Consolidation of Serbian legislation and ensuring better public access to laws in focus at OSCE/ODIHR workshop

Better public access to domestic Serbian laws, the consolidation of national legislation, and its harmonization with international standards were the focus of a workshop in Belgrade organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the Serbian National Assembly and the OSCE Mission to Serbia on 17 and 18 June 2013.

Strategies for consolidating laws and their amendments into single, integrated documents, and ensuring these can be easily accessed by people were among the things learned by the participants from the National Assembly of Serbia, government ministries and institutions, and civil society.

“Public access to legislation is an important OSCE commitment,” said Alice Thomas, the Chief of ODIHR’s Legislative Support Unit. “Where legislation is not consolidated, it is very difficult for people to find and consult legal documents on a particular question or situation. This, in turn, can leave them unable to benefit from the protection guaranteed by the law or, in other cases, to comply in good faith with its requirements.”

“We value the opportunity to learn about the experiences of other countries in consolidating their domestic laws in line with OSCE commitments, and harmonizing their legislation with EU law,” said Vladimir Cvijan, a Deputy in the National Assembly and the Head of the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues. He added that insight and expertise gained from similar events were instrumental in the preparation of the upcoming Serbian Parliamentary Resolution on Legislative Policy.

Experts from Denmark, Poland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom provided support at the workshop, which was the last in a series of four organized by OSCE/ODIHR in co-operation with the National Assembly to address the recommendations contained in the “Assessment of the Law Drafting and Legislative Process of the Republic of Serbia”, published by the Office in February 2012.