The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection urged the Government and the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia again to provide as soon as possible necessary assumptions for the implementation of the Law on Personal data Protection. Emphasizing that the implementation of this Law is important not only within the context of the EU association process and inclusion in the visa waiver program with the EU, but even more within the context of the introduction of non-existent and necessary mechanism for protection of the right to privacy, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:
"Development of the Commissioner's Office into an office of a much more complex authority which should perform several times larger workload and much more complex work implies things that depend completely on the Government and the Assembly. People and premises are necessary for functioning of any authority. Until the Assembly endorses instruments on organization of the new Office, it is impossible to employ anybody. The Administrative Committee already endorsed instruments which the Commissioner prepared, but it remains uncertain when the Assembly will endorse them. I hope it will not happen again, but just to illustrate my point I will say that I waited for similar consent five months the first time and the last time I waited for amendments of instruments for almost 18 months.
It is well known that the Serbian Government has not solved the problem of the Commissioner's premises for four years. The Commissioner has worked with ridiculously low number of people because of that. Unfortunately, this is why he received new competence with more than 800 unsolved cases from his old competence. The new Commissioner's competence implies facing a number of completely new problems arising from modern phenomena, such as biometrics, the Internet, video surveillance, cross-border transfer of personal data etc. With the new competence, the Commissioner's Office, with three times smaller number of people than the number envisaged for the old competence and about ten times smaller than the number necessary for the new competence, will be literally loaded with cases. It will certainly also jeopardize exercise of citizens' rights and performing of some international legal obligations our country assumed in connection with personal data protection.
The Commissioner prepared instruments on organization of the new Office and submitted them to the Assembly to endorse it. In order to inform the public better about the content and the way of exercising the new rights, the new information web site, the content of which will be constantly improved, was posted at the old web address www.poverenik.org.rs. In cooperation with the international subjects UNDP and ABA/CEELI and the Slovenian Information Commissioner, we started activities on education of, unfortunately, extremely low number of human resources. I believe that through this cooperation we will provide conditions for education of a much higher number of human resources, not just from Commissioner's Office, but form other authorities as well. Preparations for the development of the Guide through the Law, which will hopefully be published in the following several months, have also started. I think that nobody had the right to expect more than that. However, without assumptions which should be provided by the Assembly and the Government, this really cannot provide necessary results.
It is clear that events on the international scene make achievement of the international political goals we set more complex. However, it must not be the reason or the alibi for failure to take necessary actions for the implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection. On the contrary, we should do all we can by ourselves, all the more so because even without the reasons such as the imminent EU candidacy and visa waiver program with the EU, we have more than enough reasons for that on internal plan."
