Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ Any per­son has the right to in­spect en­vir­on­ment­al in­form­a­tion in of­fi­cial doc­u­ments and in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to en­ergy reg­u­la­tions that re­late the en­vir­on­ment and to re­quest in­form­a­tion from the au­thor­it­ies about the con­tent of these doc­u­ments.

² In the case of fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies, this right is gov­erned by the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 2004²⁹ (FoIA). Art­icle 23 FoIA ap­plies only to doc­u­ments that con­tain in­form­a­tion un­der para­graph 1 re­lat­ing to nuc­le­ar in­stall­a­tions.

³ The right to in­spect also ap­plies in the case of pub­lic cor­por­a­tions and private in­di­vidu­als who have been en­trus­ted with en­force­ment du­ties but which do not have the power to is­sue rul­ings in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 5 of the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968³⁰. In these cases, the com­pet­ent en­force­ment au­thor­ity shall is­sue rul­ings un­der Art­icle 15 FoIA.

⁴ In the case of can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies, the right is gov­erned by can­ton­al law. If the can­tons have not is­sued pro­vi­sions on the ac­cess to doc­u­ments, they shall ap­ply the pro­vi­sions of this Act and the FoIA mu­tatis mutandis.