In the ceremonial hall of the Club of Deputies, organized by the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, a gathering took place on the occasion of the Data Protection Day. This Day is celebrated in all States Parties to the Convention on the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, as well as other countries around the world. This Convention constitutes the first legally binding international treaty in this field.
On this occasion, the following participants addressed: Stanojla Mandic, Deputy Commissioner, who also performs the duties of the Trustee, H.E. Sem Fabrizi, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, H.E. Andrea Orizio, Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, Tobias Flesenkemper, Head of the Mission of the Council of Europe in Belgrade, Zlatko Petrović, Nevena Ružić and Slavoljupka Pavlović, Assistant Secretary General of the Commissioner’s Office. The meeting presents the situation in the field of personal data protection in Serbia, as well as the newspapers adopted by the new Law on Personal Data Protection. Also, the fourth publication of the Commissioner in the field of personal data protection “Privacy personality data – attitudes and opinions of the Commissioner” was also presented.
Stanojla Mandić, Deputy Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, addressed the participants first.
“By marking this international Data Protection Day, we want to draw attention to the significance of this topic in the modern world, especially in the time of increasingly massive electronic communications, digital economies, the use of social networks. On this occasion, there would be greater satisfaction when we could talk more about examples of good practice, but unfortunately, I am afraid that this year we have much less reason for optimism compared to the previous ones. There are two basic reasons why we can not be optimistic. The first is that we celebrate this Day without the Commissioner, without the key personality at the head of the institution, because as you know, Mr. Rodoljub Sabic has expired his mandate at the end of last year, and the National Assembly has not yet made a decision on the election of a new Commissioner. Another reason that we are much more concerned about is the new Law on Personal Data Protection, which is not best regulated, and with which application we should start in 7 months, “Mandic stressed.
She further noted that the implementation of the new law would be challenging with the implementation of the new law, and that the Commissioner’s Office contributed, during the period of preparation of that law, to removing the obstacles, through proposals and concrete models of laws and solutions, but that, unfortunately, they were not accepted that now we have passed a law that is difficult and confusing to interpret. The past period was marked by the commitment to point to the most severe provision of the law, a provision that erases the constitutional guarantee that citizens’ rights to data protection can be limited only by law. The amended amendment was not accepted, the law was adopted, without debate, and there is a reasonable fear that this law will apply from August 21 this year. The practice so far has shown that citizens are increasingly aware of the importance of having a regulated area when it comes to collecting, processing and storing personal data. Year after year, the number of cases reported to the Commissioner increases, as there are increasing numbers of excessive situations when talking about the illegal processing of personal data.
As part of the EU accession, Serbia has begun aligning with chapters 23 and 24 dealing with the areas of Justice and Fundamental Rights, Freedom and Security, and the right to the protection of personal data takes a significant place.
