The Ratification of European Convention Act entered force exactly three years ago, on 3 January 2004. The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance believes that this date is a good opportunity to remind ourselves that by ratifying this document our country did not only declare its willingness to improve and protect human rights but it also undertook some concrete obligations.   

On this occasion, Commissioner Sabic also said:

"Adoption of the Convention on Human Rights presupposes citizens' right to quote the Convention before domestic courts and other government bodies and request its direct application. According to the Convention, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg presents the highest level of jurisdiction in the protection of human rights, with all its consequences.

“As regards freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of the media, freedom to receive and distribute information and freedom to access information that is in the possession of the authorities, cases in which the Convention is directly applied extremely rare. This means that it is necessary to work more, and to work more seriously and continually on educating civil servants in European standards on human rights, especially about the viewpoints expressed through the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, as the basis for interpreting the provisions of the Convention.

“The fact that Serbian citizens have lodged over 1,500 complaints before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in the past three years shows that all that needs to be done on institutional and normative levels has not been done yet.

“On the institutional level, it is necessary to activate the Constitutional Court and Ombudsman immediately after the parliamentary elections.

“On the normative level, a number of laws should be amended and some should be passed in order to completely eliminate the possibility of the government supervising the media and threatening public criticism with criminal accountability, to ensure processing and other preconditions for the enforcement of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and to remove and demystify unnecessary barriers that are preventing the public from accessing information of public interest, and so on. Dealing with this normative deficit will take time; this is why it is important that government bodies remove any negative consequences by direct application of the Convention whenever possible."