On occasion of the five years of implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has estimated that Serbia is facing a number of problems. The Commissioner deems that it is necessary for the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the National Assembly to take a more active stand in relation to the status in the field of personal data protection because otherwise, due to existing deficiencies in the legal system and inconsistencies when introducing new solutions to the legal system, the number of violations of the human rights guaranteed under the Constitution will constantly grow.

Stressing that, while fully accepting that there are objective problems, some of the omissions are incomprehensible, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic has said the following:

''The number of Commissioner's cases in the field of personal data protection in 2013 was 2200, which is by 50% higher than the number of cases in 2012, and three times higher than the number in 2011. It is good that this can be explained by the raising of the citizens' awareness of their rights and by the possibility of higher protection, but it is not at all good that this can to a great extent be attributed to the shortcomings of the system and omissions of the competent authorities.

Despite several Commissioner's warnings about the need for radical amendments or even better the new Law on Personal Data Protection, practically nothing has been done in this area. There has been no response to the Commissioner's "partial" initiatives and we still lack legal solutions in very delicate fields of ​​personal data processing such as video surveillance, biometrics, security checks, etc. due to which personal data processing in these fields is illegal in a significant number of cases. The same is true of the access to citizens' data on electronic communications. The proposal of ''14 measures" that have jointly been submitted by the Commissioner and the Ombudsman has received verbal support but very few of the proposed measures have been implemented.

After more than three years from the adoption of the Personal Data Protection Strategy, the Government has still not adopted the Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy, even though there is an obligation for it to be done within three months. As a result of this omission, the Strategy has remained a ''a nice wish list'', an empty proclamation, and the three years have gone by without doing what was necessary and possible.

After five years of implementation of the Law, although it has been reminded of the obligation by the Commissioner as in the above mentioned case, the Government has failed to adopt the Ordinance on the Protection of the Particularly Sensitive Data, due to which the special statutory protection of the particularly sensitive data has remained just a hollow proclamation. As a result, in the majority of cases the processing of ''particularly sensitive data'' constitutes flagrant violation of the citizens' rights, which is of particular concern, and very often this is done by the state authorities.

Due to the listed and many other reasons, I think that it is very important, and essential, for all relevant authorities, especially the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the line ministries to qualitatively amend their attitude towards the status in the field of personal data protection."