Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, said that much more attention should be paid to personal data protection at all levels. Two very important and large-scale forthcoming government activities (census and elections for national councils of ethnic minorities) seem like a good occasion to remind that Serbia still does not have a completed personal data protection system, not even on the normative level. In this context, the Commissioner emphasized that it is crucial that the Government passes the Decree on Safeguards for Particularly Sensitive Personal Data and warned that the deadline for passing of that Decree expired more than a year ago.

In that regard Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

”Both census and elections for national councils imply processing of personal data, including the data classified as particularly sensitive by the Law on Personal Data  Protection, such as ethnicity or religion. According to the Law, this implies that data can be processed only with informed consent of a person to whom the data pertains. It is worth reminding that consent must be clear and unambiguous and must be given in writing and if a person giving consent is illiterate, consent must be confirmed by a statement signed by two witnesses.

In addition, the Law also requires that processing of particularly sensitive data must be protected by special safeguards. Pursuant to the Law, the Government should have defined such measures by a separate decree within six month after this Law entered into force. But although that deadline expired as early as in early April last year, the decree have not been passed. As a result, special protection of particularly sensitive data remains just a proclamation and it does not exist in practice. This is not only in abstract contradiction with Serbian law and assumed international duties, but it also implies real, specific and serious possibility of violation of citizens’ rights. For the reasons I do not need to explain, in the democratic world a lot of attention is paid to protection of particularly sensitive data and hence it is vital that at least minimum normative frameworks for protection are introduced in Serbia as soon as possible and that they are consistently applied.”