The Second Compliance Report on Serbia under the Fourth Evaluation Round was adopted by the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) at its 86th Plenary Meeting held on 26–29 October 2020.
The Report notes a notable progress made by the Republic of Serbia in fulfilling GRECO’s recommendations compared with the previous 2019 Interim Compliance Report which is publicly available on the official website of the Ministry of Justice.
The Ministry of Justice would like to point out that a majority of the recommendations are directly related to constitutional amendments, so the Council of Europe (CoE) is not in the position to deem certain recommendations as implemented before Serbia’s Constitution is amended. This has set the tone for the overall conclusion drawn by the CoE in the Second Compliance Report on Serbia.
By way of a reminder, in 2018, the Ministry of Justice drafted amendments to the constitutional provisions on the judiciary aimed at further strengthening the rule of law and aligning with the EU acquis and standards. The proposed amendments were welcomed by the Venice Commission. In late November 2018, the Serbian Parliament received a proposal from the Serbian Government to amend the country’s supreme legal act. Six months later, the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs and Legislation approved the proposal for amending Serbia’s Constitution in the part concerning the judiciary.
It should also be noted that, according to the GRECO’s Rules of Procedure, the Report is deemed confidential until made public following the prescribed procedure which involves, inter alia, translating the Report into Serbian. Therefore, under the principle of transparency, the Report will be published on the website of the Ministry of Justice as early as possible in full observance of the procedure for its publication which requires obtaining prior authorisation from competent authorities.