Selakovic yields to lawyers – Serbian Government prepares urgent changes to Law on Public Notaries

Minister of Justice Nikola Selakovic has decided to meet the demands of lawyers, who have been blocking the entire justice system for the last three months. He has proposed to the Serbian Government changes to the Law on Public Notaries to be adopted by urgent procedure, reports Danas.

As explained by Danas' government source, these changes to the law will be in line with the lawyers' demands although the proposed solutions still remain unknown, since the Ministry of Justice is still working on them. According to Danas' source, the proposed changes should be adopted by the Serbian Government by Friday and sent immediately into parliamentary procedure on the same day. The source explained that as soon as discussion on the budget is completed, Parliament will start to debate these changes, which should finally put an end to the lawyers' strike and unblock the judiciary. At the same time, the heads of parliamentary groups and members of parliament have been informed that they may expect an additional working day, during which they will discuss the proposed changes to the Law on Public Notaries.

These announcements appeared only one day after the expiry of the ten-day mandate of the expert team composed of representatives of the Bar Chamber and the Ministry of Justice. Nevertheless, according to lawyers' statements the impression remains that compromise is still distant. In an interview given to Danas few days ago, Dragoljub Djordjevic, president of the Serbian Bar Chamber, said that they are not even close to a solution and that “at this point, the protests are unlikely to end in the near future”.

At the moment of publication of this issue of the newspaper, the Serbian Bar Chamber was holding an assembly meeting at which lawyers were discussing how they were going to continue their protests.

With the exception of the ten-day work of the expert team, negotiations between the two sides were sporadic and poor in content. The main reason was that both lawyers and Ministry were reluctant to compromise on their demands. The lawyers insisted on changes to the Law on Public Notaries and related laws and they submitted their requirements to the Ministry in the form of law amendments. The changes essentially required that notaries, like courts in the past, may only certify contracts compiled by lawyers. The lawyers conditioned the end of their protest on the adoption of all these changes. The Ministry, on the other hand, was not ready for any concession until lawyers return to work.

With such demands staked out, the two sides have held no substantive negotiations during these three months. Instead, they have tried to achieve their goals through polemics in the media to put each other under pressure. The lawyers wanted at all costs to involve the European Union in the negotiations and force the Government to meet their demands, but the representatives of the EU declined to mediate. Only after the visit of representatives of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) was an expert team of lawyers and representatives of the Ministry formed to conduct negotiations. In addition, the lawyers were constantly providing the public with unofficial information about the reportedly excessive incomes of public notaries. The Ministry, on their side, was trying to undermine the unity of the lawyers and break up the protests from inside. During the protests various civic associations were formed, such as the Serbian Association of Lawyers and the Union of Criminal Lawyers, which called for an end to the lawyers' protests.

Several changes were introduced into the Law on Public Notaries. However, the lawyers remained unsatisfied since no changes to address their main points of opposition were included. In particular the disputed article that treats real estate purchase contracts as an exclusively public notarial act remained intact.

The lawyers' strike started on 17 September when public notaries began work. It has been estimated that in the past three months more than 130,000 trials have been postponed.

Translation provided by: www.halifax-translation.com