In this regard, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic has also stated the following:
"The reply contains a mix of two statutory mechanisms, which are only ultimately, indirectly, interlinked.
The first mechanism (Article 45 of LFAIPI) governs the supervision over the implementation of the Law, which is a responsibility of the ministry in charge of administrative affairs, or the administrative inspectorate within the ministry.
The second (Article 28(4) of LFAIPI) is specifically related to the enforcement of Commissioner’s decisions and entails the Government’s obligation to ‘’ensure administrative enforcement of Commissioner’s decisions by taking direct enforcement action", if necessary.
If it is somewhat understandable that the Prime Minister does not differentiate between the legal mechanisms and does not know the relevant facts, since she is not a jurist, the failure of the responsible associates to inform her thereof in the right way is not understandable.
Supervision over the implementation of the Law, which is the obligation of the ministry in charge of administrative affairs, entails supervision over all aspects of its implementation, and most importantly, it entails institution of misdemeanor proceedings against the perpetrators of various, numerous, statutory violations. In addition, the supervision is not carried out continuously, but only upon the Commissioner's warnings, which he is not obliged to issue. The supervision is not conducted on a regular basis even upon the Commissioner's warnings, which are only issued concerning more flagrant violations of the Law. The fact that supervision has lately been conducted more actively cannot give rise to satisfaction, since there was virtually no supervision in the previous years. For example, even though many violations have been committed, not a single misdemeanor proceeding was instituted for three successive years. Even today, the number of instituted misdemeanor proceedings is incomparably smaller than the number of violations committed.
The situation is even worse when it comes to the Government's obligation to ensure, if necessary, the enforcement of the Commissioner's decision by taking direct enforcement action.
Only this year, acting on the requests of information seekers, the Commissioner requested the Government 41 times to comply with the aforementioned statutory obligation and ensure enforcement of the Commissioner's decision by taking direct enforcement action. According to the available information, the Government has failed to do so in all of the abovementioned cases.
Finally, when it comes to the requests for access to information submitted to the Government by citizens, the media and others, the claim in the reply that "the Government acts upon them in a proper manner and within the deadline" must be taken with a lot of skepticism. Since the Administrative Court, and not the Commissioner, has jurisdiction over the protection of the right in case of the Government, more precise information should be sought from the Court. However, I am aware of numerous cases in which the Government has failed to act on the requests, and comply with the decisions of the Administrative Court issued upon applications concerning the said issue. "
