5.  The applicant was born in 1954 and lives in Sofia.
6.  The applicant was employed as a police officer in 1977. After having participated in several international missions, in 2001 he applied for a position as police observer in a new mission. This necessitated an assessment of his psychological suitability, which he underwent at the Ministry of the Interior’s Psychology Institute (hereinafter “the Institute”) on 1 September 2001.
7.  The result of the assessment was negative and the applicant was not included in the contingent to be sent to the international mission.
8.  The applicant complained of the negative result of his psychological assessment to the head of the Institute, but was informed, in a letter dated 1 February 2002, that a check-up had shown that the assessment had been objective and correct. In an explanatory note sent to the head of the Institute in relation to that check-up the psychologist who had carried out the assessment explained that during his interview with the applicant he had informed the latter of the results of the assessment in a “clement manner”, and that the applicant had been able to pose questions and to comment.
9.  After the negative outcome of the assessment, on 1 March 2002 the applicant retired from service. The parties have not specified whether he would have been able to continue working for the Ministry of the Interior at a different position.
10.  Despite having formally retired, after the expiry of the statutory time-limit of one year the applicant was allowed to undergo a fresh psychological assessment at the Institute, in relation to the preparation of a new international police mission. The new psychological assessment was conducted on 11 October 2002, and the Institute psychologists concluded once again that the applicant was psychologically unfit for the job. Thus, the applicant’s application to join the new mission was rejected.
11.  The applicant complained of this outcome to the Minister of the Interior and other bodies, such as the parliamentary commission on internal security and public order and the President of the Republic. The human resources department of the Ministry of the Interior informed him, in a letter dated 29 January 2003, that the refusals to include him in the international contingents had been lawful.
12.  On 12 February 2003 the applicant applied under the Protection of Personal Data Act (see paragraph 22 below) to receive access to the documents contained in his personnel file at the Ministry of the Interior. He argued that the file contained data which could be considered personal for the purposes of this Act, including “appraisals, the results of different tests, data from psychological assessments”.
13.  In the subsequent administrative and judicial proceedings, as described below, the competent national authorities did not refer to any individual documents or a category of documents, but instead referred generally to the information sought by the applicant as “personal data” contained in his personnel file.
14.  An initial refusal to allow him access to the file, signed by the head of the Ministry’s human-resources department and dated 2 April 2003, was quashed on 17 November 2003 by the Sofia City Court, as it had not been ordered by the competent body, namely the Minister of the Interior. This conclusion was upheld on 30 July 2004 by the Supreme Administrative Court.
15.  On 31 January 2005 the Minister of the Interior issued a decision refusing the applicant access to his personnel file. He relied in general terms on the provisions of section 34(3) of the Protection of Personal Data Act and section 182(7) of the Ministry of the Interior Act, as in force at the time (see paragraphs 22 and 25 below).
16.  This refusal was quashed by a three-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court on 29 July 2005, on the grounds that it had not been reasoned, as it had merely referred to the provisions restricting access to personal data without explaining how they had been relevant to the circumstances of the case and without accounting for the applicant’s own right to access to data concerning him. On 15 August 2006 a five-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court upheld these findings.
17.  In a new decision dated 17 October 2006, the Minister of the Interior refused the applicant access to his personnel file at the Ministry. The Minister relied once again on section 34(3) of the Protection of Personal Data Act, as well as on section 161 of the Ministry of the Interior Act of 2006 (see paragraphs 22 and 26 below). He explained that personnel files of officers contained information on “the enquiries in respect of a person applying to be employed” at the Ministry and information revealing the Ministry’s “structures, positions and functions”. He noted that the first category of information was classed as an official secret, but at the same time mentioned that, in accordance with an internal instruction of the Ministry, officers’ personnel files had to be considered to contain information which was a State secret. It was explained further that even though personnel files also comprised documents which contained no sensitive information, owing to the presence of some classified documents the files had to be classified in their entirety.
18.  The applicant applied for judicial review. He explained the circumstances in which he had left the Ministry of the Interior and that he had a “particularly strong interest” to get acquainted with his psychological assessments. He stated furthermore that his application for access to his personnel file concerned his “professional identity”. He argued that the Minister of the Interior had not duly taken into account his right to access to information, that there were no legal grounds to consider the information referred to in the decision as classified, and that in any event, seeing that the applicant had left the Ministry in 2002 and that the relevant time-limits for keeping classified documents representing official secrets had expired, any such documents in his file had had in the meantime to be declassified.
19.  In a judgment of 25 March 2008 a three-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the application for judicial review. It held that the Minister’s decision was well reasoned, and that the Minister had correctly considered that the information concerned was classified. It pointed out that even though personnel files of police officers also comprised documents which contained no sensitive information, they had to be classified in their entirety due to the presence of some classified documents.
20.  Upon appeal by the applicant, in a final judgment of 8 July 2008 the judgment above was upheld by a five-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court. It endorsed the three-member panel’s reasoning, adding that the declassification of documents could only occur after an express decision of the competent official, despite the expiry of the relevant time-limits.
21.  In the proceedings before the Court the Government submitted copies of the applicant’s psychological assessments of September 2001 and October 2002. They bear no security markings.