Document Archiving

On January 24, 2020, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Archival Material and Archival Activities ("Official Gazette of the RS", No. 6/2020) (hereinafter: the Law), and one year after its adoption its official implementation began.

This area was regulated by the anachronistic Law on Cultural Heritage from 1994 and the Law on Archival Material of the Federation of the Republic of Yugoslavia from 1998, which ceases to be valid on the day the Law enters into force.

On May 7, 2021, Ministry of Culture and Information submitted a ruling to the Historical Archives of Belgrade, in accordance with which, due to difficult business conditions and in accordance with the Law for all legal entities:

1. Тhe deadline for drafting mandatory normative acts has been extended until December 31, 2021;
2. The obligation to submit a transcript of the archive book arises in 2022, ie the transcript is submitted by April 30, 2022.

This Law regulates:

1) system of protection of archival material and documentary material;
2) the conditions and manner of use of archival material are determined;
3) the legal regulations relating to archival material originally created in electronic form shall be determined;
4) competence and activity of archives in the Republic of Serbia;
5) clearly define the obligations of all creators and holders of archival material and documentary material; and
6) opens space for improving the conditions for the work of archives in the Republic of Serbia and their equal development.

Article 9 of the Law, among other things, defines the following obligations to the subjects to which the Law applies:

1) provision of appropriate space and equipment for storage and protection of archival material and documentary material;
2) keeping an archive book on the prescribed forms;
3) appointing a responsible expert for protection and handling of archival material and documentary material;
4) recording, marking, classifying, dating and archiving archival material and documentary material;
5) submission of a transcript of the archive book to the competent archive no later than April 30 of the current year for documentary material created in the previous year;
6) informing the competent public archive about all changes that are important for the archive material no later than 30 days from the day of their occurrence.

Article 14 of the Law prescribes the drafting of the following normative acts:

1) General act on the manner of recording, classifying, archiving and storing archival material and documented material;
2) List of categories of archival material and documentary material with retention periods;
3) General act on the manner of recording, protection and use of electronic documents.

The following LINK contains more details on the implementation process, deadlines and examples of documentation in accordance with the Law (available only in Serbian).

Penalties:

The Law envisages fines in the amount of 50,000 dinars to 2,000,000 dinars for non-compliance with the prescribed obligations, and from 5,000 dinars to 150,000 dinars for the legal representative.

There are obligations in accordance with the Law for Entrepreneurs, ie natural persons who perform a registered activity, but the Law does not provide penalties for this category of entities.