COMMISSIONER
FOR INFORMATION OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
AND PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION

logo novi


COMMISSIONER
FOR INFORMATION OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
AND PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION



logo novi

COMMISSIONER
FOR INFORMATION OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE AND PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION

Source: "Blic"

It is good that, in relation to the Law on Secrecy of Information, which has recently been adopted by the National Assembly, two good things can be said with certainty.  The first is merely the fact that we finally have a law needed in a democratic society.  As opposed to the great majority, more or less all European countries, Serbia had not had a law which would define classification of secret information, but rather an incredible conglomerate of dosens of hundreds of reglations, mainly obsolete and anachronistic ’’regulating’’ this issue.  Long duration of such a situation has, of course,  had numerous negative effects of the operation of the legal order, civil rights and international reputation of the country. The other good thing is that, a better version of the law than the suggested one has been adopted, and that the Ombudsman’s and the Government’s ammendments have removed some flaws, which would have renderd the draft version completely unworthy of a bottom mark.

So, a beter version than the suggested one has been adopted. The practice is yet to show how good it is. It would be bad if this law were to be one of those ’’good’’ laws which yielded no expected results in practice. Unfortunately, this is not excluded. All documents previously marked as secret retain the same status under the new law. Having in mind those who have created the secrets, inclusive of the organizers of ’’actions’’ which were severe crimes, then much more ’’benign’’ but still harmful ’’secret keepers’’, such solution seems, to put it mildly, disturbing. As even now, one should ask oneself in relation to the forseen obligation of the public authorities’ officials to revise all existing secrets within a timeline of two years- is it realistic? Neither have sanctions been forseen for exceeding the defined period, nor automatic discontinuance of secrecy upon expiration of the given time. Therefore, if we really want to rid the neglected sphere of secrets of the dirty and cumbersome legacy, it is important to focus the public atention, from the very begining, on the implementation of the new law, priority objectives, deadlines and obligations for (not) meeting them.

Monthly Statistical Report
on 30/11/2024
IN PROCEDURE: 16.897
PROCESSED: 167.498

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