According to the Law on free access to information of public importance («Official Gazette of the RS» No. 120/04), a justified importance of the public to know, in principle, exists as for all information at the disposal of the public authorities. The enquirer does not have to evidence his importance to know certain information, nor to prove justifiability of his importance. According to the Art. 15 section 4 of the Law, the government body must not ask the enquirer to state his reasons for the request submission.

If the government body withholds to the enquirer access to certain information, it's duty is to prove that it is in the concrete case justifiable in order to protect the priority importance. Such reasons may be: security reasons, defense of the country, revealing of the offender, conduction of court proceedings, protection of privacy and others, in any case - reason explicitly provided for under the Law.

It is in particular necessary to emphasize that under the Art. 4 of the Law it is laid down that the public authorities must never withhold access to information relating to endangering and protection of life and health of people and environment. Therefore, with respect to such information, the authorities are not allowed to assert that the public does not have justifiable importance to know such information.

From the press release of the Commissioner of 4 July 2005