The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection submitted today to the Constitutional Court of Serbia the Motion to establish Constitutionality of the provisions of Articles 12, 13 and 14 of the Law on Personal Data Protection. The Commissioner requested from the Constitutional Court to establish that those provisions were not compliant with the Constitution saying that implementation of the disputable provisions of the Law could have adverse effect on citizens’ rights enshrined in the Constitution.

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

“Article 42 of the Constitution stipulates the following: “collecting, keeping, processing and using of personal data shall be regulated by the law”. The same article envisages among other things that use of personal data for any purpose other than the one they were collected for shall be prohibited and punishable in accordance with the Law, unless this is necessary to conduct criminal proceedings or protect safety of the Republic of Serbia, in a manner stipulated by the law.

Thus, only the Law can be a basis for personal data processing. However, the provisions of Articles 12, 13 and 14 extend the legal basis for personal data processing by stipulating that such data can be processed not only pursuant to the Law, but also pursuant to a subordinate enactment, the so-called secondary legislation. In Article 12 the basis is extended by the formulation: “another regulation adopted pursuant to this Law”, in Article 14 by the formulation: “another regulation passed pursuant to a law”, while in Article 13 only the formulation: “or another regulation” is used.

In my opinion, it is more than obvious from grammatical, logical and legal aspects and it should not be disputable that such formulations unconstitutionally extend the legal basis for personal data processing beyond the limits set by the Constitution. Thus they should not be a part of our legal order. That is why I requested from the Constitutional Court to rule these provisions unconstitutional and since those arrangements are important for citizens’ fundamental rights, I urged the Constitutional Court to pass this decisions as soon as possible.”