Today, in a letter to the Minister of Justice, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has supported the initiative for amendments to the Law on Misdemeanours that has been submitted to the Ministry of Justice by Transparency Serbia. He has estimated that the initiative is a valuable contribution to the attempt to fight corruption and that the Ministry should accept and implement it as soon as possible. Commissioner Sabic has stated the following:

"A very important part of the problem related to the implementation of anticorruption laws such as the Law on Free Access to Information, the Public Procurement Law, the Law on Agency for the Fight Against Corruption, is a result of the penalty provisions of these laws being applied very weakly and rarely or not applied at al,l even in cases of drastic violations of the law.
One of the main reasons for this is a very rapid onset of obsolescence.
The Law on Offences, which is a general law regarding this matter, stipulates that the infringement procedure cannot be initiated, if one year has passed from the date when the offence has been committed.
The law has indeed listed a few areas where, by a lex specialis (customs, foreign exchange, foreign trade, etc.), a longer period of limitation may be prescribed, and it is up to five years. No explanation has been given as to why the law has not foreseen longer periods in case of violations of anti-corruption regulations and therefore the general, very short period of limitation of one year applies to them.
Harmful consequences of this are manifold.
The efforts of independent state authorities in implementation of anti-corruption regulations are devaluated. For instance, in the period from 2005 until 2009, in which the Ministry of Culture and Information had the authority to initiate infringement procedures, the Commissioner's Office submitted 1751 cases to the Ministry with elements of violation of the law. Those were the most obvious violations and the actual number of violations was much greater. The Ministry initiated proceedings with only 128 misdemeanour bodies; in 26 cases a fine was imposed and in 14 cases only a warning, all others became obsolete. The disastrous "accountability system" originating from 2010, as well as the authority of the Ministry of Public Administration to initiate infringement procedures, has changed for the better, at least slightly, but the number of offences prosecuted is still much smaller than the number those committed, and the vast majority of them become obsolete. Violators of the law can count with great certainty that they will remain unpunished, which is indirectly, but surely, an impetus to continue with violations. Otherwise shaken people's confidence in the real willingness of the state to sanction violations of anticorruption legislation is growing. This discourages the overall efforts to combat corruption and must be changed immediately. It is therefore necessary to accept and implement this initiative. "