Personnel at authorities must always be ready to help any natural person, legal person or association thereof, who are looking for information held by authorities.

The authority must give any natural person, legal person or association thereof who requests this access to the administrative documents he requires, by allowing him to peruse the documents, providing an explanation about them, or giving a copy of them.

§ 1.

Any administrative document in the possession of a person under the employ of an authority is considered to belong to this authority to the extent that the administrative document relates to the performance of the authority's duties.

As far as the Flemish Parliament is concerned, the term "person under the employ" in the previous subsection is to be understood as "personnel member of the services of the parliament".

§ 2.

An administrative document of an authority which is deposited in an archive, is considered to be an administrative document which this authority has at its disposal.

An administrative document is partly made public if in addition to other information the document contains information to which an exception applies – within the meaning of articles 11, 12, 13, 14 or 15 – or for which the obligation to prove an interest applies, as referred to in article 17, §2, second subsection, and if it is possible to separate the latter information from the former.

In such case the authority must in its decision explicitly indicate that the administrative document concerned can only partly be made public. To the extent possible it is to indicate the locations where information was left out and also on the basis of which provision of articles 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17, §2, this was done.