The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has forwarded letters to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Ombudsman regarding the Bill on the General Administrative Proceedings (LAP). The Commissioner has expressed concern regarding the content of certain provisions concerning the right of access to information, and regarding the ways in which these provisions have found themselves in the Bill.

In this regard the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, has said the following:

''Provisions of Articles 77 – 79 of the Bill place a condition on the possibility to examine the files, i.e. to access information held by the authorities, by obliging the applicant to prove the ''legal interest'' and by authorizing public authorities to require the applicant to justify this interest.

Such conditionality of access to information held by the authorities directly contravenes the basic principles of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance (LFAIPI). The Law contains the statutory presumption of the public interest, excludes the burden of proof of any special interest, and on the contrary it obliges the public authority to prove that there is another interest overriding the public interest to know, if it deems that the right to access should be limited. Proposed provisions entail significant reduction of the attained level of human rights in Serbia, which is in direct contravention of paragraph 2 of Article 20 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia.

The relevant provisions of the LAP Bill, which was published back in April 2013, read: ''Other persons have the right to inspect the files pursuant to the law which governs free access to information of public importance and personal data protection.'' This means that they are in accordance with the principles of the LFAIPI.

A public discussion on the LAP Bill was held from 29.04. to 07.06.2013. Neither from the Public Discussion Report nor on the basis of available information can it be discerned whether the above mentioned solution was questioned by anyone.

On 03.06.2013 the Ministry organized a round table ''Presentation and discussion of the LAP Bill'' and the Commissioner was specifically invited. The Commissioner participated in the discussion; however he did not have any objections because the solutions from the Bill, which were under discussion, were acceptable from the standpoint of the LFAIPI principles.

At the website of the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration and the E-Administration Portal one can only find the text of the Draft which content is acceptable from the standpoint of the LFAIPI principles.

In the course of compilation of the Draft, it is quite unclear how and why this change has occurred in the last moment and on whose evaluations and standpoints the Draft is based.

I have appealed to both the Government and the MPs to intervene with an amendment to the LAP Bill by introducing a solution which has constantly, until the last moment been present in the Draft Law, instead of the disputable provisions, and I hope that it shall be so.

I have also informed the Ombudsman and he will certainly respond to this."