The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic estimates as justified and joins in the criticism of many NGO's, dealing in transparency of public authorities' work, expressed in their letters to the President of European Commission and to European Commissioner for Trade. The criticism was addressed at the internal act, instructions for staff, which the EC Directorate General for Trade calls ‘'Vademecum''.

Saying that he expects the so called ‘'Vademecum'' to be revoked or at least amended, as the Commissioners from some member states of the EU have said as well,  the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic has stated the following:

‘'Regardless to the motifs for forwarding this instruction to some EU staff, or a possibility that it is an ordinary bureaucratic act, without a political message, it is obvious that some of its parts are, to say the least, controversial and that they can have very harmful consequences. 

It is very dubious to suggest a most narrow interpretation of requests for free access to information, and especially to give instructions to formulate official documents so as to contain the least information possible from the aspect of freedom of access to information.  The idea to make two types of documents, ones for the public and others for ‘'internal'' use, is obviously antithetical to that freedom, and also it could be said that recommendations to make available to the public the least possible amount of information on contacts with certain companies cause doubt of  an attempt to hide corruption.   

Messages contained in such documents, even in environments with highly developed democracy and a long democratic tradition, can have very harmful consequences. In transitional countries, which have weak or no mechanisms of democratic control of power at all, the damage could be even greater in many ways.

This is why I wish to believe that the European Commission will find a way to annul bad messages that ‘'Vademecum'' sends directly or indirectly.''