The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic, evaluates as very important readiness of EU Delegation to render financial, logistics and expert assistance to the Commissioner’s activities directed towards improving status in the field of personal data protection. Evaluating that this field is quite important both from the standpoint of human rights and as a subject of serious attention of the EU in the context of harmonizing our legal status with the EU standards, the Commissioner stressed that we should achieve results on that plan much more quickly than we had so far.
In relation to that, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, also said the following:
„The Agreement on Stabilization and Association with the EU has obliged us to harmonize our legislation with the European Standards for Personal Data Protection, as well as to secure real implementation of those standards in practice. Even without that formal obligation it was necessary to change our attitude towards the status in this really neglected field of human rights.
Some year and a half ago, by adopting the Personal Data Protection Act that big job was just formally initiated. Normative and factual interventions should have followed in numerous fields and activities. Unfortunately, not much has been done of the things that should and could have been done. Therefore, although we should have them, we don’t have answers to many open questions in relation to personal data protection (especially sensitive data, biometry, safety, video surveillance, electronic communications...).
We do not have clearly defined strategy what shall we do. And we are also late regarding the plan for regulations’ harmonization and on the plan of education of citizens, the broadest public and of the subjects dealing in data processing, about the content, importance and scope of new rights. Consequences of lateness can become a source of serious problems and they should be eliminated as soon as possible.
Besides that the Personal Data Protection Act itself hasn’t been completely harmonized with the European Union standards, and not all by-laws have been passed, which are necessary for its implementation.
In relation to that I remind that my collaborators and I have already during the last summer, also in cooperation with the EU Commission experts prepared and delivered to the Government Proposal of the National Strategy on Personal Data Protection. It is hard to understand why the Government hasn’t still until today adopted that Strategy, as well as why, although I have several times warned of the necessity to do so, it hasn’t passed a Regulation on Protection of Specially Sensitive Data, although the deadline for that has lapsed more than a year ago.
Clearly defined strategies and at least minimum normative framework are the first necessary preconditions for achieving results which are really quite necessary for us, and which we can achieve with more plan, energy and goodwill. “
