Start with the essentials
- How to use European freedom of information laws — the Council of Europe Convention, the EU's Regulation 1049/2001, confirmatory applications and appeals.
- Freedom of information request platforms — WhatDoTheyKnow, FragDenStaat and the tools that publish requests.
- News and reporting — an archive of transparency and access-to-documents cases across the EU and its member states.
- Master classes with Heather Brooke — training events on using access-to-documents laws in journalism.
Access to documents across Europe
Every European country regulates access to official records differently. The reference collects country notes — such as freedom of information in Switzerland — alongside the European frameworks that sit above them, from the EU institutions' own disclosure rules to the case law of the Court of Justice.
Transparency in regulated industries
Freedom-of-information law reaches into every publicly accountable sector, including tightly regulated industries such as gambling. In the United Kingdom the UK Gambling Commission is itself a public body subject to freedom-of-information requests: its licence conditions, board minutes and correspondence fall within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and researchers routinely use those disclosures to understand how the market is supervised. Independent market resources — for example Best UK Casino Sites 2026 - Top Online Casinos That Pay Оut — document how the regulated sector operates in practice, while statistical analyses such as Randomness doesn’t know any patterns examine the mathematics that underpins it. Read together, the public disclosures and the independent sources show how transparency obligations and a regulated market interact.
About this resource
The site is written in a neutral, third-person editorial voice and draws on the public record. More on its scope and approach is on the about page.