Centre for Civic Education (CCE) informs the public that the Council of the Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information (AZLP) has upheld CCE’s appeal and annulled part of the decision of the Faculty of Maritime Studies of the University of Montenegro (UoM), which denied access to data on the individual salaries of employees. This decision confirms what CCE has consistently insisted on: privacy protection cannot serve as a shield for concealing how public funds are spent.
As part of its research into the transparency of UoM, CCE requested from the University’s organisational units individual salary records containing the names and surnames of employees. Some faculties acted in accordance with the law and duly provided all the requested data. However, some completely denied access to this information, invoking privacy protection, while others provided salary amounts without the names and surnames of employees, thereby defeating the very purpose of access to such information.
AZLP has now challenged this practice. The Council of the Agency took the position that information on the salaries of employees paid from public funds should be publicly available, as there is a strong public interest in knowing how public money is spent. Privacy protection justifies the redaction of personal identification numbers, addresses, bank account numbers and other data protected by law, but it cannot serve as a basis for concealing the names and surnames of employees and the amounts of their salaries financed from public funds.
CCE has therefore sent letters to those on the non-transparency blacklist – the UoM Rectorate, the Faculty of Political Science, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the Faculty for Sport and Physical Education, the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, the Music Academy, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. In light of the AZLP decision, we expect them to reconsider their previous actions without further delay and provide complete data on individual salaries, including the names and surnames of employees, while withholding only those data for which there is a clear legal basis for protection.
Following the decision of the competent second-instance authority concerning the same type of information within the same university, there is no longer any room for different UoM units to interpret the public’s right of access as they see fit. Any continued withholding of this information would amount to disregarding the legal position of AZLP and knowingly maintaining a non-transparent practice when it comes to the spending of public funds.
It is particularly important for UoM to understand that university autonomy does not mean autonomy from public accountability. UoM is predominantly financed by citizens’ money and must therefore be prepared to account to the public for how those funds are allocated and spent. Public money does not cease to be public once it enters the University’s account.
Transparency in the management of public funds is not a matter of goodwill on the part of those who manage public institutions, but a legal obligation. UoM cannot demand more money and greater autonomy from the state while at the same time providing the public with less information about how it manages those funds. Academic autonomy and financial non-transparency are not the same thing, and the AZLP decision is an important reminder of that distinction.
Jovana Radulović, Programme Assistant