People’s Parliament began implementation of a national project “People’s initiative”, in cooperation with several NGO’s from Belgrade, Pozega, Novi Sad and Negotin.

We started this legislative project due to restrictiveness of the actual Law on referendum and people’s initiative and related regulations, as well as parts of the Law on local self-governance who deal with local people’s initiatives.

Above mentioned laws currently restrict democratic rights of citizens of Serbia to propose legislative solutions to legislators through so called “people’s initiatives”. Evaluating parts of concerned legislations which deal with the length of the signature’s collection process from citizens supporting a people’s initiative, as well as a required number of signatures that need to be collected, we came to the conclusion that current legislative acts are too restrictive, especially when compared to similar laws in numerous European countries. In reality this laws currently make it harder for citizen’s to participate in legislative roles.

Because of the above mentioned, and some other reasons, we plan to develop and propose to legislators amendments to the Law on referendum and people’s initiative, amendments to the Law on local self-governance (especially Article 68.) and various sub-legislative acts that regulate people’s initiatives. This will be done during 10 months period, until middle of 2010. Also, we plan to organize a public campaign that will introduce the project to a wider auditorium and give it a chance to participate in it.

More information on this project and activities organized are available at www.narodnainicijativa.rs.