Civil sector essential for transparent legislation

BELGRADE - The role of the civil sector in Serbia must be strengthened in order to increase the transparency of legislative procedures after the forming of the new government, it was stated on Tuesday at the media conference on experiences of the Visegrad Group.

Very low transparency of the legislative process marks the countries of the Western Balkans, where legislative activity is mainly a formal mechanism, and members of the parliament do not have sufficient influence on the contents of the laws, noted the participants of the conference, held to present the collection of articles titled “Towards greater openness of the legislative process in Western Balkan countries".

Olja Ristic of the Center for Development of Civil Society (CRCD) said that no government in Serbia has fully conformed to the principle of openness of the legislative procedure, even in cases where public participation was explicitly required.

Snezana Ilic of CRCD expressed concern that the new laws, primarily those on labor, education, and judiciary, will be passed “in the same manner as the 2006 Constitution, with a lack of transparency and no input of the public and the civil sector," adding, however, that the non-governmental organizations still have some maneuvering space for their activity.

Hungarian Deputy Ambassador to Serbia Zoltan Varga-Hasonic said that, at this point, Serbia needs a proper and intensive legislative procedure which should include the civil sector and experts.

The EU integration involves a number of tasks related to legislation, not only because of Kosovo, but also due to the matters of sovereignty, he pointed out.

The conference on transparency in legislation was held as part of the project of...

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