The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic deems that Draft Amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance forwarded to the National Assembly for enactment, can present an important step towards promotion of free access to information.
The Commissioner has estimated that it is good that the Government's proposition greatly corresponds the solutions in the high quality Draft Amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance supported by thousands citizens' signatures back in December last year and forwarded to the National Assembly. He is also of the opinion that the chance to improve this Law was missed by omitting certain solutions from the citizens' initiative.
In this context the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic stated the following:
„ It is good that the Government Draft contains solutions aimed at removing long observed inconsistencies. It gives a more precise definition of certain obligations of public bodies, a clearer emphasis to how binding the Commissioner's orders are and a better definition of penal provisions. What is especially good is that suprervision over implementation of this law is transferred from the Ministry of Culture, which is absolutely incapable of performing this task, to the Ministry of Public Administration, which will use administrative inspection at its disposal.
Solutions from the Government Draft are highly compatible to those from the above mentioned citizens' initiative. Only a couple of them have been ommitted. In short, those are solutions whose aim was to allow complaints for withholding information against the six highest public authorities, excluded from the law up until now; to define more clearly the primacy of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance in cases of collision with other laws; to remove inconsistencies concerning possible administrative proceedings against Commissioners' decisions obviously misused by some public bodies in their operations so far, and which is particularly important - to protect the so called ''whistle blowers'', insiders, individuals from taking on responsibillity for making available certain classified information to the public so as to oppose malversations, corruption and the like despite formal obligation to keep them classified.
It is good that the Government forwarded this proposition, but in my opinion it would be better to have accepted all solutions from the Draft forwarded as a citizens' initiative. Ommitting some of them will cause unnecessary dillemmas. It is particularly bad that all provisions relating to insiders protection have been ommitted.
Concerning that, I would like to remind the public that it is an issue which has received signifficant attention in international relations in the context of fight against corruption. Serbia has ratified UN Convention Against Corruption and Citizens' Convention, both of which prompt insiders protection, and the same obligation is promted by one of GRECO reccomendations which has unfortunately not been implemented.''
