The Commissioner for the Information of Public Importance, Rodoljub Sabic, met today with Dr Attila Peterfalvi, Parliamentary Ombudsman for Data Protection and Free Access to Information of the Republic of Hungary.    

On that occasion, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic made the following statement:

“We talked about a large number of issues related to exercising the freedom of access to information and to the personal data protection. Along with the credits for the results achieved so far, I also had an opportunity to get to know the appraisals and suggestions which may be useful for our further activities.

The Hungarian experience in this field deserves recognition.  Hungary has very solid results in enhancing human rights in compliance with the European standards.  It is not by accident that it became a member of the European Union and it would be good to make most of some of their experiences that could be very useful for us, too.

I have several times expressed publicly that in order to have a good quality implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information it is necessary to enact several more complementary laws as soon as possible. This assessment has been confirmed to me at this meeting as well. In this context, the Hungarian Ombudsman put a particular stress on the importance of adopting a contemporary Law on the Personal Data Protection, noting that this law is practically inseparable from the Law on Free Access to Information, because, as he said, they regulate the two sides of the same coin. In addition, we have agreed that, in the very foreseeable future, the adoption of this law will also represent a formal condition for the further advancement of Serbia towards the European integrations, and that activities should be undertaken in order to get the attention of the authorities, as well as of the expert and wider public, with regards to its enactment.

We will continue with the contacts, exchanging of the experience and will further improve our cooperation.”