July 9, 2026

Author: Lawyer Enrico Germano

In the two-year dispute between the newspaper ‘laRegione’ and the City of Lugano over the speed check carried out on Riva Vela on May 11, 2023, the City of Lugano prevailed initially: the Cantonal Commission for Data Protection and Transparency rejected the appeal filed on November 27, 2024, by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief against the denial of access to the radar documentation.

This decision, however, did not spare the city government criticism, accusing it of displaying “a certain inconsistency” during the proceedings. The editor-in-chief of ‘laRegione’ has therefore appealed the ruling before Tram, which will now rule on the case.

The legal-administrative criteria and arguments are potentially diverse, and since we are unaware of the file in question and obviously do not have access to such documents, we can attempt to analyze them taking into account the Ticino regulatory framework and the general principles of Swiss administrative law.

1. Violation of the Duty to Transmit (Weiterleitungspflicht)
In Swiss administrative law—and in Ticino in particular—there is a principle that an authority receiving an application for which it is not competent cannot simply reject it but is obliged to forward it to the competent authority, informing the applicant accordingly. This principle is codified in the general administrative procedure and expressly referred to by the Cantonal law on Information and Transparency in Canton Ticino (LIT).

2. Violation of the Principle of Good Faith (Treu und Glauben, Art. 9 of the Federal Constitution)
The Municipality’s conduct could also appear questionable under the constitutional principle of good faith, which has a very specific meaning in Swiss administrative law.

3. Violation of the Principle of Cooperation (Untersuchungsgrundsatz and Procedural Obligations)
In Swiss administrative law, the authority is not a passive entity: it has active obligations to cooperate with the applicant, specifically:

  • Duty to investigate ex officio: the authority must ascertain the relevant facts, even on its own initiative
  • Duty to verify jurisdiction: before ruling on the merits, the authority must verify whether it is actually competent
  • Duty to provide information: the applicant must be given the means to contact him/her

4. Right of Access to Official Documents and Public Interest in Information
The Cantonal Law on Information and Transparency in Canton Ticino (LIT)—modeled on the Federal Law on Freedom of Information in the Administration (FoIA)—establishes the principle of transparency as the rule and secrecy as the exception. This reversal of the burden of proof is fundamental: it is not the applicant who must justify why he/she wants the documents, but the authority that must demonstrate why it does not provide them.
In this specific case:

  • the requested data concerns road traffic control, which is a public task.
  • it does not involve sensitive personal data of individual citizens, but aggregated information on the authorities’ enforcement activities.

5. Freedom of the press and the right to report as a qualified public interest
This argument operates on a different but complementary level. Freedom of the press is guaranteed by Article 17 of the Federal Constitution and by the jurisprudence of the Federal Court, which has repeatedly recognized the role of the media as “watchdogs” (Wachhund or watchdog in English – of democracy, as a recognized metaphorical expression).

6. Excessive formalism (das Verbot des überspitzten Formalismus)
The Municipality’s attempt to have the appeal declared inadmissible on formal grounds—arguing that the application had been submitted by another editor and that the editor-in-chief lacked standing—could be characterized as excessive formalism, prohibited by Swiss procedural law (Article 29 of the Federal Constitution).
The Federal Supreme Court has repeatedly criticized authorities for using procedural obstacles to avoid ruling on the merits, especially when the formal shortcoming appears to be of little substantive importance—as in this case, which involved a takeover of the procedure within the newspaper’s editorial staff.