no. 07-00-00124/2023-02 date: 4.8.2023.

OPINION

The opinion was issued in the proceedings regarding the complaint filed by AA against the Ministry of Internal Affairs (from now on: the Ministry). In the complaint and the amendments, the applicant stated, among other things, that he was employed at the Ministry from June 1, 2000, to July 10, 2018, when his employment ended due to his retirement. He further stated that “the MIA treated him unequally compared to other members of the Ministry because they did not grant him a canceled official identification card when he retired”, as well as that, in this particular case, he was put in an unjustifiably disadvantageous position compared to his colleagues BB and VV, who, upon retiring, had their official identification cards canceled “automatically” and without submitting a request. He also stated that on October 14, 2022, he submitted a request to the Ministry to be granted a canceled official identity card, but that by the decision of the Human Resources Sector 08 number 445/23 dated February 7, 2023, his request was rejected as unfounded, as well as that he believes that in this particular case, he was discriminated against because “during his service, he made the public aware of the illegal actions of the Police Directorate, the Criminal Police Directorate and the Service for Combating Organized Crime”, and because of his previous addresses to the Commissioner, as well as because of his political conviction and political contacts with “leaders of the opposition“. In the Ministry’s statement, among other things, it was specified that the complainant was issued an official identification card on March 27, 2007, based on the Rulebook on the Official Identification Card of Authorized Officials and Badges of Uniformed Police Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (from now on Rulebook), which was in force in the period from November 1, 2001, to March 2019, and which did not provide for the retention of the official identification of authorized officials when their employment in the Ministry ends. It was further stated that during the period of validity of this Rulebook, the Human Resources Department received “only a few requests related to the retention of official identification cards and that in those cases, no special decision was made to reject the request, but the requesters were informed by an official document that there are no conditions for the retention of official identification cards after the termination of employment”. In the statement, it was clarified that in April 2019, the Regulation on the Appearance, Form, and Content of Official Badges and Official Identification (from now on: Regulation) entered into force, which in Article 10 stipulates that when the employment of a police officer in the Ministry ends by agreement or retirement, the official identification can be retained, but that it is canceled by perforation. It was also stated that following the changes in the regulations, new official identification cards were issued to police officers BB and VV on April 22, 2019, which they kept after their employment in the Ministry ended (BB on December 31, 2020, and VV on September 1, 2022), and that they are not in a comparable situation with the complainant, whose employment in the Ministry ended in 2018. During the proceedings, it was determined that the provisions of the Rulebook on the Official Identification Card of Authorized Officials and Badges of Uniformed Police Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (“Official Gazette of the RS” 53/01 and 59/02) in Article 8, paragraph 1, item 1, stipulated that an authorized official is obliged to return his official ID card when their employment in the Ministry ends, while paragraph 3 of the same provision stipulated that a uniformed member of the police is obliged to return the badge of a uniformed member of the police following the cases from para. 1. and 2. of this article. In this regard, it can be stated that the provisions of the Rulebook that were in force at the time when the complainant was issued official identification in 2007, i.e., at the time of his retirement in 2018 did not provide for the possibility of retaining the official identification of an authorized official. Furthermore, given that the Regulation on the Appearance, Form, and Content of Official Badges and Official Identification, which gives the possibility of retaining official identification, entered into force in April 2019, based on this Regulation, new official identification cards were issued to police officers, as well as that BB’s and VV’s employment in the Ministry ended in 2020, i.e., in 2022, it can be stated that the complainant and the persons in relation to whom he considers that he was put in an unjustified disadvantageous position are not in a comparable situation, bearing in mind that in this particular case, their official identification cards were issued under two different legal acts, that is, that their employment relationship ended during the validity of different legal regulations, which regulated the issue of retaining official identification cards in a different way. Taking into account all of the above, the Commissioner issued the opinion that the Ministry did not violate the provisions of the Law on Prohibition of Discrimination.

COMMISSIONER FOR THE PROTECTION OF EQUALITY
Brankica Janković