The conference was opened by National Assembly Deputy Speaker Gordana Comic, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice Gordana Pualic, State Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Media and Information Society Jasna Matic and Director of Official Gazette PE Slobodan Gavrilovic.

Deputy Speaker Comic said that passing laws and controlling their enforcement changed the social system and improved the citizens’ quality of living. The transparency of the National Assembly’s work, evident in submitting and accepting many of the MPs’ amendments, as well as organising public hearings is very important in the process.

State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice Gordana Pualic declared the results of the achieved regulatory reform in Serbia and the infomatisation of society quite visible.

State Secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Media and Information Society Jasna Matic pointed out that, in the last three, information technologies have been introduced years into the work of the Government and Republic Legislation Secretariat which improved the quality of the institutions’ work making them more transparent and, at the same time, reducing the potential for corruption.

Director of Official Gazette PE Slobodan Gavrilovic stressed that it was important to view the achieved results and the state’s strategic goals through discussion, expressing his belief that the conference would contribute to further improve the quality of the legislative process in Serbia.

The conference, which took place in three thematic blocks – Strategic framework: regulation reform and development of information society in the process of European Union accession, Legislative process in Serbia: drafting, adoption, publication and distribution/dissemination of regulations and Good practice and approach to legislation in the European Union, gathered state body representatives from the country, as well as experts from the European Union and its member states.

Speaking of the harmonisation of domestic and European Union legislation, the participants agreed that in addition to passing laws it was important to monitor their implementation. The participants also discussed the role of the Constitutional Court in the legislative process in Serbia, as well as the GIZ project activities within the Germany-Serbia development cooperation aimed at improving the legislative process in Serbia.

Deliberating on the legislative process in Serbia, Legislative Committee Chairman Vlatko Ratkovic briefed all present on the procedure of adopting bills on the agenda for the National Assembly sittings and sessions. He emphasised the influence of the MPs on the final text of the law, achieved by submitting amendments to the bills. Government representatives also spoke of the legislative process, focusing on the introduction of Government e-sessions. The role of Official Gazette Public Enterprise which publishes and distributes adopted acts was also presented.

The Director of the European Union Publications Office spoke of the EU experience and good practice related to the legislative process and distribution of legal information to the citizens via new technologies, while representatives from Italy, France and Slovenia briefed the assembly on their respective countries’ experience in the field.