In late July, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, after appeared in the public the information that the Tax Administration would, in determining the tax on rental apartments, process personal data of the citizens collected in the population census, held by the Serbian Statistical Office, initiated a supervision procedure over the implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection in both of these institutions.

As soon as in the initial phase of the Commissioner's supervision procedure (he already informed the public about it) in talks with the directors of both institutions he got assurances that such processing of personal data has neither been made nor planned, as they are aware of its unlawfulness. The procedure further continued requesting from both institutions to declare in writing of all specific, relevant issues.

The facts established in the procedure confirmed that not only in the specific case unlawful processing of personal data was not carried out, but in fact it is not, and it would not be possible.

The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, pursuant to the provisions of the Law on Official Statistics, after completion of processing of the data collected, removes identifiers of reporting and statistical units in the electronic database. The Office also destroys paper documents in keeping with the List of categories of registry materials with retention periods.

Individual census forms in paper form from the 2011 Census, in keeping with the abovementioned List of categories of registry material with retention periods, and in accordance with the Decree of the Archive of Serbia, 02 Number 1197 of 29 December 2014, were destroyed, since the retention period, which was three years, expired.

The Commissioner suspended further supervision procedure in this legal matter.