Source: "Blic"
The Commissioner has recently ordered that the Shareholders and Creditors Association of RK Beograd be delivered a document containing the list of workers of this company who have, pursuant to a special Government conclusion fulfilled conditions to receive a special gratuity, provided that personal data, such as: address, personal ID number, current account number and the like, be left out from this list. Instead of abiding by the order, the Ministry of Economy and Regional Development has sent an ‘'interesting'' answer: ‘'We cannot act upon your order without prior consent of the Republic Legislation Secretariat, due to possible infringement of the provisions of the Law on Personal Data Protection, even though you have stipulated that personal data was omitted, as well as without consent of the Republic Public Attorney, due to a possibility that individuals who would consider their rights violated file a suit.''
And for five years now we have had a law, whose Article 1 reads as follows: ‘'For the purpose of exercising the right to access information held by public authorities, the Commissioner for Information shall be established as an independent state organ, independent within his sphere of competence.'' By law the Commissioner's decisions are binding, one cannot file a complaint against them, and their revision is possible in special cases, under conditions prescribed by law, only before the Supreme Court. Therefore, this preoccupation for the privacy of the citizens is really interesting. Especially as it was absent when the Agency for Privatization (which is under the supervision of the Ministry) was divulging personal data of several thousands of citizens to the media. Also, especially interesting is the idea to protect the privacy of the citizens ‘'determinedly'' even from the Commissioner's orders, whose job is to protect, and whose orders are binding, under the Law on Personal Data Protection, in that field as well.
What do these, from the aspect of basic legal principles, incredible ‘'legal'' arguments used to refuse to act upon legally binding orders of the competent authority, tell us? They could, of course, say many things. Even in the best case, they speak of the need to handle with far more realism the already infamous, favorite to some, thesis on our ‘'high administrative capacities''
