Zaric Kovacevic stressed that Serbia had achieved considerable progress in terms of improving its electoral legislation and is ready to continue the good work. “It is important to us to keep pace with the legislation of the most developed countries and we are eager to reform and improve our legislation in a way which would yield the best results”, opined Kovacevic.

Douglas Wake, former Head of the ODIHR Observation Mission in Serbia, was interested in the involvement of the National Assembly and members of parliament in the process of drafting a set of election laws, primarily the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, Law on Local Elections, Law on the Election of the President of the Republic, Law on Financing Political Activities, as well as the amendments to the Law on Prevention of Corruption, created as a result of inter-party dialogue and based on the recommendations of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

The officials also underlined the importance of cooperation with the Venice Commission, especially since the role of this Council of Europe’s expert advisory body is to provide legal advice to countries to make sure that their legislative and institutional frameworks meet European standards in the field of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. In that regard, Jelena Zaric Kovacevic also recalled the successful cooperation the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues and the Working Group for the Drafting of the Act to amend the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia had with the Venice Commission in the previous period, when they worked on drafting constitutional amendments in the field of the judiciary.

Representatives of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said that by the end of the year, they would, together with the Venice Commission, pass a report with conclusions on the set of election laws, which will then be published.

The meeting was also attended by the following members of the ODIHR delegation: Goran Petrov, advisor, Raul Muresan, project coordinator at ODIHR, and Vittoria Zanellati, associate project officer.