The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, on the occasion of the Draft Law on Foreign Investment, assesses that it is of the utmost importance in the procedure of adopting this Law in the National Assembly, to evaluate and remove potential negative consequences of adopting, to put it mildly, very controversial provisions of Article 28, Paragraph 4, of this Draft Law. This is a provision which envisages that information on foreign investments, regardless of the Law on Access to Information of Public Importance, shall be absolutely inaccessible to the public, except by approval of foreign investors.
In this occasion, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic said:
„Such a provision in the field of foreign investments completely excludes public access, which certainly may as a consequence result in numerous principal and practical problems.
The implementation of a Law of the Republic of Serbia is thus subject to the will of every individual foreign investor, offering more rights to foreign than to domestic legal and natural persons. It is very contradictory that the Republic of Serbia, by its Law on Access to Information, if certain conditions are fulfilled, enables to all, including foreign legal and natural persons, access even to information designated as confidential, while at the same time denying any access to its own public to information on foreign investments. Information on foreign investments may, when and if this is required, be attributed a certain level of confidentiality, however the upper level of limitations of public access must be the same as for all other information.
In view of the serious problems and insufficient results of the fight against corruption, it is very important to properly assess also the quite apparently exceptionally negative effects of adopting such a provision. Along with the broad, fluid and imprecise definition of foreign investment, this provision, as a basis for banning public access to absolutely all information, could naturally very easily be used as a means to hide various activities of corruption.“
