Home > 5.1 Nature of the referendum > SERBIA - Urgent Opinion on the Draft Law on the Referendum and the People's Initiative
 
 
 
Download file    
 
 
Paragraph 71
 

Article 8.2 regulates the protection of personal data. The question arises whether the ban to use personal data collected during the referendum and people’s initiative processes for any other purpose means that the data may not be published in the media. Such a consequence is obvious outside the field of elections and referendums. For the people’s initiative, this would mean that only the number of signatures could be published, but not who has signed the petition. It would be better to state this explicitly. Since many voters could decide to sign the request for referendum based on who the initiators are, the Venice Commission recommends publishing the name of the initiators. Other personal data such as addresses should be kept secret.