“The Ministry of Justice is satisfied with the Venice Commission’s opinion on the Draft Amendments to the Serbian Constitution (Draft Amendments or proposed Amendments). The Commission’s draft opinion – which is to be submitted to Serbia – has been reviewed and unanimously adopted by all the Venice Commission members”, Justice Minister Nela Kuburović stated today. “The Ministry of Justice is satisfied because the adopted opinion proves we were heading in the right direction with the proposed future Amendments. The most important thing about the proposed Amendments is that the Ministry of Justice will undoubtedly accept all the opinions the Venice Commission has given”, Kuburović stated following 115th plenary session of the Council of Europe Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission).
The Justice Minister said that the most important conclusion from the session was that the Commission was in support of the High Judicial Council’s structure remaining the same, i.e. having 5 judges as Council members and 5 other members be elected by the National Assembly. She also noted that the Justice Ministry’s proposal to give the Council membership election mandate to a 5-member committee – a system for electing new members by the Republic of Serbia introduced for the first time –, in case the National Assembly has failed to elect the members, was accepted.
In her opinion, it was equally important that the provisions on the structure of the Public Prosecutorial Council had been revised since the Commission’s original draft text, in that the Ministry’s efforts had been acknowledged once more. “Naturally, we hope to finish revising the Draft Amendments, with due consideration of all the comments given today, and submit them to the National Assembly for adoption as soon as possible“, Kuburović said. She then explained how most of the Commission’s objections were due to unclear translation of certain parts of the text of the Draft Amendments which was corrected during today’s session, adding that those parts would be revised in any event.
Kuburović pointed out that the President of the Consultative Council of European Judges was also in attendance, him having been a supporter of the adopted opinion and who repeated several times during the session that Serbia was compliant and that it had worked collaboratively with the Commission representatives on the Draft Amendments – all of which proved that the only right way had been taken.
The Justice Minister addressed the Venice Commission in today’s session where she again presented the Draft Amendments to the constitutional provisions on the judiciary which had been submitted for the Commission’s opinion in April. She is presently in Venice at the invitation of the Director and the Secretary of the Venice Commission Thomas Markert.