The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection submitted to the National Assembly the Report on Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection in 2013. The Report was also submitted to the Serbian President, the Ombudsman and the Serbian Government and posted on the Commissioner's official website at http://www.poverenik.rs/en/o-nama/annual-reports/1772-izvestaj-poverenika-za-2013-godinu.html 

In that regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said the following:

"Constant increase in the number of citizens and other entities who contact the Commissioner was continued in 2013. In 2013, the Commissioner handled 9,903 cases (7,377 cases in the field of freedom of information and 2,526 cases in the field of personal data protection), which is about 31 % higher than in 2012, more than 60% higher than in 2011, two and a half times higher than in2010 and as much as 20 higher than in 2005. These are of course just formal procedures, while the number of citizens' informal contacts is several times higher. This trend can be seen as positive, as it shows that citizens' trust in the institution of the Commissioner is increasing, but it is also alarming, as it confirms that a number of problems associated with the exercise of rights still remain.

Evaluations of and situations in these two fields are significantly different. On one hand, in the field of freedom of information we have continual progressive process, which is evidently irreversible in spite of some chronic problems which persisted for years.

The source of these chronic problems in connection with freedom of information is the absence of functional mechanisms which are beyond the Commissioner's control and within the mandate of the executive branch.

The fact that the Government has not enforced the Commissioner's decisions in any of the cases where this was necessary, although it was clearly required under the law to do so, while the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration has not prosecuted a single one of the by now numerous offenders in the last three years, appears to simply beg for more violations of the law.

An end must be put to this practice without any further delays, taking into account the importance of transparency for the fight against corruption, as well as for the achievement of a number of objectives of transition, i.e. the fundamental principles of democratic society such as –good administration, democratic control of the government, rationality, responsibility etc. In that regard I remind that at the end of the previous year, the Commissioner submitted to the National Assembly the Special Report which addresses serious issues in implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance in public enterprises, which the Assembly has not considered.

Underestimation of facts which point to a lack of compliance with the duties owed to the public, especially when coupled with a chronic lack of liability for violations of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, unstoppably and inevitably steers the country away from the desired and strongly proclaimed results in the fight against corruption and many other objectives of transition.

In the field of personal data protection, the number of cases handled by the Commissioner, which is more than 50% higher than in 2012 and three times higher than in 2011, shows that the citizens' awareness of their rights and their trust in the institution of the Commissioner have increased. This is certainly commendable, but in spite of that we cannot and must not be satisfied with the situation in this field.

In this field, the sources of problems are also beyond Commissioner's control.

Even after repeated warnings by the Commissioner about the need for radical amendments or, better still, a completely new law on personal data protection, virtually nothing has been done in this regard in 2013. There has been no response even to the "partial" initiatives launched by the Commissioner. As a result, Serbia lacks legislative provisions in highly sensitive areas of personal data processing, such as video surveillance, biometrics, security checks etc., although theexistence of such provisions is stipulated by the Constitution. The same is also true of access to data on citizens' electronic communications.

Even after more than three years of adoption of the Personal Data Protection Strategy, the Government has not adopted an Action Plan on Implementation of the Strategy, although it should have done so within three months. As a result of this omission, the Strategy remains a list of good intentions, a dead letter, while in the meantime three years have passed by without any attempt to do what was needed and possible.

Five whole years after the effective date of the Law, although it had a duty to do so and had been warned by the Commissioner on more than one occasion, just as in the previous case, the Government has not adopted a decree that would provide for the protection of particularly sensitive personal data. For this reason, the special protection of particularly sensitive data, which is guaranteed by the law, has remained nothing more than an empty promise for many different categories of persons. As a result, processing of data in many cases leads to violations of the citizens' rights. This is all the more alarming because these rights are flagrantly and quite frequently violated by public authorities.

Since the reasons explained above are a source of a large number of violations of guaranteed human rights, it is necessary for competent authorities, including in particular the Government of Serbia and the competent ministries, to qualitatively change their current approach to the situation in the field of personal data protection."