In connection with the amendment to the Decision on Public Route Transport which the Assembly of the City of Belgrade passed yesterday, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent letters (identical in content) to the Mayor of the City of Belgrade and the Chairperson of the Belgrade City Assembly.

The Commissioner focused in particular on those parts of the Decision which granted ticket inspectors in public transport the power to process personal data by verifying citizens' identity even without the presence of a police officer or a municipal police officer and stipulated that citizens have a duty to provide the requested information.

In this regard, the Commissioner recalled that personal data protection is guaranteed by Article 42 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. According to paragraph 2 of the same Article, any collecting, keeping, processing and use of personal data must be governed by a law. Indeed, the Decision passed by the Constitutional Court of Serbia in its session held on 30 May 2012 reaffirmed that secondary legislation cannot provide valid legal grounds for personal data processing. In view of the foregoing, the Law on Personal Data Protection also stipulates that personal data protection is permitted only if based on a statutory provision or on the data subject's consent.

A decision passed by the City Assembly is, of course, a piece of secondary legislation, which means it cannot provide grounds for the ticket inspectors' "right" to verify citizens' identity, i.e. to process citizens' personal data, or for the citizens' duty to provide such data.

Without questioning the importance of ensuring orderly payment of public transport fares, the Commissioner noted that this should and must be done exclusively within the boundaries imposed by the Constitution and the applicable laws and explained that the said Decision, as it pertained to personal data processing, clearly overstepped those boundaries, which rendered its unconstitutional and illegal. For this reason, the Commissioner expects the competent authorities of the City of Belgrade to refrain from enforcing this Decision, to avoid potential unwanted reactions from citizens, to avoid any future actions by the Commissioner in accordance with his powers in this regard and to notify the Commissioner of its compliance.