Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, said in connection with today’s voting on the Amending Bill to the Law on Free Access to Information that it would be a shame if deputies missed the opportunity to enable Serbia to take a huge step towards establishing a very important corruption mechanism by adopting the amendment providing for insider protection, which the Ombudsman submitted to that end.

In connection with that, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

“Provision of legal protection to insiders is a formal duty of the country arising from the binding GRECO Recommendation which should have been complied with by the end of 2007. Of course, it is needles to say that even without that formal duty we have more than enough reasons for doing so. Experiences of many countries show that insiders can contribute significantly in the fight against corruption. But for that to be possible, those who disclosed corruption and abuses in their own environment by making information available to the public in order to protect public interest and thus ended up on the wrong side of formal and informal confidentiality rules should be protected from possible adverse consequences, primarily from various liability proceedings.

The amendment submitted by the Ombudsman is a very good basis for that and its adoption would certainly be good news. It would be a shame if the Assembly is not willing enough to adopt that amendment. But even if that is the case, it would not be commendable at all if the other amendment, which appeared subsequently as an alternative and happened to be endorsed by the competent Committee, were adopted in order to comply with the GRECO Recommendation. Not only does the latter amendment objectively provide no protection to insiders, but it can even be a potential threat for the achieved level of freedom of information.

Thus I think it is my duty to urge deputies one more time, just before voting, to adopt the amendment submitted by the Ombudsman.”