On the behalf of SIGMA the meeting was attended by experts Wojciech Zielinski and Dawid Szescilo.

Meho Omerovic informed the delegation that the Committee on Human and Minority Rights and Gender Equality cooperates with independent state bodies such as the Ombudsman, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection and the Commissioner for Protection of Equality. These independent bodies, elected by the National Assembly, monitor the situation concerning human rights and freedoms and provide recommendations on the basis of it. Omerovic said that the Committee also reviews the independent state institutions’ annual reports and submits conclusion proposals on them to the National Assembly to be considered and adopted by the plenary. Besides the annual reports, the Committee also reviews special reports and other documents submitted by the Ombudsman such as the Roadmap to Institutionalization in Serbia, model law on gender equality and similar. He added that the Committee uses the independent state bodies’ recommendations and findings as guidelines to prevailing problems and in line with them it realizes different activities such as sittings outside of the Assembly seat, public hearings, conferences and roundtables to which the representatives of the civil sector are duly invited.

Petar Petrovic, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, Public Administration and Local Self-Government, said that the Committee he chairs also reviews the annual reports submitted by the Ombudsman, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Commissioner for Protection of Equality and the Anti-Corruption Agency, always within the deadlines, but its biggest focus is the adoption of the legislative framework within the scope of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government. Petrovic stressed that the Committee enjoys excellent cooperation with the independents state bodies, but mentioned that in certain instances these bodies have overstepped their authority as regards the operation of courts or information of public importance not in the scope of the organizations which requested them.

The committee chairmen informed the representatives of SIGMA that, in view of the fact that both review the independent state institutions’ reports, they had organized a joint sitting to review the report of the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture.

Concerning the activities assessed by SIGMA in its support for the improvement in governance and management in EU candidate states, the delegation members thanked the committee chairmen for the briefing, hoping that the cooperation between SIGMA and the National Assembly would continue in the future.