Serbian general public already speculates a lot about the EU condition referring to dropping the preamble from the Serbian Constitution, which defines Kosovo and Metohija as a part of Serbia. This has been assessed as unacceptable by legal and political experts.
According to the Action Plan for the Chapter 23 in negotiations with the EU, Serbia was supposed to carry out certain amendments of the Constitution by the end of 2018, which mostly has to do with the judiciary, however the biggest attention is currently directed to the issue of the preamble on Kosovo.
Professor of the constitutional law at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade Vladan Petrov said that he is among those who are opposed to the removal of the preamble, and who claim that its eventual removal should go to a referendum.
“In our Constitution, no matter on all other amendments, the preamble which clearly stipulates that Kosovo and Metohija is part of Serbia, should remain” said Petrov to Tanjug agency. However, he explained that even if the preamble would be dropped from the Constitution, “Kosovo and Metohija would remain part of Serbia in constitutional-legal terms, because it is written so in the normative part of the Constitution”.
Political analyst Branko Radun argues that dropping of the preamble from the Constitution would be a very bad thing for Serbia because it would influence the ‘state of mind’ of the Serbian society and it would send a message that “in a way it gave up from Kosovo”.
The leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj, said that his party claims that there is no need for the amendment of the Constitution and that they are absolutely against the dropping of the preamble on Kosovo.
MP from the ranks of the Democratic Party, Nataša Vučkovic, says that it is crucial for this party that adopted laws, and the Constitution itself, are reflecting the real situation.
