Transparency Commission wants change in access to confidential information

This change was proposed today by the Chairman of the Committee on Transparency, Rui Paulo Sousa, who mentioned prior discussions on the matter with the interim PS parliamentary leader, Pedro Delgado Alves, also the coordinator of the socialists in the Committee on Transparency.

Like Pedro Delgado Alves, the PSD coordinator, Hugo Carneiro, also expressed some openness to adopting this solution for processes classified as confidential.

In today’s meeting, Rui Paulo Sousa advocated for following the Transparency Committee’s precedent concerning court-sourced confidential processes, drawing from his previous experience as Chairman of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee into the case of the Luso-Brazilian twins.

In that parliamentary inquiry committee in the previous Legislature, there was a “final code,” a software allowing only members to access information under confidentiality.

Confidential information was inserted into a single desktop computer stationed in a fixed location in the Assembly of the Republic, accessible solely to committee deputies, with no possibility of forwarding or printing the documents.

Rui Paulo Sousa considered this change crucial for deputies to gain “timely” access to significant processes, while simultaneously limiting the “risks of information leaks to the media.”

In the previous Legislature, within the Committee on Transparency, there were numerous complaints regarding the handling of confidential processes, as only the designated rapporteur had advance access to court-provided information on a process concerning a deputy’s immunity.

Under the rules from the previous Legislature, other committee deputies only learned about the contents of a specific process and the conclusion of the proposed rapporteur’s opinion mere hours before the decisive vote on the immunity lifting process.

Consequently, frequent protests erupted from deputies across parties over a lack of time for analysis before being required to decide on complex processes.

During today’s meeting, preliminary steps were also taken to transfer legislative matters out of the Committee on Transparency, allowing it to focus on what Pedro Delgado Alves called the “executive” component.

If this change is implemented, legislative amendments will rest solely with the Constitutional Affairs Committee, and the Committee on Transparency will concentrate on decisions related to immunity lifting, incompatibilities, impediments, interest registry, and code of conduct consultation.

Pedro Delgado Alves and Rui Paulo Sousa both noted that this change is increasingly justified given the Committee on Transparency’s decreased number of effective deputies this Legislature—comprising four from PSD, three from Chega, three from PS, one from Iniciativa Liberal, and one from Livre.

Owing to the reduction in the number of effective deputies, the Committee on Transparency is also expected to cease operating in two distinct working groups.

In the prior Legislature, there was a working group for the register of interests, which convened nearly twenty times, and another for the code of conduct, which met infrequently.