At its sitting held on 3 April 2006, the Constitutional Issues Committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted a motion made by the Democratic Party of Serbia Deputies’ Group to nominate Sasa Jankovic, National Legal Advisor with the Department for Democratisation at the OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro, for the position of Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman, as defined by the Ombudsman Act is an independent government body charged with protecting civil rights and supervising public authorities, elected, as stipulated by Art. 39 of the Ombudsman Act, by the National Assembly within six months from the entry into force of the Act. The Ombudsman Act came into force on 24 September 2005.

The motion was presented by the chairman of the Democratic Party of Serbia Deputies’ Group, Milos Aligrudic.

The chairman of the Constitutional Issues Committee, Predrag Markovic, noted that the nominee, Mr Jankovic, met all statutory conditions for nomination, and proposed that the matter of electing the Ombudsman should be submitted to the National Assembly for discussion under urgent procedure. Committee members unanimously voted to include the matter in the agenda of the Second Sitting of the First Regular Session of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in 2006.