Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has sent a letter to the Government of the Republic of Serbia in which he warns of a worrying trend that the change in regulations from the departments of individual ministries lowers the right of access to information below the level prescribed by the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance (FOIA), which systemically regulates this matter. The Commissioner sent letters identical in content to the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government and to the Republic Secretariat for Legislation.
It is becoming more common to propose legal provisions that regulate, without authorization, the issues of access to information which are already regulated by a framework law, ie. Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and establish additional restrictions beyond those prescribed by this law, and despite the explicit provision of Article 8 of this law by which the rights under this law may be exceptionally subjected to limitations prescribed by this Law, meaning FOIA exclusively, and not another law or regulation.
There is no small number of examples - four such draft laws appeared last month alone, and particularly controversial is the situation regarding the Draft Law on Investment which is, in spite of the "public discussion held", to be found nowhere on the website of the Ministry of Economy or on any official website, and for which no one can confidently say what its real contents are, despite publicly presented suspicions that it tends to drastically limit the rights of the general public in relation to information about investments.
In accordance with its responsibilities as set out in Article 35 of the FOIA, the Commissioner indicates that it is necessary to stop or prevent further worsening trends against exercising the rights of the public or citizens to free access to information of public importance as soon as possible. Especially if it is done in a way that results in a distortion of the true unity of legal order, causing a conflict of laws and violation of the rights of the public and citizens.
In regard to this, the Commissioner recalls that all strategic documents of the Government and the Assembly and in connection with the reform of the state administration, the process of European integration, and the fight against corruption predict and require a higher level of transparency in the work of competent bodies as well as the elimination of barriers in the implementation of the existing FOIA.
If, despite this, ministers and the Government should find that there be reasonable grounds for impeding the conditions for exercising the right to free access to information or for limiting the powers of the Commissioner for Information, and if they believe that they can explain those reasons to the democratic public, they would need to use only permitted procedures, that is, amendments to the FOIA itself, in which these rights and responsibilities are established.
