This is a sword over the heads of the citizens

The President of the Bar Association, Zdravko Begović, announced that the association will submit an initiative to the Constitutional Court to evaluate the constitutionality of the provisions of the amendments to the Law on Civil Procedure, on the basis of which citizens will pay large court costs to the state if they lose a court case with it.

With that regulation, which was adopted at the last session of the Assembly, the Protector of Property and Legal Interests of the State acquired the right to collect those court costs based on the attorney's fee, and they will go directly to the budget.

"Immediately after the vacation, we will submit an initiative to the Constitutional Court, because we believe that the basic right of citizens has been violated since they were put in a situation where a sword was put over their heads not to initiate proceedings due to possible high court costs," Begović told "Vijesta".

He believes that this is "retribution of the state against the lawyers who represented the officials in the proceedings against it". "First they filed criminal charges against two female lawyers because they were hired to represent the interests of clients in the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and now they are putting a sword over the heads of officials to give up protecting their rights," says the lawyer.

He asks which of the heads of state bodies was responsible for the large damages following the lawsuits filed by the employees. Begović explained that until now the costs of the proceedings were received by the lawyers from the court and that they certainly do not belong to the state authorities, that is, the protector, who normally receives a salary for his work.

The government, which is the proposer of the Law, claims that the good side of the new regulation is the "equality of the parties in the dispute", so that both parties bear responsibility for proceedings before the courts.

In the Alternative Institute (IA), however, they claim that the new solution avoids solving the problem caused by accumulated costs, which are paid from the budget due to the mistakes of managers in state bodies.

Milena Milošević, public policy researcher at IA, told "Vijesti" that, in addition to the changes to this law, changes to the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees are underway. Currently, his draft is under public discussion.

"They put the burden of peacefully resolving the labor dispute on civil servants, instead of the state, that is, the Protector of Property and Legal Interests, as the legal representative of state bodies. This is not in accordance with comparative practices, which place the obligation to submit a proposal for a peaceful settlement of disputes under the authority of public institutions, that is, the state attorney's office...", she said.

Milošević pointed out that in February the Government tasked the Ministry of Finance with preparing the Draft Law on the Protector of Property and Legal Interests, which should provide an essential answer to the problem that has burdened our public finances for years.

"That problem is not in the initiation of court cases against the state by employees in the public sector, because the Government has stated in its own analyzes that the number of requests in labor disputes is negligible. They make up 70 percent of all the cases that are in the work of the Protector," says Milošević.

She concluded that the problem lies in poor mechanisms for determining the responsibility of managers and ministers, who are primarily responsible for the causes of disputes, as well as in the unclear position of the Protector.

Most of the lawsuits in the past few years against the state were filed by employees against the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, or ZIKS.

Due to the alleged abuse of clients' trust, the police, based on information from the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense, filed reports against two female lawyers.

There was no public discussion, Aprcović does not understand his colleagues?

In June, after the Government established the law, the Chamber sent an amendment to the Parliamentary Committee for the Political System, requesting the deletion of the disputed provision.

Begović says that their representative, Danijela Radulović, participated in the Board's discussion, but that there were no effects of their efforts to protect the Bar Association and clients, that is, citizens.

"Board President Željko Aprcović is a lawyer himself, so we are surprised by his lack of understanding," said Begović.

Yesterday, Aprcović did not want to comment on the changes to the Law on Civil Procedure and its disputed provisions for "Vijesti".

Milena Milošević believes that the Government and the Ministry of Justice decided on legal changes without a public hearing and thereby violated the regulations on public hearings and cooperation between state administration bodies and non-governmental organizations, but also prejudiced the resolution of the status of the Protector of Property and Legal Interests, before determining the proposal of this special law. .