I have actually seen government agencies complain about being deluged by FOI requests, the cost of dealing with them etc. They mostly get ignored because on inspection the "deluge" of FOI requests tends to be from journalists digging for stories, and that's sort of what we want them to do. Also because the high cost of FOI responses tends to reflect messy and disorganised internal information systems rather than anything fundamental.
That said, I don't think it's really comparable to the GDPR. For one FOI compliance is a joke, organisations get out of it all the time on the thinnest of pretexts. There's no real incentive for a government to police itself in this regard. But GDPR enforcement is incentivised by large sums of money, for an organisation that is technically bankrupt.
> But GDPR enforcement is incentivised by large sums of money, for an organisation that is technically bankrupt.
What do you mean here? It seems to be about suggesting that GDPR is about getting the fine money? Elsewhere the law is quoted where it states the fine should be appropriate to be effective. So even if you don't trust this there's legal ground to back it up. Secondly, why is the EU technically bankrupt? Or is this a theoretical organization?
Appreciate some clarification because currently the sentence I quoted is too open to interpretation.
What does "appropriate" and "effective" mean in the context of law? Put it like this - do you really believe the first targets won't be Google, Facebook, Apple, etc? Very rich companies in industries the EU has failed to compete in and which handle data all day? It's free money for the EU.
Secondly, why is the EU technically bankrupt? Or is this a theoretical organization?
Because its liabilities are greater than its assets, or put another way, it spends more than it receives and does so structurally.
EU budget commitments exceed payments by about €10 billion a year, leading to an ever-rising volume of outstanding commitments, known as reste à liquider (RAL). RAL is expected to exceed €250 billion by 2020.
The EU is not a company, it's effectively a government, and so it simply doesn't allow itself to go bankrupt in a legal sense. It can violate contracts at will because it ultimately controls the courts. So when it doesn't have enough money to make payments it has committed to, it simply delays those payments. This results in an ever growing backlog of delayed payments that can't be made because the EU doesn't have sufficient funds.
Note that this behaviour is illegal under the treaties. The EU is not allowed to spend more than it receives. It does so anyway because it correctly believes the member states are too weak to enforce the rules. Also, the EU controls the ECB and ultimately the ECB is keeping many member states afloat via massive bond purchases. Whilst the EU Commission cannot legally just print money to fund its own operations, in practice that's what it's doing - the ECB prints money and uses them to buy the bonds of insolvent member states, which then turn around and hand some of that money back to the EU as part of its budget.
That said, I don't think it's really comparable to the GDPR. For one FOI compliance is a joke, organisations get out of it all the time on the thinnest of pretexts. There's no real incentive for a government to police itself in this regard. But GDPR enforcement is incentivised by large sums of money, for an organisation that is technically bankrupt.