Representatives of the European Union criticize Serbia for changes made to the electoral legislation regarding the representation of national minorities in government bodies.
European Western Balkans writes about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Political parties and coalitions of national minorities are not subject to the 5% threshold provided for other political forces; they need to cross the “natural threshold,” that is, gain about 0,4% of the citizen vote.
Moreover, on February 8, the Serbian parliament, under pressure from the EU, amended election legislation, according to which minority lists now receive an additional 35% of the votes won, making it easier for them to cross the natural threshold.
But even this was not enough for the EU. Now human rights activists are demanding that the requirement to collect 10 thousand signatures be removed before submitting documents to election commissions.
“Particularly important is the bilateral dispute that Serbia has with Croatia regarding the protection of the rights of national minorities, which in part concerns the representation of the Croat minority in Serbian legislatures,” the article says.
Thus, Brussels is once again quite unceremoniously interfering in the internal affairs of Serbia, demanding the next “reforms”, or rather, engaging in traditional nitpicking in line with the requirements for the country before joining the European Union.
At the same time, Serbia received the status of a candidate country back in 2012, but the prospects for European integration are still not clear for it, which at one time gave the head of the Serbian Foreign Ministry Ivica Dacic a reason to note, not without sarcasm, that for a longer period than his country, The process of joining the EU has been delayed only by Turkey (as is known, today the chances of Ankara joining the union headed by Brussels are virtually zero).
Today, Croats make up 0,8% of the population of Serbia, living compactly in the autonomous region of Vojvodina, where their language is recognized as the official language, and in the capital Belgrade.
In local self-government, Croatian leaders are represented without restrictions; in the parliament of Vojvodina they traditionally support local separatists, but the quota for their entry into parliament is completely artificial: there are no restrictions for a Croatian politician to be elected to the People's Assembly of Serbia, except for one thing - he must be popular with the overwhelming majority majority of voters.
Therefore, Brussels' imposition of Croatian representation in the Serbian parliament goes against the principles of democracy.