-111. Tomás Vial Solar, lawyer He was legal adviser to the Ministry-General Secretariat of the Presidency from 2002 to 2004. According to the reports of the respective Senate and Chamber committees, the reform of Article 8 of the Constitution “was understood […] merely as elevating to constitutional rank the contents of Articles 13 and 15 of the 1999 Constitutional Organic Law on General Principles of [State] Administration.” During the Parliamentary discussion, “there was never any mention of the existence of a right of access to information for the population”; “nor was there any record of their having discussed the effects of the reform on the different body of the State and on the legislation in force”; nor “was the need to modify the legislation in force or to make an effort to provide increased access to information mentioned.” The new Article 8 of the Constitution introduced a constitutional principle of disclosure that applies to all State entities; consequently, its scope is greater than the General Principles Law which refers only to the State Administration. The constitutional provision indicates that acts, together with the decisions and procedures on which they are based, shall be public. The words “acts” and “procedures” should be understood in the broadest sense. Regarding the grounds for acts and decisions, all documents relating to any specific act of the State are public. The constitutional provision establishes that restrictions of access to information shall be imposed only by a law adopted by a special quorum (the absolute majority of the elected senators and deputies). The new grounds established in Article 8 of the Constitution stipulate that secrecy or confidentiality can only be established when disclosure would affect due compliance with the functions of State entities, individual rights, national security and public interest. This provision also reduced the reasons for which information may be declared secret or confidential. “The adoption of the constitutional reform […] rendered unconstitutional both the provisions of Article 13 of the General Principles Law, which allowed this confidentiality to be established using rules of a regulatory nature, and also the Secrecy and Confidentiality Regulations and all corresponding decisions.” The constitutional provision is more restrictive regarding the grounds for refusing information than the legal provision (Article 13 of the General Principles Law), because it establishes “that, in order to refuse information, an individual’s rights must be affected.” Nevertheless, it is less demanding, since the legal provision established that disclosure should affect the rights of the third party “noticeably,” while the constitutional reform does not mention this specifically. The legal provisions to establish the secrecy or confidentiality of some issues, which were enacted prior to the constitutional reform, retain their validity, to the “extent that they do not substantially conflict with the Constitution.” He indicated that although the constitutional reform represented progress from the section of view of ensuring access to information, it did not include a positive obligation by the State and, thus, did not constitute a right. Since access to information is not a constitutional right, a conflict arises when it is weighed with other rights that have a constitutional rank and that would have priority. Also, since it is not a constitutional right, the State does not have the constitutional obligation “to promote it or to create the conditions for its due protection.”