The mechanism of constitutional reform in Serbia: procedure and practice

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Author: Sergey Zenkin

DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2022-5-42-62

Keywords: procedure for amending the Constitution of Serbia; National Assembly; act for Constitutional Amendment; legal form of constitutional amendment; constitutional amendments; constitutional law on the implementation of constitutional amendment; constitutional referendum

Abstract

The article examines the procedural stages for amending the Constitution of Serbia: proposal of an amendment to the Constitution; this proposal’s consideration and adoption by the National Assembly; development, consideration and adoption of an act to amend the Constitution; appointment and holding of a referendum to approve this act; and finally proclamation of the act by the National Assembly. It is shown that this procedure is more rigid than those in other countries, partly due to historical traditions. The normative basis of this analysis is, in addition to the Constitution, the laws on the National Assembly and on the Referendum and People’s Initiative, and also the Regulations of the National Assembly. Special attention is paid to the legal form for constitutional amendment, namely, constitutional amendments. This is reflected in the practice followed for making proposals to amend the Constitution in 2011, 2018 and 2020, and the adoption in 2021, at the initiative of the Serbian Government, of an Act to amend the Constitution containing Amendments I–XXIX on justice and prosecutor’s office issues and on a referendum for approval of this Act in 2022.

About the author: Sergey Zenkin – Candidate of Sciences in Law, Associate Professor, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Zenkin S. (2022) Mekhanizm konstitutsionnoy reformy v Serbii: protsedura i praktika [The mechanism of constitutional reform in Serbia: procedure and practice]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnnoe obozrenie, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 42–62. (In Russian).

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