The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection initiated the inspection monitoring of the implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection in the Municipality of Obrenovac. The monitoring procedure was instituted due to the publication of over five thousand rulings within the "List of final rulings on state aid allocation that were issued in the period from 27 July to 16 September."

In addition to the information the disclosure of which is necessary to achieve transparency in the award of state aid (the number of the ruling, validity period, amount of aid given, etc..) the above list contains, without any grounds and clear purpose, several personal data of aid beneficiaries (name, street address, date of birth, Personal Identification Number).

Within the monitoring procedure, the Commissioner will request the Municipality Obrenovac to issue a statement on the relevant facts, primarily on the legal basis and the purpose of data publishing, taking into consideration that the transparency of the state aid granting process, even without explicit grounds, requires the disclosure of some personal data, for example, name and surname, and place of residence; however, the disclosure of most personal data, especially the Personal Identification Number, is obviously quite unnecessary and disproportionate to the purpose and therefore unauthorized. Specific absurdity in this regard is the publication the Personal Identification Number of citizens who have not been granted aid, whose requests have been rejected.

The Commissioner believes that such conduct is not a consequence of any evil intent, but only a confirmation of the fact that he has long been indicating. That this indicates evident, alarming ignorance of even the basic standards of personal data protection, which is particularly worrying when it comes to those in power.