Next year, Serbia is facing changes in the Constitution. In addition to an independent judiciary, citizens will decide in a referendum, most likely, on deleting the preamble of Kosovo and reduction of the number of MPs.
Serbia will change at least two times the Constitution until entry into the EU.
President Tomislav Nikolic has said he will give a mandate to form a new government to SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic.
Speaking on Sunday, he added that if the Serbian Constitution is changed in the future, he knows there will be no change to the preamble that states Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia.
"I think I will not even have to hold consultations on a PM-designate as everything depends on whether someone has managed to secure 126 MPs who will vote for a government," he said, according to Tanjug.
Referendum, or decision on what Serbia should do, is the question which divided the Serbian Government officials, in a situation when Western countries are pressing Serbia with requests related to the Kosovo and Metohija. Serbian President Nikolic is advocating the idea of referendum, where citizens should decide. Serbian Prime Minister Vucic also recently said that he “will ask people how to deal with this issue in the future”, and in the light of the attempts to prejudge the outcome of the Brussels dialogue.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said that due to joining the EU, the Constitution of Serbia has to change and that would be necessary a broad consensus for it.
On the question of the students of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, whether the highest legal act will have to be changed because of a preamble in which Kosovo and Metohija is referred to as an integral part of Serbia; the Prime Minister said that it will be due to "Serbia's accession to the EU."
Program Director of the Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI) Pavle Dimitrijevic said today that the deletion of the preamble of the Constitution of Serbia will be a signal that the Serbian government is ready for further concessions related to the Kosovo. "Deleting of preamble from the Serbian Constitution will above all have political impact. That is political signal that relates to the shift in politics, in the sense of ignoring, or giving up, UN SC Resolution 1244 which has so far been a stronghold of the Serbian Government in any negotiations and foreign policy, when it comes to Kosovo.
Platform of the President Tomislav Nikolic on Kosovo is not in accordance with the Serbian Constitution, it is unenforceable and for political daily use.
Representatives of all parliamentary parties will gather today to agree on the mode of action group which was established in order to reform the political system, which should lead to changes in the Constitution of Republic of Serbia.
This week, the Serbian Government action team for changing the Constitution, composed of representatives of the parliamentary parties, will held the first meeting. The president of the team, and the chief of caucus of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Zoran Babic, assures the public that the MPs would first focus on changing the electoral political system i.e. reducing the number of MPs from 250 to 150. Babic said that they are willing to listen to the proposals of any interested citizen in Serbia, denying earlier media speculation that foreigners will write the highest legal act.
Any change of the Constitution should be well planned. The parts of the Constitution should be changed, while the preamble should be left, said Professor of the Constitutional law Vladan Petrov. “My thesis does not correspond to the theses of politicians, since we are not changing the Constitution for the EU, but for us. It is necessary to correct some additional guarantees, mechanisms and solutions that bring us closer to the ideal of the rule of law,” he said.
Even if the citizens of Serbia would decidein referendum to possibly change the preamble of the Constitution the territorial integrity of country would not be jeopardized, claim the members of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). However, they explained that change of the preamble is not a priority in the upcoming comprehensive reform of the political system.