Implementation of Transitional Laws in Serbia 2006

Implementation of Transitional Laws in Serbia 2006of secrecy of letters and other forms of communication. In that sense,decisions on such actions are classified as secret in the Law on SecurityIntelligence Agency and sub-legal acts of the Agency” 790 . It is true that theConstitution of the Republic of Serbia considers this as legal in certainsituations, but it is questionable to what degree BIA does it, as violation ofthe rights and freedoms of Serbian citizens is allowed only to a certain limitand does not depend on the discretion evaluation of BIA’s managers.The Serbian Supreme Court in a closed session held on April 19, 2006passed a decision that BIA rejected 791 . Members of the council were judgesJadranka Injac, Borivoje Bunjevacki, Zoja Popovic and court counselorVera Marinkovic 792 . Not going deeper into the merits, the Supreme Courtestablished that BIA cannot be the party in the procedure and thereforeit cannot be the prosecutor in administrative procedure either. BIAhad no active legitimacy in the dispute as execution of the right to freeaccess to information is an administrative affair that is solved through theimplementation of the Law on General Administrative Procedure 793 , whichstipulates that prosecutor in the administrative procedure can be a physicalperson, legal person or other party if it thinks that administrative act violatedsome right or legal interest 794 . The decision of the commissioner did notdecide on BIA’s right or legal interest, but the agency’s obligations to actas first-instance administration body following a request of the Initiative.Following this decision of the Serbian Supreme Court, the decision of thecommissioner became executive so BIA was obliged to submit the requiredinformation within seven days. BIA has not done so to date.After BIA’s rejection to submit the required data, apart from the decision ofthe commissioner and decision of the Serbian Supreme Court, the Initiativedecided to use the last mechanism to protect the right to free access toinformation that the law allows and to submit a request for execution of thecommissioner’s decision to the Serbian government 795 . Under the Law onFree Access to Information, the commissioner decisions are obligatory, and790 The charges that BIA raised to the Serbian Supreme Court are available in the Initiative’s documentation791 Decision of the Serbian Supreme Court no. U. 247/06 of May 23 rd , 2006, available in the Initiative’s documentation792 Ibid793 The Law on General Administrative Procedure (Official Gazette of the FRY Nos. 33/97 and 31/2001),adopted on July 19 th , 1997. Changes and amendments to this law were adopted on July 5 th , 2001794 See above under 791795 The Initiative submitted a request to the Serbian government on May, 29 th , 2006 and it available in theInitiative’s documentation146