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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Initiative for granting national minority status to Serbs in Slovenia

Belgrade, 21 March 2005

Serbian Deputy Minister for Diaspora Aleksandar Cotric said today that the Ministry for Diaspora, in association with the Union of Serbian Associations in Slovenia, requested that Serbs in Slovenia be given the status of a national minority.

Cotric told a press conference that there are 50,000 Serbs in Slovenia and that they account for two percent of the total population, thus representing the largest non-Slovenian community. However, in spite of that they are not recognised as a national minority.

He specified that the Union of Serbian Associations in Slovenia has begun collecting the 40,000 signatures needed for launching the procedure for changing the Slovenian Constitution and that the Serbian Ministry for Diaspora requested the Serbian parliament pass a resolution demanding that the Slovenian parliament change the resolutions of the Slovenian Constitution, which currently recognise only Hungarians and Italians as national minorities, who number 6,000 and 2,000 respectively.

Cotric said that during his latest visit to Slovenia, he spoke with the Slovenian Ombudsman and raised the issue of the status of 8,000 persons who were erased from the records after Slovenia gained independence, losing their right to residence, housing, pension and social insurance, and of whom 70 percent are of Serbian nationality.

Cotric called for the implementation of two decisions, which have been adopted but have yet to be enacted, of the Slovenian Constitutional court stipulating the application of basic rights for these citizens.