Remembering Helen Darbishire, One of Europe’s Most Effective Civil Rights Leaders

Europe has lost a great European in Helen Darbishire, who passed away last week. One of the staunchest, most charismatic and most effective civil society leaders in Europe, her actions were instrumental in making not only the EU but also its member states and candidate countries more transparent and accountable, to the benefit of the many, not the few.

The impact of her work will remain unmatched by most contemporary political leaders.

While most nonprofits focus on one policy dimension, such as climate or migration, Helen worked strenuously to create the pre-conditions for those organisations to gain access to – and hold accountable – decision-makers when implementing any type of policies.

After cutting her teeth at Article 19, Helen joined the Open Society Foundation before establishing Access Info Europe. Since then, both she and her organisation have become global references for promoting and protecting the right to Information, open government, the fight against corruption and the defence of human rights in the European Union, its member states and its candidate countries.

Helen set up her influential organisation Access Info Europe in Madrid, not Brussels, to keep herself and her organisation closer to the “real Europe” than the bubble.

That’s where Helen felt most comfortable. A Briton-turned-Spaniard as well as an outsider-insider of the EU, she became a proud cosmopolitan Madrilena who loved coffee, food, music and swimming wherever she happened to be across the continent. What exemplary joie de vivre!

Access Info was more than just another nonprofit working on the right of information. It became and acted as the de facto lead of a pan-EU movement for civil society organisations working on the right to Information, connecting that community to other movements such as those working on anticorruption and open government.

Her list of achievements is long, despite her premature passing. Her two most tangible impacts are the launch of AskTheEU, an open-source Alaveteli site that enables citizens to submit FOI requests to EU institutions, and the international recognition of 28 September as Right to Know Day, which has been listed as an official UNESCO day since 2016 and as a UN official day since 2019.

Through AsktheEU, Helen enabled thousands of investigative journalists, activists, academics, and researchers to access documents that proved key to understanding what the EU and its Member States have been deciding or omitting in their actions (and omissions) vis-à-vis 450 million citizens. Both Askthe EU and Right to Know Day are testaments to Helen’s legacy.

Her work also transcended the European continent. Helen assisted in drafting and promoting implementation of access-to-information laws in Latin America and Africa, as well as advising intergovernmental organisations such as UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the World Bank.

In parallel with this, she contributed to international movements on transparency, open government and anti-corruption through serving on the OGP Steering Committee for two terms, from 2016 to 2022, and by chairing the UNCAC Coalition from 2020 to 2023.

That led her to scale up her impact, by advising the adoption of freedom of information laws in countries ranging from Italy – where she assisted The Good Lobby Italy in the final, crucial phases of adoption and implementation – to Bosnia and Herzegovina and many others.

As some of those celebrating her life have pointed out, there are some people you remember meeting for the first time – and Helen was one.

I was fortunate to meet Helen in 2010, a few years after she had set up Access Info Europe. It was a glorious day in the Plaza del Sol, where we met just a few blocks from her office. Helen’s enthusiasm was contagious; Access Info had just won its big case against the Council, which had refused to disclose documents regarding the revision of the EU Freedom of Information Act but also the identity of the member states voting against and in favour of the reform.

I was immediately hired as an advisor to Access Info and was quickly upgraded to both friend and board member. We became ‘partners in crime’, teaming up on so many battles for greater access to the EU.

These ranged from setting up the EU Transparency Register in 2012 to advocating for the EU to join the Open Government Partnership (still pending), to making judicial appointments to the Court of Justice of the European Union more transparent (back on the agenda), to setting up and getting access to beneficial ownership registers (and seeing that crumble), to improved access to EU documents and most recently, to seeking access to European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen’s alleged SMS exchanges with Pfizer’s CEO, and much, much more.

Helen will be sorely missed. But her example and legacy will keep us going.

Alberto Alemanno is a professor of European law at HEC Paris, founder of The Good Lobby and former president and board member of Access Info Europe.