Final draft of the National Strategy for Advancing the Judiciary published

The Ministry of Justice has published the final draft of the National Strategy for Advancing the Judiciary 2019−2024 on its website, which reflects the comments and suggestions shared during the public debate. Together with the draft Strategy, the Ministry has published the public debate report and the comments received with a note whether a specific comment had been accepted or not.

The Ministry had prepared the draft Strategy with the next steps of Serbia’s EU-accession process in mind, and with the aim of strengthening the rule of law, access to justice and legal certainty, and achieving a strong and an efficient system of protection of the citizens’ rights and freedoms. Prior to the start of the drafting process, the earlier National Judicial Reform Strategy 2013−2018 − which had been drafted with the support of the USAID Rule of Law Project − was analysed in order to assess the reforms already implemented and to define the future development of the judiciary. It was the same USAID Project which had facilitated the public debate and the drafting of the current Strategy draft.

The first working draft of the National Strategy for Advancing the Judiciary 2019−2024 was presented in late January 2019 when the consultative process began, and all the interested parties could submit their comments and suggestions to the text. The final draft was agreed by all the drafting working group members, and the entire consultative process had been transparent and inclusive.

In order to present the draft text of the Strategy to the community of experts and the general public, the Ministry of Justice had organised four round table discussions: one in Kragujevac, one in Novi Sad, one in Niš and one in Belgrade. All the comments had been reviewed and considered carefully. Most of the comments clearly showed that there was support for the adoption of the new Strategy and that there was a consensus on the vision and the objectives set by the Strategy, making the proposed text a solid basis for the justice sector’s continued development.