Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has estimated that the deferral of the deadline for adoption of the necessary amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance (hereinafter: LFAIPI) for mid-2016 under the third draft Action Plan for Chapter 23 suggests a disturbing unwillingness to resolve long-outstanding problems.

Considering that the new deferral, which is one of who knows how many, could not have been agreed without the consent of Kori Udovicki, who is at the helm of the ministry which ''oversees the implementation of LFAIPI", the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, has sent her a letter in which he expresses his inability to understand this decision, his dissatisfaction and concern.

Under the new draft Action Plan a series of long-outstanding, evident problems, namely the need to: raise the level of proactive disclosure of information; include all entities vested with public authority in the scope of the law; remove obstacles and uncertainties in connection with the enforcement of the Commissioner's rulings; transpose European directives relating to access to information into the legal system of the Republic of Serbia; prevent the narrowing of the achieved level of rights; ensure and increase accountability for violations of the law, are once again being swept "under the carpet".

Again, it is difficult to say how many deferrals there have been, however, this one is all the more difficult to understand because a very solid basis for the drafting and adoption of amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance was prepared a long time ago. The Bill was already in parliamentary procedure in early 2012, but it was withdrawn, and never returned, and there was really more than enough time to, if it was deemed necessary, revise and improve it.

The Commissioner refers in particular to the problem of the lack of liability for violation of the law which is directly related to the oversight over the LFAIPI ''conducted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government''. The Commissioner has warned that the oversight is based solely on written replies of public authorities, without embarking on verification of their allegations which often do not correspond to the facts. And since "oversight" is anyway, taking into account its intensity, carried out only symbolically, the number of proceedings instituted by the Ministry against offenders in relation to the actual number of infringements is minimal, and it can be measured in permils.

Such an attitude, an almost complete absence of accountability for infringements encourages offenders to violate the law, as evidenced by the large, ever-growing number of complaints submitted to the Commissioner.