The concept of information of public importance pursuant to the Serbian Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia" Nos.120/04, 54/07, 104/09 and 36/10) entails that the information is embodied, i.e. contained in a document, regardless to the type of information medium. If there are no documents containing amendments to legislation, (working version, pre-bill, bill and the like) pursuant to the provisions of Article 16, paragraph 1 of the Law, a public authority shall upon the request for information inform the applicant of that fact. Strategic documents, action plans, work programmes and the like which contain information on the dynamics of adoption or amendments of legislation, can also be understood to be public information pursuant to this Law.
Apart from that, even if amendments to a law have not yet been compiled as a document, i.e. are not formally information of public importance within the meaning of Article 2 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, basic decency and principles of good administration require the public authority to notify the applicant of the current stage of the amendment process of the law.
In the case of EC Regulation 1049/2001, the European Court of Justice adopted a broader interpretation of the concept of public information, in the sense that the interpretation that a decision of a requested institution refers only to access to documents as such is wrong. Recent legislation on access to information also refers to access to information held by public authorities, regardless of whether it is contained in a document/documents. In addition, pursuant to Serbian legislation, the fact that documents are in the preparation or compilation stage, itself is not a reason for exclusion from access. Access to such documents could hypothetically be limited before their issuance or adoption by applying Article 9, paragraph 2 of the Law, only provided that this could adversely affect the decision-making process, undermine the proposed legislative solutions and the like.
