Democracy Watchdog Warns EP Serbian Citizens’ Rights, Democracy under Threat

Linglong (FOTO: printscreen/youtube)

Ahead of a planned European Parliament debate on alleged forced labor at the Linglong factory in Zrenjanin and recent environmental protests in Serbia, the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) sent a letter to Vladimir Bilcik, EP rapporteur for Serbia, and Tanja Fajon, chair of the EP's Serbia Stabilization and Association Committee, flagging a number of other indications that democracy and civic rights in Serbia are under threat.

CRTA noted that the threat stems from the Serbian authorities' insufficient commitment to the obligations they undertook in Chapter 23 in Serbia's European Union accession negotiations and in the agreement on stabilization and association.

The letter reminds the representatives of the EP that election legislation has been amended to fundamentally change the rules of electoral proceedings -- a change made, and not for the first time, immediately before elections were called. This is in opposition to international standards of free and fair elections and can seriously jeopardize the implementation and integrity of the election process, the missive underscores.

CRTA raised the question of how much legitimacy the current institutional framework had to amend the Constitution given the lack of pluralism in the National Assembly and the public sphere at large.