of documents is permitted, they are reusable for purposes commercial or non-commercial, in accordance with the requirements established by this Law and in compliance with the legislation on intellectual property. " 8. In Article 6, paragraphs 1 and 2 shall be amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 6. --(1) The requests for reuse of documents are made in writing, either on paper or in electronic form. Requests shall include the following elements: a) the public institution to which the application is addressed; b) the information requested so as to allow the public institution to identify the documents c) the identification and authentication data of the applicant, as well as the address to which the response is requested; d) the purpose in which the required information will be used. (2) The settlement of applications for the reuse of documents shall be made within 20 working days from their receipt by the public institution, through the public relations department designated for this purpose. " 9. In Article 6, after paragraph 9, two new paragraphs are inserted, paragraphs 10 and 11, with the following contents: " (10) Applicants may specify in the request the support and format in which they wish the documents. (11) The request may also refer strictly to the right of reuse of information already in the possession of the applicant or available in the public space, in which case the applicant may state that he does not wish to receive a copy of the documents in cause. " 10. Article 7 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 7. --(1) In so far as public institutions approve the reuse of the documents they hold, they are made available to the applicant, in any pre-existing format or in any language available and, if possible and appropriate, in formats automatically open and machinable, together with their metadata, which is information about the data contained in the document. Both formats and metadata should, as far as possible, comply with formal open standards. (2) Public institutions are not obliged to create, adapt documents or provide extracts from documents, if this would require disproportionate costs, which exceed the scale of a simple operation. (3) Public institutions are not obliged to continue the production and storage of a certain type of documents, with a view to their reuse by a private or public sector organisation. " 11. Article 8 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 8. -(1) Where charges are levied for the reuse of the information, the respective charges shall be limited to the marginal cost associated with the provision of These costs are borne by the applicant, under the law. The income collected from the payment of these services is made to the budget of the institution that offered the data for reuse or, as the case may be, to the state budget, if the institution cannot have its own (2) Provisions of para. ((1) shall not apply: a) public institutions obliged to generate revenue to cover a significant part of the costs related to the performance of their public service activity; b) by way of exception, the documents for which the public institution in question is obliged to generate income to cover a significant part of the costs related to the collection, preparation, reproduction and dissemination of them, under the law; c) libraries, including university libraries, museums and archives. (3) If the public institutions referred to in par. ((2) lit. c) impose taxes, the total income obtained by making documents available and the authorization of their reuse in the corresponding accounting period does not exceed the cost of collection, preparation, reproduction, dissemination, preservation and obtaining authorization to use rights protected by rights, plus a profit that will not be more than 5% above the reference interest rate of the National Bank of Romania. (4) The fees provided in par. ((3) shall be established and calculated in accordance with the accounting principles applicable to the public institutions concerned, under conditions of transparency. " 12. Article 9 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 9. -(1) Public institutions must ensure conditions for facilitating access to documents available through the publication of available document lists and the designation of persons responsible for their access and reuse. (2) In order to facilitate access and search for documents provided in electronic and machinable format automatically, under the conditions of art. 7, public institutions must publish the documents provided in par. (1) and on the government data portal open-data.gov.ro-, together with the relevant metadata, in compliance with its rules of use. (3) As far as possible, public institutions shall facilitate access and search in several languages of documents. (4) The documents provided in par. ((1) may be uploaded by public institutions and on the website of the institution or on portal sites with links to the data lists, while indicating information points. " 13. After Article 9 a new article is inserted, Article 9 ^ 1, with the following contents: "" Art. 9 9 ^ 1. --(1) In the case of fees for the reuse of documents held by public institutions, any applicable condition and the actual amount of those fees, including the basis for calculating these fees are predetermined and published by electronic means whenever possible and appropriate, including on the website of the institution. (2) In the case of other fees for reuse than those provided in par. ((1), the public institution concerned shall indicate in advance the factors which are taken into account in the calculation of the duties in question. On request, the public institution concerned shall also indicate how such charges were calculated in relation to that request for reuse. (3) The requirements provided in art. 8 8 para. ((3) and (4) are predetermined. They shall be published by electronic means whenever possible and appropriate, including on the website of the institution. ((. Public institutions shall ensure that persons addressing requests for reuse of documents are informed of the remedies available for decisions or practices concerning them. " 14. Article 10 is amended and shall read as follows: "" Art. 10. --(1) The reuse of documents must be free for all natural and legal persons, even if they already exploit new products on the market obtained on the basis of these documents. Contracts or other agreements concluded between public institutions holding documents and third parties shall not provide exclusive rights. ((2) The reuse of information from public institutions may be subject to an agreement on the granting of an exclusive right only if such a right is necessary for the conduct of a public service. The validity of the reason for which the exclusive right has been granted is periodically re-examined and, in any case, every 3 years, the granting of this right cannot, by cumulation, exceed the maximum range of 10 years. (3) Exclusive agreements concluded under the conditions of par. (2), must be transparent and made public by any means, as well as on the website of the public institution concerned. ((. Without prejudice to paragraph 1. ((1), where an exclusive right concerns the digitisation of cultural resources in the public sector, the period of exclusivity shall not exceed 10 years. Where that period exceeds 10 years, the duration of that period shall be reviewed during the 11th year and thereafter, if applicable, every 7 years. (5) The agreements establishing the exclusive rights referred to in par. (4) shall be transparent and shall be made public. (6) If there is an exclusive right referred to in par. ((4), the public institution concerned shall receive, free of charge, as part of those agreements, a copy of the digitised cultural resources. That copy shall be available for reuse upon expiry of the exclusivity period. ' 15. After Article 11, a new Article shall be inserted, Article 12, with the following contents: "" Art. 12. -(1) Every 3 years, the Ministry of Communications and the Information Society shall submit to the European Commission a report on public sector information available for reuse, the conditions under which they are made available. that information and practices in relation to remedies. On the basis of that report, which is made public, public institutions shall undertake a review, as regards the application of art. 8, especially regarding the imposition of taxes above the marginal cost; before the presentation to the European Commission, the report will be sent for information to the specialized committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. (2) In order to elaborate the report referred to in paragraph (1), public sector institutions have the obligation to submit annually to the Ministry for Information Society the information requested. " + Article II Exclusive agreements in progress on the date of entry into force of this Law, which do not fall within the exceptions provided for in accordance with art. 10 10 para. ((2) and (6) of Law no. 109/2007 on the reuse of information from public institutions, as amended, as amended and supplemented by this Law, shall cease at the end of the contract or, in any event, no later than 18 July 2043. * This law transposes Directive 2013 /37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 amending Directive 2003 /98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L series, no. 175 175 of 27 June 2013. This law was adopted by the Romanian Parliament, in compliance with the provisions of art. 75 75 and art. 76 76 para. (2) of the Romanian Constitution, republished.
p. CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES PRESIDENT,
FLORIN IORDACHE
SENATE PRESIDENT
CĂLIN-CONSTANTIN-ANTON POPESCU-TARICEANU Bucharest, November 25, 2015. No. 299. ----