Law 11/02 of 16 August 2002 on Access to Documents held by Public Authorities1, which hereby repeals all legislation that contradicts the provisions of the current law. Law 11/02 of August 16 The Decree-Law2 16-A/95 of 15 December consecrates the right to information held by public authorities which includes access to non-classified documents, certificates or authenticated copies and personal documents concerning third parties. A Democratic State and the Rule of Law are founded on the principle of open government* as a rule and establishes the exceptions relating to classified materials such as State secrets. Hence the need to concretise and develop the constitutional principle of participative democracy which requires of the public authorities the practice of government* transparency and its subjection to controls, as well as [the need to] regulate citizens’ access to documents held by public bodies*. In these terms, as provided for in sub-paragraph b) of article 89 of the Constitutional Law, the National Assembly approves the following: Law on Access to Documents held by Public Authorities CHAPTER I General provisions NOTES General: Throughout, I’ve opted for English words with a Romance/ Latin etymology so as to arrive at as close a match to the original as possible. Nonetheless, where doing so would have made a word/ phrase sound odd to the ear, I have used Germanic-derived words. Grammatically, I have kept also to the original tense structure, not going into the standard English legal “shall”/ “will” etc so eliminate room for ambiguity and possible unfortunate interpretations. Words in square brackets have been added for clarity 1 The original in Portuguese speaks of “administração” [administration], just as the Americans speak of the “Bush/ Clinton/ etc Administration”. Derived from this word use, comes the term “administrative documents” which I have translated – as appropriate and applicable – into “documents held by public authorities/ public bodies” in line with usage in British instruments such as FOIA and elsewhere. Further occurrences of this are indicated by the asterisk *. 2 The term “Decree-Law” or “Law Decree” is not commonly found in documentation on legislation of English-speaking countries, but I have come across it often in English documentation on legislation of French-, Spanish-, Portuguese- and even non-Romance-speaking countries.