Nearly every country in Europe has transparency, or ‘freedom of information access’ (FOI/FOIA), laws. Journalists tend to know their national laws well, but others’ less so.
This guide is a starting point to help European journalists change that, and serve the increasing numbers of us doing crucial, cross-border investigations.
The guide walks you through how to request documents in 39 countries, and from the EU institutions, and includes practical knowledge that you’re unlikely to find in other resources, such as:
- the laws governing requests
- timeframes, and the full appeals process
- differences in process between provinces, cantons etc. within a country
- examples of successful requests and templates for requests
- exemptions routinely used, or common reasons for rejection
- specific resources and contacts
It is written for journalists, by journalists, but researchers, campaigners, lawyers and anyone else who files requests should find it useful.
We plan to keep the guide current, as laws and practices change, so if you spot something that is out of date, wrong, or missing, tell us at alexander.fanta@ftm.nl
The backstory
The guide is a product of the European FOI network, founded by Alexander Fanta and Jean Comte after an FOI roundtable at 2025’s Dataharvest conference. The network communicates via a mailing list and Signal group, where journalists ask questions, compare notes, share tips, documents and refusals, and work out how to get around them.
The guide is co-authored by Alexander Fanta of Follow the Money, who co-ordinated the effort, and Jelena Prtorić of Arena for Journalism, who edited the guide. It’s hosted by Arena for Journalism in Europe, to continue our work supporting cross-border, collaborative investigations across the continent.
To build the guide, we brought together journalists and assorted FOI nerds across the continent to write up what they knew. It contains the knowledge of around 40 contributors from across Europe (all of whom are credited as co-authors in the at the end.)
To join the FOI network, contact alexander.fanta@ftm.nl
Credits and licensing
The guide is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY-NC 4.0). You are free to copy, republish, translate and adapt it, non-commercially, as long as you credit the authors. If you do use it, we would love to hear about it at comms@journalismarena.eu
Suggested credit: The FOI Guide, by the FOI Network and Arena for Journalism in Europe. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Download the guide
The guide will be launched on October 15, 2026. Register for the launch event here.