Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection estimates that recently published texts of legal acts by the European Commission, which texts announce the establishment of a new privacy protection system at the level of the European Union - the United States, although not of formal importance are yet seriously and essentially important for Serbia, its citizens and businesses.

A few days ago, the European Commission presented its draft "Adequacy Decision" and the text of the "Privacy Shield" Agreement. These documents assert the privacy principles to be observed not only by all companies involved in the transfer of personal data but the US authorities as well, which obligation has been undertaken in writing, and safeguards and restrictions on access to data by the law enforcement.

It is established that safeguards for data transfer under the new EU-US ''Privacy Shield'' shall be identical to the EU personal data protection standards. The new legislative framework reflects the requirements set out by the European Court of Justice in its ruling on October 2015, which declared the old Safe Harbor framework invalid. The competent US authorities must undertake stronger obligations on strict enforcement of the Privacy Shield and guarantee that national security services shall not access, or conduct surveillance over, the data indiscriminately or en masse.

Commissioner estimates that, regardless of the impending problems in the implementation of the new EU - US data protection legal framework, this certainly further emphasizes the importance of personal data protection and the fact that the European Union will attribute more importance to it.

Our country has a formal obligation but also the need to harmonize our legal system with the EU standards. Unfortunately, at it is running very late in this regard. The Action Plan for Chapter 23, which is aligned with the European Union, has already been violated without this Chapter even being opened. The new, literally indispensable Law on Personal Data Protection prepared by the Commissioner should have been adopted at the latest by the end of 2015, in accordance with the Action Plan for Chapter 23, but this deadline was missed. As a result, we have a "system" of processing and protection of personal data, which not only isn't in line with the EU standards, but it isn't even in line with the Serbian Constitution.

Having this in mind, the Commissioner estimates that one of the priority tasks of the Serbian Government after the elections will have to be a radical change of attitude towards the situation in the field of personal data protection. This is required by both the Constitution and the citizens' rights guaranteed by law, as well as the economic interests of our economic operators and the country as a whole.