Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic submitted to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia the Report on Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection in 2009. The Commissioner submitted the same Report to the President of Serbia, the Government and the Ombudsman. The Report is also posted on the Commissioner’s official website in the “Documents” folder under the headline “Reports”; it can also be accessed via the following link: Report for 2009.

In that regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said the following:

“The Report contains information on operations of the institution of the Commissioner and on general situation in these two important fields. It is based on the Commissioner’s practical experience and on over 600 annual reports submitted by various public authorities. It confirms the continuity of positive trends, in particularly the increase of interest of the public for exercise of its rights, but, unfortunately, it also shows that problems highlighted in earlier reports still persist.

In 2009, the Commissioner’s Office had about 2800 cases in process. The inflow of cases was about 23% higher than last year and the number of resolved cases was about 29% percent higher than last year. Apart from that, the Commissioner also took a number of measures and activities in the field of personal data protection. Those results should be evaluated taking into account the fact that the Commissioner had only 5 civil servants until April 2009 and at the end of that year he had 11 instead of 69 envisaged civil servants.

Commissioner’s interventions produced results in about 90% of cases and requesters received previously denied information. Measures taken in the field of data protection also produced beneficial results, albeit on a much smaller scale. However, it would be absurd to reduce the implementation of these two laws only to the Commissioner’s activities. There are a number of things other entities should do.

For example, the Government’s failure to enforce the Commissioner’s rulings de facto encourages offenders, however unwittingly.

The increasing number of inadmissible complaints against Commissioner’s rulings filed by public authorities also has to be addressed. The Supreme Court confirmed their inadmissibility on a number of occasions by rejecting them. Regardless whether these complaints are based on an unacceptable lack of knowledge or on an even less acceptable intention to delay the exercise of legitimate public rights, it should not be tolerated – it is a waste of time paid by taxpayers’ money with the ultimate goal of violating their rights.

Another incentive for offenders is the fact that, because of insufficient activity of the competent ministry, only 7% of about 1800 registered offenders (the real number of infringements is incomparably higher) were held liable in any way.

I think it is obvious that the way in which requests from the public are treated has to change and that we should insist on the duty of public authorities to make as much information on their operations as possible available to the public even without those requests. Hence the Report, in addition to the above and many other facts relevant for evaluation of situation in both fields, contains also recommendations for adoption and implementation of certain specific legal and factual measures which would enable higher quality of implementation of both laws.”