The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has submitted the Report on Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection in 2016 to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. The Report was submitted to the President of the Republic, the Protector of Citizens and the Government of the Republic of Serbia and posted on the Commissioner's website.
In the Report, the Commissioner assessed the situation in both areas as unsatisfactory and worrying, and recalled that in last year's report he expressed the concern that ignoring the problems that he had pointed out could jeopardize his assessment, repeated several times in previous reports, that in the field of freedom of information, regardless of numerous problems, there is an irreversible, continuous positive process, and noted with regret that this is exactly what happened.
In 2016, the ever-increasing percentage of successful interventions of the Commissioner saw a reduction for the first time ever, from 96% in the previous year to 92%. Although it is still possible to speak of a relatively high success rate, a decrease of 4% in one year is definitely a concern.
The decline in effectiveness of the public's rights protection must be explained to the greatest extent by the absence of support that was to be provided to the Commissioner by other public authorities. Neither the administrative inspection within the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, responsible for instituting misdemeanour proceedings against violators of the law, nor the judicial authorities, have an even remotely adequate attitude towards the fact that the law is violated en masse. The number of instituted misdemeanour proceedings is much lower than the real number of misdemeanours; the proceedings are instituted rarely and selectively, and concluded in most cases due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
However, the lack of the necessary and expected support, which is to be provided by the highest authorities in the process of improving the public's right to know, is more important.
In 2016, the Commissioner was forced in many more cases (61) than in previous years, to demand from the Government to secure enforcement and the Government did not do so in any case.
In 2016, the second year in a row, the National Assembly, contrary to the law and its own Rules of Procedure, failed to consider the Commissioner's annual reports. What is more, for the first time in 12 years of the Commissioner's existence and operation, even the "home" Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information, failed to consider the Commissioner's report.
In addition to the abovementioned, the persistence of some chronic problems related to the exercise of the public's right to know, or the re-emergence of the problems for which we could have hoped to have been resolved or overcome, is worrying. This is especially true for problems with respect to the exercise of the right of access to information regarding some major, economic moves of the state or public authorities, information about disposal of significant financial and material resources. These problems, in addition to resulting in grave violations of the public's right to know in many cases, had other adverse effects as well, above all on the reputation in the context of combating corruption, which was confirmed in 2016 by the chronically poor score and the ranking of our country on the global Corruption Perception Index.
2016 saw a continuation of the chronically poor, very worrying state of play the area of personal data protection.
Our country is still at the very beginning of the process of introduction of European standards of personal data protection in the legal system and their implementation in real life. Unfortunately, the need for acceleration of this process is still not even remotely understood. The Personal Data Protection Strategy was adopted six and a half years ago. The Government of the Republic of Serbia failed to adopt the Action Plan for Implementation of the Personal Data Protection Strategy in 2016, as well. Consequently, the Strategy has remained a "dead letter", and given the passage of time, it is obsolete today and it is necessary to adopt a new one.
In the absence of a Serious strategy and a real desire for its implementation, the competent national authorities do impermissibly little work, almost nothing, regarding the necessary, further harmonization of the legal framework, especially the Law on Personal Data Protection with EU standards, even though we are gravely lagging behind in this respect. Back in mid-2012, the Government formed a Working Group tasked with the preparation of amendments to the Law on Personal Data Protection, but even after nearly five years, there have been no expected effects. In its Action Plan for Chapter 23, the Government at the time determined that the new law would be passed by the end of 2015, based on the model prepared and made available to the Government by the Commissioner. However, the Law was not passed, the time limit was extended to the end of 2016 to avoid enactment. A formal Bill did not even appear, and the "working version" of the Draft presented by the Ministry of Justice had almost nothing in common with the Commissioner's model, but rather did not even contain the answers to virtually any important, acute open issues in practice.
Numerous excesses or violations of the right to personal data protection, some of them very extensive or significant, are also the consequence of the said attitude. This requires a total, complete change of the attitude of the state and the society as a whole towards the protection of personal data and privacy in general. The fact that the Commissioner is taking more and more intensive actions on the protection of rights should not, cannot and must not be used as comfort, but rather as a serious warning. It is necessary for all responsible entities to take action. The state must take measures that are an expression of real will to change the situation for the better and which will yield results, rather than take measures that are "concessions" to the international community. This is imperative for Serbia's EU integration processes and, more importantly, for the need to promote and protect human rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia.
