The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection assesses and warns that it is wrong to continue the Government of Serbia’ practice of settling and submitting certain bills to the National Assembly for adoption without seeking the Commissioner's opinion, contrary to its Rules of Procedure and the law, even though these bills include, inter alia, personal data processing. This may result in not only "abstract" violation of the constitutionality principle due to the adoption of legal norms contrary to constitutional provisions, but also in the concrete, continuous threat to the right to personal data protection in the implementation of laws after adoption.

The Commissioner points out those three bills to which the Commissioner’s opinion had not been sought, which contain solutions on personal data processing contrary to the Law on Personal Data Protection and the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, entered the parliamentary procedure only on 1 December 2017. Thus, the Bill on Amendments to the Labor Law, the Bill on Amendments to the Law on Employment and Unemployment Insurance, the Bill on Amendments to the Law on the Deadlines for Settlement of Financial Liabilities in Commercial Transactions, provide for the introduction of new records that certainly imply personal data processing without specifying types of personal data.

In this way, the decision on the personal data to be processed is practically left to the discretion of those who will keep these records, or possibly, to their internal instruments, both of whom are directly contrary to the constitutional provisions that explicitly provide that personal data processing be regulated exclusively by law.

The Commissioner believes that the responsible attitude towards the constitutional guarantees of the citizens’ right to personal data protection requires either the MPs, or the Government itself, to remedy the abovementioned deficiencies through appropriate amendments to the bills.