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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Anti-discrimination Bill to be sent to parliament under emergency procedure

Belgrade, 12 March 2009

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic announced in an interview for today’s Politika daily that the bill on anti-discrimination will be forwarded to parliament under emergency procedure, voicing his hope it will be adopted by end-March.

Author: www.politika.rs

Cvetkovic noted that after looking into the proposals put forth by religious communities, the text of the bill has been somewhat altered in the sense that certain articles have been clarified in more detail, but added that its essence has not been changed.

He explained that the bill was withdrawn from the procedure when Minister of Religion Bogoljub Sijakovic informed him that religious communities asked to be given one more chance to state their objections to the bill.

Since these were not objections from only one religious community I decided that postponing adoption for a few days will not be a problem. Furthermore, this is a very important law, which is why we must have as broad a consensus on it as possible. I therefore called for the bill to be withdrawn in order to take these belated objections into account, explained the Prime Minister.

He noted that religious communities did not pose any ultimatums in this case, adding that the government could have ignored their stance, but it is always better to establish a dialogue when it comes to such issues.