Civil Rights Must Be Respected In Practice

Civil Rights Must Be Respected In Practice RODOLJUB ŠABIĆ Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection

A real progress in implementation of the Chapter 23 will be when civil rights are respected in practice which is something that many government officials still find foreign. Their behaviour ranges from the routine aloofness to denying the public the right to find out how large public- and state-owned financial resources are used

The latest criticism that Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić has received from the Prime Minister elect and his coalition partner is just a continuation of the disparagement he has been exposed to ever since the office of the Information Commissioner was established. The only thing that is different is a progressive growth of civil rights violations that come under his scope of work.

Do yout hink that the media, which have overstepped all ethical boundaries in reporting about the recently committed crimes, are the first or the last link in the chain of nonfunctional state institutions? — Sometimes they are the first, sometimes the last. The way they report often constitutes not only a breach of professional and ethical standards in journalism and trampling on the dignity of victims, their families and the public but also a breach of law. The media often 'analyze' a criminal act in a way that suggests that they have had a direct access to official investigation documents which, in turn, causes suspicion that the Law on Personal Data Protection and other laws (like the Law on Public Information and Media, Criminal Code and Code on Criminal Procedure) have been breached with the blessing from the people working for the state institutions. All of this speaks volumes about the need for the line ministry, the prosecution and the police to react, in addition to the Commissioner.

Supervisory procedures conducted by the Commissioner in certain cases have confirmed that the state bodies have been 'leaking' information. However, in some cases, the media claiming that the information came from „relliable official sources“ is just a plain falsefood. Regardless of the situation – be it blindly trusting bad sources, or intentional spinning the news, or consciously „creating“ falsefoods for the purpose of boosting circulation – these practices should be denounced and dealt with. This includes not only journalist associations but also state bodies and institutions which reputation and authority are being smeared in this way. Further from that, it is very indicative and worrying that the said institutions often don't even react to such things, let alone deny any wrongdoing on their part.

rights? Are we talking about the rascals from the state administration or the usual systemic politically correct responses that we get from the government about respecting the rule of the law? — Statistically speaking, ministries are institutions that have the biggest problems with respecting civil rights. In 2015, the Commissioner's office received 1,841 complaints against the state bodies which is a half of all the filed complaints. Almost fifty percent of these complaints – 846 – relate to the bodies

OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES, THE SERBIAN

PROGRESSIVE PARTY (SPP) HAS FILED THE BIGGEST NUMBER OF COMPLAINTS TO THE COMMISSIONER WHEN IT WAS IN OPPOSITION AND THE COMMISSIONER HAS RULED IN THE PARTY'S FAVOUR MORE THAN IN ANY OTHER CASE. ONCE THEY CAME TO POWER, EVERYTHING CHANGED

that make the core of the state ad-

Considering your scope of work, which state institutions have failed the most in respecting civil ministration which is the ministries.

However, we should not focus on statistics or quantity alone. I have been warning for quite some time now that the root of the problem regarding violation of civil rights has moved to the segment of large financial or material resources. In that context, it is very worrisome to see just how untransparent is the work done by state-owned and public enterprises which is the reason why I have submitted a special report to the Parliament.

There are many individual and group characteristics of the responsible officials which are causing problems when it comes to the public exercising their rights. They range from not fully comprehending the importance of human and public rights, a warped image of their own role, arrogance, and, in many cases, intentional activities on hiding their personal incompetence, lack of accomplished results, irrationality and even worse abuse of power, crime and corruption from the public.

Should we feel despicable for reading such contents and are we to blame for being humiliated? — There is a well-known political quote by Karl Marx who says that „every country has the government it deserves“. This could be expanded to include the media and the public stage.

The situation in our media is incredibly worrisome, sad and desperate. What is even more alarming is the lack of committment on the society and the state's part to do something about it. And let's not even talk about the fact that the way our media work, and especially the tabloids, cannot be contributed to an unwanted or temporary incident but rather a concept or a method that is used in governing the public stage. This is not a coincidence but a result of the government's unwilligness to stop the wave of tabloidisation. People also doubt

the government's readiness to put a stop to this because it seems that the government uses the media to accomplish its goals when fighting their political opponents.

The current situation needs to be changed. Instead of focusing on worthless, stupid and demeaning topics, we should focus on culture, art or education. However, this requires a far bigger and stronger engagement of all relevant societal structures. As long as their interest in dealing with this issue is weak and sporadic or even completely absent, we are to blame for the humiliation that we have been suffering.

Considering all of the aforementioned, do you think that the implementation of the chapters 23 and 24 will make us more civil or at least make this country a more civilised one? — I believe that the actual implementation, and not some formal opening or closing of the chapters, is at the core of our EU accession negotiations. I believe that we can and have to make Serbia a well-regulated country that abides by the rule of the law. However, I do not agree with those unrealistically optimistic politicians who claim that „between 80% and 90% of the work has already been done“. I think that this task should be approached in a much more objective and responsible manner. To illustrate this point, let me just remind you of the current situation in the personal data protection segment which, along with other, will be an inevitable topic of the Chapter 23.

It is really not acceptable for the state to dump most of the work on the personal data protection onto the Commissioner's office. Our activities are growing exponentially. For instance, in 2009, we had 83 cases and, in 2015, we had 2,430 cases which is a 30-fold-increase. We cannot compensate for the work that other authorities, primarily the ministries, the government and the Parliament, should be doing within the framework of one strategic approach.

Formally speaking, Serbia does have the Personal Data Protection Strategy. The government adopted this strategy in the summer of 2010 following my initiative. The Strategy stipulates that „an action plan for the Strategy's implementation with identified activities, expected results, executors of specific tasks and deadlines should be written within 90 days since the Strategy's publication“.

That was six years ago and the government still hasn't drafted this action plan which renders the Strategy an empty proclamation.

The same thing happened to the adoption of the new Personal Data Protection Law. Following the initiative by the Commissioner's Office, the need to adopt this law was recognised back in 2012. An interdepartmental government task force was formed but no results have been accomplished as yet. The fact that the Commissioner drafted the format of the new law and made it available to the government two years ago amounted to nothing. In its Action Plan pertaining to the Chapter 23 of the EU accession negotiations the government did say that the new law would have been adopted by late 2015 with the Commissioner's draft serving as the basis. However, the law was not passed and the draft, presented by the Ministry of Justice, did not resemble the Commissioner's draft at all. Do you think that the EU has been turning its head away from this issue and didn't you expect the EU to react more strongly to the events in Savamala which, according to the internal findings of the Ombudsman, took place because certain obligations towards a foreign investor had to be fulfilled? — In politics, and especially in international politics, the reaction doesn't necessarily has to be loud in order to have an impact. On the surface, the EU represenatives were more concerned with other topics like the Belgrade-Priština relations but I can assure you that the Savamala case was not bypassed or underestimated.

After all, I think that that is practically impossible. An event involving a group of masked people taking part in a night operation in downtown Belgrade who have committed criminal acts and violated several human rights is something that, simply put, should not have happened at all. However, it did happen and, in this case, the reaction from our authorities should have been fast and strong. In this particular case, the event did happen but there was no reaction whatsoever. To ignore this, particularly in the light of the recently opened negotiations about the Chapter 23 which has human rights

IT IS UNREALISTIC TO EXPECT PROGRESS IN

THESE NEGOTIATIONS IF THE SAVAMALA CASE DOESN'T HAVE AN ADEQUATE CLOSURE

and judiciary at its core, should be practically impossible. It is unrealistic to expect progress in these negotiations if the Savamala case doesn't have an adequate closure.

The Socialist Party, which is a close politicial ally of the Serbian Progressive Party, has criticised you pretty harshly recently, while the Prime Minister elect has also been quite critical of the work done by the indepedent bodies. What do you base your belief about the unaffected integrity of independent institutions on? — This „criticism“ coming from the Socialist Party is a politically motivated move based on very blatant falsefoods and imputations and I don't think it is even deserving of a comment. In terms of the statements made by the Prime Minister elect, he did express his dissatisfaction, even animosity towards the Commissioner. Still, I wouldn't label it as criticism because critique implies serious assertions which the Prime Minister elect did now provide.

I would just like to say that similar „critiques“ are nothing new. They have been around since the very establishment of the Commissioner's office. Different political establishments have labelled me as „a person who jeopardises the country's security“, „undermines its economic and financial system“ and is to be „blamed for everything“. This criticism is actually the best illustration of a phenomenon that has pervaded our political stage. When they are in opposition, our political parties are very sensitive to transparency and civil / human rights, as well as very supportive of the Commissioner's activities. Once they come to power, all of this radically changes. While we are on the subject of the Prime Minister elect, I would just like to remind you that, out of all political parties, his party - the Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) - has filed the biggest number of complaints to the Commissioner by far and that the Commissioner has ruled in the party's favour more than in any other case. As an opposition party, the SPP treated legal rights in a rational, legitimate, responsible and robust manner and was even promoting them. Once they came to power, everything changed.

Regardless of all the obstacles, problems and obstructions, the Commissioner's office has been growing stronger year-on-year. I belileve that other indepedent institutions that were formed after us will take have a similar trajectory.

A recent survey has shown that many citizens are completely politically clueless, and that quite a few of them have been repeated victims of populism and fans of authoritative leaders. When citizens approach the Commissioner's office are they even aware of their rights and the ways to protect them? — What you have described doesn't happen only in Serbia but also in all transition countries to a higher or lesser degree. It is vitally important that we change this picture. Raising the awareness about civil rights and citizens' readiness to use and fight for these rights is the right measure of quality of the transition. That's why I think that the biggest success in implementing the Law on Free Access to the Information of Public Importance falsefoods in the fact that it is mostly the citizens who are exercising the rights guaranteed by this law.

THE FAILED COUP IN TURKEY Erdogan’s Revenge

Turkey’s president is destroying the democracy that Turks risked their lives to defend

Much is unknown about the attempted military coup in Turkey on the night of July 15th. Why was it botched so badly? How far up the ranks did the conspiracy reach? Were the putschists old-style secularists, as their initial communiqué suggested; or were they followers of an exiled Islamist cleric, Fethullah Gulen, as the government claims?

But two things are clear. First, the people of Turkey showed great bravery in coming out onto the streets to confront the soldiers; hundreds died. Opposition parties, no matter how much they may despise President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, united to denounce the assault on democracy. Better the flawed, Islamist-tinged strongman than the return of the generals for the fifth time since the 1960s.

The second, more alarming conclusion is that Mr Erdogan is fast destroying the very democracy that the people defended with their lives. He has declared a state of emergency that will last at least three months. About 6,000 soldiers have been arrested; thousands more policemen, prosecutors and judges have been sacked or suspended. So have academics, teachers and civil servants, though there is little sign they had anything to do with the coup. Secularists, Kurds and other minorities feel intimidated by Mr Erdogan’s loyalists on the streets.

The purge is so deep and so wide—affecting at least 60,000 people—that some compare it to America’s disastrous de-Baathification of Iraq. It goes far beyond the need to preserve the security of the state. Mr Erdogan conflates dissent with treachery; he is staging his own coup against Turkish pluralism. Unrestrained, he will lead his country to more conflict and chaos. And that, in turn, poses a serious danger to Turkey’s neighbours, to Europe and to the West.

ONE MORE EARTHQUAKE

The failed putsch may well become the third shock to Europe’s post-1989 order. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 destroyed the idea that Europe’s borders were fixed and that the cold war was over. The Brexit referendum last month shattered the notion of ineluctable integration in the European Union. Now the coup attempt in Turkey, and the reaction to it, raise troubling questions about the reversibility of democracy within the Western world—which Turkey, though on its fringe, once seemed destined to join.

The turmoil is unsettling NATO, the military alliance that underpins Europe’s democracies. Without evidence, Mr Erdogan’s ministers blame America for the coup; they have demanded that it extradite Mr Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, or risk Turkey turning its back on the West. Electricity to the military base at Incirlik, a hub of American-led air operations against Islamic State (IS), was cut off for a time. Were Turkey an applicant today, it would struggle to qualify for NATO; yet the alliance has no means to expel a member that goes bad.

With the second-largest armed forces in NATO, Turkey has been the forward bastion of the West, first against Soviet totalitarianism and then against the chaos of the Middle East. In the early years of government under Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development (AK) party, the country became the model of a prospering, stable Muslim democracy. It sought peace with the Kurdish minority, and the economy grew healthily thanks to sensible reforms. The EU opened membership negotiations with Turkey in 2005.

MANY TOURISTS ARE NOW

TOO FRIGHTENED TO VISIT, SO THE CURRENT-ACCOUNT DEFICIT WILL ONLY GAPE WIDER

But since major protests in 2013 against plans to build over Gezi Park in Istanbul, and then a corruption scandal, Mr Erdogan has become ever more autocratic. His regime has jailed journalists, eviscerated the army and cowed the judiciary, all in the name of rooting out the “parallel state” Mr Erdogan claims the Gulenists have built. As a cheerleader for the overthrow of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, he turned a blind eye to the passage of jihadists through Turkey. Mr Erdogan wants a new constitution to allow himself to become an executive president, though he hardly lacks power. He has abandoned all caution to achieve it, not least by letting peace talks with the Kurds break down. Turkey now faces a double insurgency: by the Kurds and the jihadists.

AUTOCRATS R US

Handled more wisely, the failure of the coup might have been the dying kick of Turkey’s militarists. Mr Erdogan could have become the magnanimous unifier of a divided nation, unmuzzling the press, restarting peace talks with Kurds and building lasting, independent institutions. Instead he is falling into paranoid intolerance: more like the Arab despots he claims to despise than the democratic statesman he might have become.

Granted, the AK party has won every election since 2002. But Mr Erdogan’s view of democracy is distinctly majoritarian: though only about half of Turks vote for him, he thinks he can do what he wants. It will be principally for Turks themselves to check their president, by peacefully resisting his power grabs and backing his opponents at the ballot box.

Turkey’s Western friends must urge Mr Erdogan to exercise restraint and respect the law. But what if he will not listen? Turkey is a vital ally in the war against IS. It controls the south-eastern approaches to Europe, and therefore the flow of everything from natural gas to Syrian refugees. Europe cannot change geography, but it can make itself less vulnerable, starting with a proper system to control the EU’s external frontiers and handle asylum-seekers. And although Mr Erdogan holds many cards, he is not immune from pressure. Just before the coup he patched up relations with Israel and Russia.

Mr Erdogan’s greatest success—the economy—has become his weak point. Many tourists are now too frightened to visit, so the current-account deficit will only gape wider. To stay afloat the country needs foreign investment and loans, so it must reassure foreigners that it is stable. With Mr Erdogan acting like a vengeful sultan, that will be hard.

The repercussions of the putsch will be felt for a long time. The coup-makers killed many fellow Turks, discredited the army, weakened its ability to protect the frontier and fight terrorists, rattled NATO and removed the restraints on an autocratic president. A terrible toll for a night of power-lust.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original article, in English, can be found on www.economist.com

EU Accession Policy Remains a Priority

There is no dilemma - the EU accession policy remains a priority after the formation of the new Government. The accession process will remain an inseparable part of the reform policy JADRANKA JOKSIMOVIĆ Serbian Minister without portfolio Responsible for European integration

"We have done everything in our power and deserved the opening of the chapters", this was the sentence that we have often uttered in the days before the opening of Chapters 23 and 24. This sentence has not only reflected our position, but it also represents the essence of the process which consists of the acceptance and implementation of clearly defined standards.

Serbia has fulfilled clear criteria and the chapters have been opened. Of course, there is still a lot of work ahead of us regarding the implementation of the standards, which is critical for the concrete progress which will be felt by every citizen of our country. The fact that we have already implemented nearly 80% of the planned commitments at this stage, despite the chapters not having been opened, clearly shows how much we are committed to this.

The essence of European integration is the creation of a regulated society and state, in which the citizens will receive adequate and efficient service for the services paid to the state, and where the rule of law will mean certainty and stability for the citizens, for business, and for investments. The opening of Chapters 23 and 24 will accelerate the reforms in the areas that are important for the citizens - from the fight against corruption, especially in areas where most citizens are faced with corruption (health, education, police, local government, etc.), to judicial reform towards more efficient and quality processes, fight against organized crime, rule of law, more secure legal environment for attracting new investments and jobs, minority rights, situation in the media...

There is no dilemma - the EU accession policy remains a priority after the formation of the new Government. The accession process will remain an inseparable part of the reform policy, an integral part of internal development policy, which will be treated as an investment in healthy foundations for building a functional and efficient state and a higher standard of living for its citizens. Such approach proved to be the only one that can yield results.

We will not raise the expectations

DEDICATED POLICY

of citizens based on unrealistic grounds - instead, formal steps in the negotiations will be based on the results achieved. We haven't been giving unrealistic promises, we haven’t been saying that it can be easily accomplished, and we haven’t been saying that we will live better today already. Instead, we have shown that we are a state that thinks seriously about its development and that we have a clear strategic plan - not only about what will happen tomorrow, but also what will happen in ten, fifteen or twenty years. We are leading Serbia on its path of European integration as an important instrument for the recovery of our domestic economy and overall development, which will be felt as prosperity by each citizen of our country. Through responsible and disciplined policy, and primarily through economic policy, along with attracting new investments, Serbia is surely marching, primarily, towards sustainable

SERBIA HAS GAINED IMPORTANT PARTNERS IN

THE WORLD BY ITS RESPONSIBLE AND TRULY

economic recovery and progress.

I am convinced that this is one of the reasons why the citizens still strongly support the reforms. With their support, our people have demonstrated maturity and the desire for progress.

Of course, one part of our public exhibits eurosceptic views, which is to be expected since the support to European integrations in the Member States, as well as in the candidate countries, is not immune to the overall context of international relations at the time when the candidate begins or is in the process of negotiations. Joining the EU is a process fraught with challenges, but also with significant and concrete benefits for the state and its citizens. It is important to present the concrete benefits from the process to the citizens. The fact is that, despite all the challenges with which the EU is facing, it remains the best place to live and work.

We strive to make the process transparent, and not be tied to the elite. The openness of the negotiation process is our imperative, because we are all owners of the process that will affect the lives of us all.

Serbia has gained important partners in the world by its responsible and truly dedicated policy. For Serbia as a candidate for EU membership, the message that is these days coming from the EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, and many others, that they support the enlargement policy based on fulfilled criteria and respect for fair rules for membership, is also important. It is a fact that all countries have gone through some kind of political conditioning. Some countries have become members owing to some more favourable international circumstances for them, even though they were not fully prepared. Many would expect us to protest and be angry because of this. However, since we care to reform the society, we continue to work hard, not wasting our time looking at great global debates, which we are prone to, and trying not to miss real opportunities for progress. Only turning towards pragmatism and solving specific life issues on realistic grounds can lead to the goals we all strive to achieve.