Revised Judicial Laws: Two Key Recommendations Unmet

Serbia’s National Assembly has put the revised set of judicial laws, publicly known as the “Mrdic laws,” back on the agenda following the Venice Commission’s opinion in April. Lawmakers are debating the changes in Belgrade, and the discussion turns on a single question: did the government fulfill what the Council of Europe’s advisory body requested, or did it merely repackage the texts?

According to the opposition, two key recommendations remain unmet. Both concern prosecutors who handled sensitive cases and who, critics of the government say, were not returned to those posts. One is the “Nadstresnica” case, relating to the collapse of a canopy in Novi Sad, and the other is the “Konjuh” case, which concerns a seizure of marijuana. The prosecutor in the “Konjuh” case was not reinstated to work on it, which the opposition cites as proof that the revision did not touch the substance.

Member of parliament Danijela Nestorovic raised a question reaching beyond technical amendments. She asked who will be held accountable because, as she put it, “laws that are not in line with the Constitution were applied for four months.” That shifted the debate from the future text to consequences already incurred, to decisions made while the disputed framework was in force.

What did the Venice Commission actually request?

The Venice Commission’s April opinion dealt with constitutional matters, chiefly the independence of the prosecution and how prosecutors are assigned and returned to cases. The Commission issued a series of recommendations, and the opposition insists that the two most important, those concerning specific people and specific cases, were not implemented. The government, for its part, maintains that the text is aligned and that the objections were taken into account as far as legally possible.

The dispute over who is right is not merely political. The set includes amendments to the law on judges, the law on public prosecution, the law on the High Prosecutorial Council, and the law on combating high-tech crime. This is the framework that determines who judges, who prosecutes, and under what conditions someone can be removed from a case. Any imprecision in that framework carries consequences measured in years, not weeks.

Why the number of rewrites matters

The opposition has characterized the situation as an “international embarrassment,” and the argument is simple: the government rewrote the same laws three times. Critics ask how a lawmaker can vote twice for entirely different texts of the same law while claiming both are sound. From that follows the question Nestorovic raised, about accountability for the period in which the disputed framework was applied.

The government responds that this is a normal legislative process and a matter of heeding objections, and that repeatedly returning the text is proof of a willingness to listen to the Venice Commission rather than evidence of carelessness. Where the truth lies will be shown by the vote and, later, by application in the courtrooms.

What remains, however, is a question that has no clear answer for now: if the prosecutors on the “Nadstresnica” and “Konjuh” cases were indeed meant to be reinstated and were not, who bears responsibility for the decisions made in the meantime?