The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection considers the estimates that the termination of the Portal of Courts of Serbia, which has been explained as the consequence of the ruling adopted by the, misinterpretations of the meaning and content of the ruling.

Pursuant to the Law on Personal Data Protection (LPDP) the Commissioner's ruling pronounced a ban against the Ministry of Justice relating only to further processing, i.e. publication of personal data of parties and other entities involved in the proceedings before courts, because it is performed contrary to the law and without legal grounds, and the ban does not apply to the operation of the Portal as a whole.

As previously mentioned, the Commissioner deems the Portal of Courts a useful and good tool to offer a wealth of information regarding the work of courts to the public on a proactive basis: on the jurisdiction and organization, on judges, on the number and types of civil disputes, criminal proceedings, extra-judicial proceedings and enforcement proceedings, on the manner of communication with the court, bills for court fees and deposits, and many other data regarding the operation of courts. There are no statutory limitations for the publication of the data (of course, with exception to those listed in the ruling on the ban) and the Commissioner in this regard expects the Portal of Courts to continue to operate smoothly.

In addition to the above, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic has stated the following:

''Monitoring control and surveillance has been instituted ex oficio on the basis of several complaints which contained indications on the illegal scope of personal data processing on the Internet Portal of Courts of Serbia. In most cases the complaints refer to the publication of names and surnames of persons, in addition to addresses, i.e. place of domicile, street and number of dwelling, and illegality, and contain concerns regarding the potential harassment due to various reasons. In some cases complaints refer to the publication of particularly sensitive data, such as, for example, the data on persons the decision of whose loss of working ability has been made or is to be made.

Pursuant to the provisions of Article 8 of the LPDP, personal data processing is prohibited if the data subject has failed to give its consent for processing or if processing is performed without legal authorization. Processing is also prohibited if it is performed for purposes other than the one prescribed or if the purpose of processing is disproportionate to the number and type of data.

The monitoring control and surveillance has indicated that processing is performed without determining the grounds for processing on the basis of any lex specialis, i.e. without the consent of the data subject. The purpose of processing is not regulated under any law, therefore it is unclear, and the data is processed to the extent which is disproportionate even to the proposed purpose of processing. So, data processing is performed contrary to the said principles referred to in Article 8, and in some cases to Article 16 LPDP (processing of particularly sensitive data) as well. In this regard a formal warning was forwarded to the Ministry in the first half of the last year. Since enough time has lapsed for the observed deficiencies to be remedied, or for establishing a sound basis for continuing or for ceasing the processing, it was necessary to adopt a ruling which would prohibit processing, i.e. publication of personal data listed in Articles 1-5 of the ruling. Reasons for the prohibition are elaborated in the reasoning of the ruling.

The said reasons do not refer to the data other than personal data pertinent to the work or related to the work of courts."