Prompted by the fact that the Government has been delaying the adoption of the Decree on Special Safeguards for Particularly Sensitive Data for six years now, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection said it was a bizarre, almost grotesque illustration of the state's inadequate relation towards the situation in the field of personal data protection.

According to the Commissioner, the current situation, particularly lack of the activities necessary to change such situation, would certainly be a problem in negotiations with the EU on chapters about human rights and, what is much more important, would be an increasing source of excesses and violations of Serbian citizens' rights guaranteed under the Constitution and the law.

In that regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

"The time limit for passing of the Decree on Special Safeguards for Particularly Sensitive Data expired already in early May 2009! Six years have passed, several Governments have been changed but we still do not have the Decree. However, although perhaps the most bizarre, this is only one of numerous examples which can illustrate poor and worrying relation of the state towards the situation in this field.

The need to amend the existing or enact the new Law on Personal Data Protection has been recognized a long time ago because of incompliance with the EU standards and the problems observed in practice. As early as in 2012, the Ministry of Justice formed some kind of a working group responsible for this task, but it provided no results. In his efforts to assist the Government, the Commissioner prepared the Model of the completely new law and made it available to the Government but although it has been more than six months since then, this also provided no results.

The main issue is actually the lack of understanding of the fact that we need a well-designed, strategic approach defined at the national level. This is because the introduction of a regulatory and factual system for personal data protection based on the standards of the democratic world is a very complex task for every country in transition, which must imply such approach. The Serbian Government did adopt the Personal Data Protection Strategy as early as in August 2010, on the Commissioner's initiative and on the basis of the text he prepared, but although it had pledged to do so within three months, it has not adopted the Action Plan for its implementation, so there has been a delay of five years in that regard, too.

In such circumstances, I would like to emphasize again the pressing need for a qualitative change in the way the government treats personal data protection. Otherwise, I will have to accept the fact that the number of problems in this field, which are increasingly evident anyway, will increase even more rapidly, with the inevitable harmful consequences for the citizens' rights and the reputation of the state."