Commissioner for information of Public Importance Rodoljub Šabić, held talks today with Vida Petrović Škero, President of the Supreme Court of Serbia and Slobodan Radovanović acting Republic Public Prosecutor on issues of implementation of the Law on free information access in the judicial system. Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić, among other things announced the following:    

„The subject of today's talks were certain issues in the implementation of the Law on free information access, especially noted in the matter of Prosecution Offices. Today's talks were held with the goal of contributing to the solution of these problems.  One of the results is the agreement on specific activities, which will be undertaken in several big Prosecution Offices, together with Mr.Radovanović.

Law on free information access, for all authorities represents, obligations they have to respond to. The judicial body is no exception to this. It is of course understood that exercising the right to free information access should not impede on the performance of the judicial duties of the judicial body. This is why the Law stipulates that the right to free information access, should not impede or endanger the indictments of criminal acts, administering penal offences, or trial, sentencing or executing the sentence or fair proceeding and right to a fair trial.

But limitation of rights can be justifiable only in cases when they are really present, not in anticipated or fictional circumstances. It is inadmissible to hide behind withholding information the illegitimate reasons, such as inadequacy, irresponsibility, not undertaking necessary measures and lack of results.

We also agreed in the course of the talks that many problems in implementation of the Law are caused by insufficient training of personnel to implement new legal standards in the communication with the public, and that it is necessary to undertake measures to eliminate this shortcoming, for attaining of which the judicial system  needs financial, logistic and other assistance of the executive government branch..

In regards to this, those in charge of implementing the National Strategy for fight against corruption, should have in mind one still not implemented points from GRECO recommendations, which is to organize and undertake a serious program of training of personnel in the government for implementation of the Law on free information access as well as the campaign to inform the general public on the content and reach of the right to the free information access.“