Parliamentary Committee vague on access to information – absence of will to perform proper supervision over executive authority

Transparency Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) estimates that Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information, by accepting conclusions without real content, on the occasion of annual report of Commissioner for Information, reduced its acting to mere declaration, that doesn't enable resolving of problems among which some are a decade old. Truthfully, as it recently turned out , not even when National Assembly defined so, on the basis of precise conclusions of Parliamentary Committees, clear obligation for the Government, is not enough to bring results. It is also necessary that Parliament honestly tends to perform supervision over executive authority and to use reports of independent organs for such activity.

Comparing three draft conclusions that Committee discussed  showed that final version, unlike two of denied drafts, does not contain specific measures that could lead to improvement of status related to free access to information.  Therefore, for example, adopted text just generally states that state organs should respect the Law and obligation to provide execution of Commissioners decisions and initiate procedures against violators or to change the Law to authorize Commissioner to do so, is not being mentioned. 

After one of three Committees that discuss Commissioner's report adopted such disappointing draft conclusion, only hope remains that Judiciary Committee and Committee for Human and Minority rights will formulate specific recommendations and that National Assembly will at least oblige the Government, after adoption of these conclusions, to submit reports on their implementation.

It remains uncertain for now when such thing is supposed to occur, because, one should remind that authorized committees discusses three weeks ago report of Anticorruption Agency and report of Ombudsman one month and a half ago, and that even then was stated that draft conclusions will be determined in "one of the following sittings". Whatever the conclusions of remaining two Committees are, the fact that Committee for Culture and Information consciously made one step back compared to previous practice of the Parliament remains.

Details (with organic text of all three drafts) on TS web-page: http://goo.gl/ce4xz3

Transparency – Serbia

Belgrade, 3 June 2015