Public statement:

New Constitution and fight against corruption

Capability of Serbia to curb corruption can depend also on some constitutional provisions. Drafters of supreme country's legal act were certanly introduced with main problems and recommendations how to overcome them through National Anti-corruption Strategy adopted in December last year.

Among other, we consider that, new Constitution has to: 1) provide firm guarantee for right to access information held by public authorities; 2) regulate mechanism of establishment and better status of independent state bodies, out of which many should play important role in fight against corruption (e.g. Supreme Audit Institution, Commissioner for Information, Ombudsman...) 3) enable imunity of public officials from prosecution to be settled to appropriate measure; 4) provide preconditions for adequate resolvement of issues such as „freedom of mandate“ and accountability of parliament members; 5) enable efficient implementation of international conventions and agreements related to fight against corruption.

Due to fact that final text of new Serbian Constitution is still unavailable, it has yet to be checked whether drafters discharged their tasks succesfuly. Anyhow, secrecy of final drafting phase, present itself wrong example for future legislators and drafters of by-laws to follow.

Transparency Serbia

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Press Office

Belgrade, September 29th 2006.