The Commissioner for information of public importance has submitted today to the National Parliament of the Republic of Serbia the report about the implementation of the law on free access to information of public importance in 2006. The Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, stated on this occasion:     ''As foreseen by the law, the Report covers both the activities of The Commissioner for information and the activities of other government agencies in the implementation of the law. 

As far as The Commissioner is concerned, it has been observed that there is a big increase in the number of complaints from the citizens, journalists, non-government organizations and others. There had been around 1850 cases or a little over four times more cases in the work in 2006 as compared to 2005. Around 1200 cases were finalized with big problems with respect to promptness, since the office of The Commissioner worked with 6 of the foreseen 21 employees. An informative and well visited web site was established. Numerous projects related to the education of citizens and employees in government agencies were also materialized, primarily in cooperation with the non-government organizations. Of the 18 charges pressed against the decision made by The Commissioner about which the supreme court of Serbia decided, 5 were refused and 13 rejected. Finally, as regards the costs The Commissioner and his office spent less than 14.5, which is around 45 percent, of the available 31.5 million dinars.

As far as others are concerned it is good to note that significantly more agencies have submitted their reports to The Commissioner this year as compared to last year. There were 310 reports last year as compared to 634 this year. Of the six highest agencies only the Republic Prosecutor's Office has not forwarded its report. Of the 19 ministries a report has only not been forwarded by the Capital Investments. Obligations have been completed on the provincial level by the: Executive Council, Parliament and all the secretariates. All four cities have forwarded their report. As far as the others are concerned, the situation is not so good, but the percentage of fulfillment is better everywhere as compared to last year. The worst situation is with the local self-administration. Reports have been forwarded by 91 municipalities. These 53% are better than the last year's 48%, however one should be certainly concerned over the fact that this means that only a little over half of the municipalities have completed their elementary obligation in the third year of the implementation of the law.

Following the forwarded reports citizens are using  more and more their right to the free access to information. Around 6000 requests, 3 times more than last year, have been registered in these reports. Considering that all these reports are not complete and that a large number of agencies have not forwarded their reports, it is realistic to expect that the number of submitted requests for access to information is certainly incomparably greater.

The report points out also to the negative examples and problems, particularly the main ones related to the system, in the implementation of the law. The most characteristic negative example is the Security Informative Agency, and among the problems of the system, two stand our in particular. The first one is the malfunctioning of the of the legal mechanism for the supervision over the implementation of the law including also the responsibility for violation. The second problem is the Government not being prepared, when necessary, to perform its legal obligation to provide for the execution of The Commissioner's decision.

The competent ministry has begun only recently with the initiation of violation proceedings. The first sentences have even been pronounced. It is good that something is finally happening, but it will be hard to make up for the damage caused by the two lost years. Particularly if we have in mind that the government did not provide for the execution of The Commissioner's decision in any of the couple of dozen cases when the citizens, non-government organizations or mass medias asked it to do so. This has obviously been understood by some as an invitation to violate the law, thus the number of cases of not taking action in accordance with the instructions given by The Commissioner, which was insignificant earlier, is now growing.

The report includes also recommendations which suggest measures which the competent authorities should undertake so as to provide a better quality implementation of the law and overcome the current problems. It is a pity that it mainly deals with problems, which have been defined a long time ago, which were the subject of The Commissioner's report even in 2005, but which have still not been solved. Generally, the greatest problem in the implementation of this law is that the responsible authorities are not prepared to start resolving the problems''.

NOTE: The text of The Report about the implementation of the Law on free access to information of public importance in 2006. can be found in Folder DOCUMENTATION - REPORTS