The Archival Material and Archival Activity Act (Official Gazette of RS no. 6/2020 – hereinafter: the “Act“), which was passed in 2020, officially begins to be applied starting year 2021.
In order to avoid fines provided by this Act, which range from 50,000 to 2,000,000 dinars for a legal entity and from 5,000 to 150,000 dinars for a responsible person in a legal entity, MPartners Legal team points out to you the changes that were passed by this new Act in relation to the previous one, which was applied until recently.
Namely, the Act introduced the obligation of companies and other legal entities to adopt the following regulations:
1) Rulebook on office and archive operations,
2) Rulebook on the manner of recording, protection and use of electronic documents,
3) List of categories of archival material and documentary material with retention periods,
4) Archive book.
The Act prescribes the obligation to keep the Archive Book as an electronic form that will be submitted annually to the competent archive, all in order to facilitate the process of recording and inspection of archives, while the Rulebooks and List are adopted once and kept in the company for inspection by competent authorities.
In the case of the List of categories of archival material and documentary material with retention periods, there is an additional obligation to submit it to the competent archive in writing, with an accompanying letter. Delivery is also planned for a printed copy of the Archive Book with entered data on archived acts in each calendar year, and considering the fact that the Act applies from previous year, the Archive Book for 2021 will be submitted to the competent archive with a cover letter by April 30, 2022, according to the information on the website of the Historical Archive of the City of Belgrade.
Less than a month before the deadline for submitting the Archive Book, the Rulebook on the Archive Book Form (Official Gazette of the RS, No. 34/2022 – hereinafter: the “Rulebook“) was adopted, which prescribes the form of the Archive Book kept by the creators of archival material and documentary material. Entry in the Archive Book, which is the basic record of all archival material and documentary material created in the work of the creator, will be done chronologically, by year and classification marks, by the name of the category of documentary material according to the current List of categories of archival material and documentary material with retention periods.
The electronic or paper form in which the Archive Book will be kept, Rulebook prescribes as an AK form, which contains the following elements: ordinal number, date of entry, year of creation, content, classification mark, storage period from the category list, number of consent to the category list, volume of documentary material, premises and shelves/devices for storage with location, number and date of minutes, as well as remarks.
The Act does not provide sanctions for entrepreneurs, which leaves room for legal interpretation that they are not obliged to adopt the general acts in question, i.e. that the previously mentioned sanctions will not be applied to them. However, entrepreneurs reserve their right to adopt general acts, if that is their will.
Given the risk of initiating misdemeanour proceedings, as well as approaching the deadline for submission of the Archive Book and other necessary documentation, MPartners Legal team is available to all interested businesses for additional information and clarifications.
