A list of high school graduates containing contact information constitutes the information of public interest within the meaning of Article 2 of the 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), since the data stems from activities in connection with the work of schools, and schools have the status of a public authority, and the data are contained in a certain document(s), a justified public interest to know is assumed under this Law until proven otherwise by the public authority.

However, information on graduates at the same time constitutes personal data as well, within the meaning of Article 3 of the Law on Personal Data Protection ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia" Nos.97/08, 104/09-other law, 68/12-decision of the Constitutional Court and 107/12) and its processing, which, in terms of the Law includes permission to examine a document or making it available in any other way, can be performed on legal grounds or on the basis of the consent of the person concerned.

Article 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, specifies when the public's right to know may be denied or limited in favour of the right to privacy, which includes the right to protection of personal data. The same Article stipulates exceptions to the protection of privacy in favour of the public's right to know. One of the exceptions is the situation where there is consent of the concerned person, then in case of a person or an event of public interest or in the case of a person whose behaviour gave rise to requests for information. Weighing of interests between the public's right to know and the protection of privacy is done by the authority when acting on requests for access to information by applying Article 8 of the Law on Access to Information.

Based on the above, it follows that schools would not be able to make available to the applicant, as information of public interest, a list of graduates with the data on their addresses and telephone numbers without their explicit consent, regardless of the reasons why the information is required by the applicant (in order to invite people to the high school reunion). As for the names of graduates, access to this information is generally not controversial, unless if the persons concerned could be identified on the basis of the names in case of, for example, a small town where the school is located, which would constitute violation of their privacy .

If the names of high school graduates are published and publicly available, further use of such information or data would not be questionable in terms of free access to information and freedom of opinion and expression. However, if the use of obtained personal information exceeded personal needs of the individual, i.e. if the received data would be used to create new personal data files which would be available to others over the Internet or in any other way, then this would fall within the scope of the Law on Personal Data Protection.

(No.011-00-261/2013-03 dated 10 April 2013)