The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection believes that the statement by the Minister of Economy and Regional Development with which he tried to explain the censored version of the documents delivered to the Anti-Corruption Council cannot be justified with the legislation granting the right to free access to information and the provisions related to the possibility of limiting the aforementioned right.

Besides reminding that the "arguments" that do not have any constitutional or legal basis fail to contribute to the resolution of existing dilemmas, but, rather, ignore them, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also stated the following:

"The right to free access to information of public importance is based on the Constitution and the Law on the Free Access to Information of Public Importance. This right is achieved in a certain manner, under certain conditions and procedures determined by law, and the provisions of any commercial contract cannot override this.

The law, of course, envisions the possibility of, in certain predefined conditions, limiting the aforementioned public right in order to protect legitimate interests. And, in this context, the access to certain information, the disclosure of which could have jeopardized the legitimate interest of the other party to the contract, could have been limited. However, the possibility of introducing a limitation has its boundaries and this cannot be applied to the information that are a legitimate sphere of public interest, such as the restructuring of public property, financial incentives, etc.

For the public, the reference to "business secret" can be very confusing, as well as that the censorship was "performed by people from Fiat". First of all, the documents of our Government cannot be characterized as "business secrets" because the Law on Data Confidentiality, which was adopted two years ago, does not recognize this phrase within the nomenclature, meaning classification, of data. Second and more important of all, as in any other sovereign country of the world, acting upon the request directed to our authorities and the decisions made are solely the responsibility of our authorities.

In this regard, I would like to remind of the fact that the provisions of the basic Contract on Joint Investment between the Republic of Serbia and Fiat related to data confidentiality and disclosure state that the obligation of confidentiality would not apply if the disclosure of the aforementioned information is requested by the pertinent legal system. And, according to the Contract, the pertinent legal system is the legal system of the Republic of Serbia."