15.12.2016.

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The rule of law must be at the center of EU accession negotiations

Despite the progress in the process of European integration of Serbia in a technical sense, first of all by opening negotiations on the two most important chapters, the rule of law in Serbia is backsliding, it was said in the research that Belgrade Center for Security Policy presented at a ...

Despite the progress in the process of European integration of Serbia in a technical sense, first of all by opening negotiations on the two most important chapters, the rule of law in Serbia is backsliding, it was said in the research that Belgrade Center for Security Policy presented at a conference held in Skopje, on 7 December 2016.

“Serbia checked all the boxes that were necessary for opening negotiations on Chapter 23 on Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, and Chapter 24, concerning Justice, Freedom and Security. However, when the situation in these areas is viewed outside of this very technical framework, there is a noticeable backsliding in key areas,” concluded Bojan Elek, a researcher at BCSP, at the conference on the rule of law in the Western Balkans.

Although Serbia made progress in certain areas, such as reducing the number of case backlog before national courts, or the adoption of the new Law on Police, the key areas are still problematic.

“There is a big gap between legal provisions, some of which are quite good, and their application, which is often selective or completely inadequate. The Law on Police is one example, which on the paper actually introduced a good system of management of human resources, while simultaneously the practice of appointing people to high positions without competition, or in the acting capacity, is still present, “said Elek.

The study was designed with the idea to represent ​​an alternative, independent overview of the state of play in the areas of political criteria and the chapters of the rule of law (23 and 24). The structure follows the Country Report for Serbia that European Commission prepares annually for all candidate countries for EU membership.

The study Monitoring and Evaluation of the rule of law in the Republic of Serbia was created within the project Monitoring and Evaluation of the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans, a project implemented by BCSP in cooperation with the European Policy Institute in Skopje and Institute Alternative from Podgorica. The project is implemented with the support of the European Fund for the Balkans within the regional Think and Link program.

Tags: accession, areas, balkans, center, european, negotiations, project, serbia, the rule, with the, with thenegotiations

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