Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic received the Serbian Prime Minister, the Minister of Internal Affairs and a group of their associates. They addressed the outstanding issues regarding the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection, as well as the issue of amendments to the CoE Convention on Access to Official Documents.

In this context, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said:

"In our talks we agreed that, as far as the duties owed to the public by all public authorities are concerned, continual efforts should be made to improve their treatment of the public and that, as a means of ensuring compliance with the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, the public should be proactively given access to as much information as possible without specific requests for information.

As regards personal data protection, we also agreed that, although fortunately there have been no major issues regarding personal databases maintained by the Ministry and its diplomatic and consular missions, the issue of personal data protection merited constant attention and that data protection should be continaully improved within the available means and constraints.

As regards the possible amendment of the CoE Convention on Access to Official Documents, we were pleased to agree that Serbia already had in place arrangements in its legislative framework which significantly exceeded the minimum guaranteed by the Convention."