Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Rodoljub Šabić, has today once again reminded all authorities of their legal obligation to deliver Annual Report on Actions They Have Implemented in Order to Implement the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. The Reports should contain prescribed data about the number of accepted applications for accessing information, number of submitted claims, amount of collected claims and the measures implemented in relation to publishing of the Information booklet, maintenance of information carrier and training of the employees for Law implementation. Those Reports represent a basis for compilation of Status Report in this field that a Commissioner delivers to the National Assembly.

In relation to that, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Šabić said the following:

„Delivery of Report on Application of the Law on Free Access to Information is legally strictly prescribed obligation of the authorities. Although, of course, everybody should be aware of those obligations, still by the end of the last year, I have personally in writing reminded all the Ministries about it, all local self-governments, all judicial bodies. The time period left for that is lapsing these days, and one important number of authorities still haven't fulfilled this obligation, so I remind them once again of it.

Lack of discipline in executing this legal obligation is obvious from the very start of law implementation. Although the data show that the state of affairs improves year after year, this is not enough in order to satisfy us. It is about one of the basic legal obligations of the authorities, and it is incomprehensive that even three years after passing of the law someone is allowed to evade it.

Omission to submit Report to the Commissioner has been legally envisaged as an infringement punishable with fine up to 50,000.oo dinars. However, even independently from that, lack of execution of elementary legal obligations by the authorities, that is, those whose task is exactly to provide law implementation, and who would have to be at the helm by giving good example, in this and any other case, represents a very bad example that must not be tolerated.“