The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has submitted a report on Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and Law on Personal Data Protection to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia for the year 2015. The report has been submitted to the President of the Republic, the Ombudsman and the Government of the Republic of Serbia. It has also been posted on the web presentation of the Commissioner.

With regard to the report, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Saric, has stated the following:

"In 2015, the trend of more intensive appealing to the Commissioner on the part of citizens and other entities was resumed.

In the area of free access to information in 2015, the Commissioner had 9.012 cases, which is an increase of around 3% compared to 2014, or approximately 17.5% compared to 2013, 32.8% compared to 2012, or about 40% compared to 2011, which constitutes a twentyfold increase compared to the year of 2005.

In the area of personal data protection, the Commissioner had 2.868 cases, which is an increase of around 8% compared to 2014, 12% to 2013, 46% to 2012, 73% to 2011 or even 37 times more cases than in 2009.

The trend is good as a confirmation of the rise in citizens' trust in the Commissioner, but, at the same time, positively confirms a large number of problems in exercising the rights.

Independently of high percentage of successful interventions by the Commissioner (95.8%) and the quality of his decisions (in the course of 2015, 115 complaints were filed against the Commissioner's decisions to the Administrative court and none was adopted), the exceptionally and invariably high number of complaints he received is worrying. For the sake of illustrating the issue, during 2015 in the USA and according to their Law on free access to information, the protection of rights was requested in 498 cases, and in Serbia, 1.841 complaints were submitted to the Commissioner against the Republic Administration solely.

According to the number of complaints against the Republic bodies, the Ministry of Interior is ranked first with 254 complaints, followed by the Ministry of Agriculture with 111 complaints, the Ministry of Finance with 109, the Ministry of Defence with 102, the Ministry of Justice 81, etc. However, if the number of complaints is compared with the number of requests for the access to information, the situation is fundamentally different. The most adverse ratio, i.e. the highest number of problems with the public's right to know, is with the Ministry of Justice – 81 complaints against 234 requests (1:2.8). The Ministry of Interior proceeded upon more than 3.000 requests (1:11.8), the Ministry of Finance upon 778 (1:7.1), the Ministry of Defence upon 486 (1: 4.7).

The issues with regard to exercising the public's right to know, or access to information about large financial and material resources deserve particular attention. This is related, as the Commissioner pointed out previously, to a long-lasting problem in communication with the public of certain state companies, i.e. Telekom, Srbijagas (Serbia's gas supplier), The Railways, etc. with the public, but also to some public authorities' actions, such as those of the Ministry of Economy in the case of the Smederevo Steelworks. Apart from resulting in serious violations of free access to information in several cases, such problems had other unwanted consequences, primarily concerning the country's reputation in the anti-corruption context, confirmed by the low country's ranking in the Global Corruption Perceptions Index. Halting the ongoing trend is of crucial importance; otherwise it could compromise the appraisal that in the area of free access to information there is an irreversible, continued positive process, as indicated in previous reports.

In the area of personal data protection, regardless of all the intensive Commissioner's activities, the situation is significantly worse and rather worrying.

In terms of personal data protection, we are practically at the very beginning of the process of the implementation of European standards into Serbia's legal order and real life. It is essential that this process be made far faster and more efficient. Unfortunately, that need is not sufficiently understood and recognized. This is best illustrated by the Government's adoption of the Personal Data Protection Strategy as early as mid-2010, but without passing the Action plan on its implementation yet, although it should have been passed within 3 months. It is self-evident that due to the incomprehensible delay of five and a half years, the Strategy is still only a dead letter, having no practical effects.

Competent public authorities do unacceptably little, or next to nothing, on the necessary further harmonization of our legal framework, particularly the Law on Personal Data Protection, with the European standards, although we are already running behind with it greatly. The Government established in the Action plan for Chapter 23 that the new law will be adopted until the end of 2015, based on the Model prepared by the Commissioner, but the law has not been adopted. Furthermore, no formal draft law has appeared and the "working version" of the Draft presented by the Ministry of Justice has almost nothing in common with the Commissioner's Model. The Action plan for Chapter 23, which complies with EU requirements, has, therefore, not been implemented even prior to opening the Chapter.

A direct consequence of the inadequate and unaccountable attitude towards the state of normative regulation of personal data protection is the fact that none of the laws has regulated numerous areas exceptionally important for personal data protection yet – video surveillance, biometry, security checks, private security sector, etc, which implies many potential and real risks of violations of rights of a large number of citizens.

Numerous incidents or violations of rights to personal data protection, some of which enormous and essential, imperatively require a thorough and radical change in the attitude of the country and society towards personal data protection and privacy in general. The fact that the Commissioner's activities with regard to the protection of rights have been multiplied to such an extent should not and must not serve as a comfort, but rather as a warning. The activities of all shareholders are required, as well as their better performance. It is not solely required by the process of our integration into EU, but more importantly, by the necessity for improvement and protection of human rights safeguarded by the Serbian Constitution".