CEPRIS calls for Venice Commission response over planned changes to judicial laws

“The announced changes, so far shown only to selected media outlets, threaten to undo all the progress made by the Serbian authorities in cooperation with the Venice Commission through the 2022 constitutional reform, which was intended to lay the normative foundations for an independent judiciary and an autonomous public prosecutor’s office in Serbia,” CEPRIS said on Friday.

The groups stressed that the changes run directly counter to the European Union’s latest anti-corruption recommendations contained in this year’s country report on Serbia.

“The potential subordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade would lead to the suspension or freezing of high-level corruption investigations,” they warned.

On 16 November, Ugljesa Mrdic, an MP and chairman of the Serbian Parliament’s Committee on the Judiciary, Public Administration and Local Self-Government, said that he expects the Parliament to adopt a law on the “reorganization of the Prosecutor’s Office” that would abolish the existing Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (TOK) and place it under the authority of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade.

Two days later, Justice Minister Nenad Vujic backed Mrdic’s initiative, claiming the amendments “are aimed at improving the legal and normative framework.”