Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Mr. Rodoljub Sabic opened today a seminar on problems in the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection, with focus on misdemeanour liability. The Commissioner organized this educative seminar in cooperation with the Higher Magistrate’s Court of the Republic of Serbia and the Magistrate’s Court of Belgrade. More than a hundred judges of these two courts will take part in the five-day seminar.

Addressing the seminar, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said:

“Enactment of new laws based on democratic, European standards will be meaningful only if the effects of those laws are visible in real live, in practice, and an important assumption for that is a functional mechanism of liability for violations of the law and for failure to comply with statutory obligations.

In practice, regarding the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection we have not seen these mechanisms functioning anywhere near a satisfactory level. Indeed, the issue of liability under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance has been addressed merely in a symbolic fashion, while the issue of liability under the Law on Personal Data Protection has not been addressed at all. Out of the several thousand misdemeanours under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, only a few hundred have been processed and only several dozens of responsible persons have been punished. And, as far as I am aware, no one has been held to justice as yet under the Law on Personal Data Protection.

It is necessary to educate magistrates on the application of certain norms and standards which they have encountered seldom, if at all, in their practice so far. And that is the main idea of this and several other similar seminars which will follow in a number of Serbian cities. Professional capacity building of magistrates’ bodies is a key assumption for making the liability for violations of the law and for failure to comply with statutory obligations more stringent. Or rather, not more stringent, but appropriate, the Commissioner for Information will insist on this, not least because these are offences committed by public authorities and their responsible officers, that is to say persons who should be setting a positive example in terms of observance of the principle of legality, rather than a negative one.”