The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection assesses as fully justified request which the Protector of Citizen sent to institutions responsible for air quality monitoring asking from them to publish all information on the method and results of measurements conducted due to fire at Vinca landfill, and calls all institutions to comply with this request without delay.

The Commissioner says that the public’s undisputable right to be informed about environmental quality in these specific circumstances is magnified by the fact that the fire in Vinca has been burning for a month, as well as by contradictory information and views of experts who have appeared in public about potential harmful consequences, which cause anxiety, with reason, among citizens.

Although the public, the media and citizens may exercise their right to information by using the instruments provided under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, i.e. by filing formal requests and then possible complaints with the Information Commissioner, the authorities should keep in mind that it’s their duty to make information available to the media and citizens, in a simpler way.

In this regard, the Commissioner reminds that Articles 78 and 80 of the Law on Environmental explicitly stipulate that the public authorities are obliged to timely, in detail and impartially inform the public of phenomena monitored within the monitoring level of pollutants and remissions, and make such information available by means of electronic databases through public telecommunications networks.