The Commissioner for Information and Personal Data Protection was given necessary office space on this day, 1 July, four years ago and he started his work on protection of citizens' right to free access to information.
On this occasion, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic has made the following statement:
„In the last four years, the new state organ, with me as its head, has faced a large and ever-growing caseload in the field of public rights protection. From 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2009, the Commissioner's Office worked on 6.426 cases. 5.600 were resolved, and 826 are jet to be resolved. These statistical data speak for themselves.
As far as qualitative grades are concerned, I myself do not wish to evaluate my work, but I am satisfied because I can say that the work of the institution, with me at its head, has received very good grades both from, CE and EU monitors, independent experts, journalists' associations, and, which is most important, from numerous ‘'ordinary'' citizens. My associates and I consider affirmation of the institution, initially completely anonymous, as a public organ in which the citizens believe, which is confirmed by a large and ever-growing number of requests for protection of rights, to be our most valuable result.
Objective failure is that despite my efforts, I have not succeeded in animating any of the several governments, which have changed in the meantime, to provide full, appropriate support to this institution. Such support would make possible much better results, not only of the Commissioner, but also of the society as a whole, in the field of establishing democratic control of power and the fight against irrationality, abuses, criminal and corruption.
Great problem in implementation of law is nonfunctioning of the system of responsibility for violations of the law, as well as, when it is necessary, enforcement of the Commissioner's orders, which is the responsibility of executive power, the Government, or the competent Ministry. As they have not provided this after 4 years, negative consequences are becoming more and more evident. The number of infringements of the law is measured in thousands, the number of initiated procedures in a couple of hundreds, and the number of the punished in a couple of dozens. Concerning non compliance with the Commissioner's legally binding orders, ‘'consistent'' Government's perseverance in non providing their enforcement has as a consequence, lately very prominent, growth of the number of unexecuted rulings, their number amounting to 220 at this moment. Although, this number does not seem too high in comparison with the total, it is very important as a principle, because it is a call to others to violate the law.
The importance of the lack of the necessary support was additionally highlighted after the Commissioner's powers had been expanded to the new, vast field of personal data protection. Following this expansion, even though based on the received compliance of the National Assembly, the Commissioner should have 69 associates, he actually has 12. Thus, tardiness in performing work in the field of protection of free access to information will inevitably be on the increase, for which I would like to apologize to the citizens in advance. And it will not be possible to really and seriously organize the work on personal data protection, except in the form of improvisation. This is why I will repeat, as I have done countless times before, that all this will have an inevitably bad effect on performing international legal obligations and on protection of citizens' rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
