Protection of Whistleblowers by Making Public Disclosures (Alerting the Public) – Tendencies and Examples from the Practice

The protection of whistle-blowers addressing the public in Serbia, directly or after internal and external whistleblowing, is under extremely restrictive rules. The legal requirements are set forth in such a way that sounding alarm to the public is almost impossible. Practice has shown that the cases of public whistleblowing, especially those with salient political component, are quickly prevented by prosecution of the whistle-blowers, who have no protection mechanism related to whistleblowing during the criminal proceedings.

Domestic case law fundamentally resists the public whistleblowing in two ways. On the one hand, it does so by stipulating conditions extremely difficult to meet for direct public address. On the other, it does so by invoking the non-disclosure of secret data to the public. The latter leads to criminal proceedings against whistle-blowers, exhausting to the defendants and extremely deterrent for other whistle-blowers.

This case study was developed as part of a joint effort by the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), the National Coalition for Decentralisation (NKD), the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and Partners for Democratic Change, to encourage greater citizen participation in the decision-making process through the project “Citizens Have Power”, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The views expressed in this case study are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of USAID.