In his letter sent to the Serbian Government the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection emphasized the need for a qualitative change in treatment of the situation in an important field of human rights such as personal data protection by competent authorities, particularly the Government.

The direct reason for the Commissioner's addressing the Government is the fact that five and a half years have passed since the Government adopted the Personal Data Protection Strategy and the attitude towards the implementation of this Strategy might be "the best" illustration of the worryingly poor treatment of personal data protection.

The Government adopted the Personal Data Protection Strategy on 16 August 2010 and on that occasion it decided to "form a special working body to oversee provision of conditions and implementation of the Strategy and the Action Plan, coordinate public authorities with the aim of ensuring efficient functioning of the personal data protection system...", as well as that that it would "pass the Action Plan for implementation of the Strategy with defined activities, expected effects, implementing agencies in charge of specific tasks and time limits for execution of tasks within 90 of the date of publication of the Strategy."

Five and a half years later, there is neither a "special working body" nor the Action Plan.

The result of the absence of a strategic approach is the lack of a number of necessary activities and numerous omissions. As an illustration, a particularly drastic example that beggars belief is failure to pass the Regulation on Protection of Particularly Sensitive Data. Although the Regulation should have been passed within six months of the date when the Law on Personal Data Protection entered into force, the competent Ministry of Justice has never prepared it, so the Government delayed its passing for almost seven years!

The situation is similar as regards the passing of the new Law on personal Data Protection. Although the need to enact the new law has been recognized as early as in mid-2012 on the Commissioner's initiative and some kind of an interdepartmental working group has been formed for that purpose, no effects have been achieved. The fact that the Commissioner prepared the complete Model New Law and made it available to the Government a year and a half ago did not help either; quite the contrary. The Government has specified in the Action Plan for Chapter 23 in negotiations with the EU that the new law will be enacted by the end of 2015 and that it will be based on the Model Law prepared by the Commissioner. However, the law has not been enacted and the Draft Law presented by the Ministry of Justice shares almost no common ground with the Commissioner's Model Law, which means that the Action Plan for Chapter 23, harmonized with the EU, has been violated even before opening of the Chapter.

It is not a good sign when essentially the only activities undertaken by the state in the field of personal data protection are those of the Commissioner. Because although the number of his activities is continually increasing, they can in no way make up for everything that should be done by other competent authorities, primarily ministries, the Government and the Assembly.

The Commissioner reminded that he talked about these issues with the Prime Minister in person on several occasions and that he got the impression that they have the same opinion of the need to pass the Action Plan for Implementation of the Personal Data Protection Strategy and the new Law on Personal Data Protection, but unfortunately the events that followed did not confirm this. This is why the Commissioner emphasized again in his letter that a qualitative change in treatment of the situation in this field by the competent authorities, particularly the Government, is an important condition for achievement of the objectives defined in the Action Plan for Chapter 23 and, what is more important, for actual, real guarantee of citizens' rights under the Constitution and laws.