Download the Draft law here (in Serbian)
During 2005 and 2006 PALGO Center’s team of experts worked on a Draft law on the City of Belgrade by consulting continuously numerous government representatives, from municipal to city level.
The project was supported by OSI / LGI from Budapest and the SLGRP program (DAI, USAID) in Belgrade.
During the process of defining this Draft law, PALGO Center was coordinating the work of six groups of experts who were working on following issues: territorial organization, relations between the City and the Republic level, municipal and City competences ; government organization and administration ; financing and property ; local public enterprises ; local elections ; City and the citizens.
Next to the experts’ opinion on this Draft law, certain solutions were analyzed through a survey conducted among local government representatives, while some first versions of the Draft law were debated at different occasions, like meetings between PALGO Center and SLGRP, on one side, and municipal and City officials, on the other side.
On November 1 2006, PALGO Center held a Press Conference “Introducing the Draft law on the City of Belgrade” in Media Center in Belgrade. The speakers were Željko Ožegović – President of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities and Chairman of the Municipality Novi Beograd, Zlatko Stefanović – professor at Law School of Union University, Snežana Đorđević – professor at the Faculty of Political Science of Belgrade University, and Dušan Vasiljević – Policy Reform Team Leader for USAID program Municipal Economic Growth Activity (MEGA).
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Zlatko Stefanović: ”Various regulations refer to the Law on the City of Belgrade, it is mentioned both in previous and new Constitution. Also the Law on Local Self-Government (2002) recommends enacting the Law on the City of Belgrade but even so, and to the best of our knowledge, it has not been drafted yet. PALGO Center is the first organization that completed the Draft law on the City of Belgrade and presented it for public discussion.”
“If we look at the competences and the organizational structure, Belgrade cannot be in the same position as a provincial town or municipality. We consider Belgrade to be something in between a local self-government unit and Province or even Republic. Due to its importance, its size and internal organization Belgrade should have competences that so far have characterized the Province or the Republic level.”
“This Draft law on the City of Belgrade seeks to define the status of central municipalities (10). The new Constitution does not make any progress to that effect – it mentions central urban municipalities but does not resolutely shape them as local self-government units. The question what central urban municipalities really are is not an easy one, even more so as the new Constitution does not clearly define their status.”
Snežana Đorđević: ”With this Draft law on the City of Belgrade we wanted to organize Belgrade as a modern and democratic city that is open to its citizens and at the same time as a functional and cost-effective unit.”
“Decentralization process in Belgrade has made a big step ahead with this Draft law. The organization of sub-municipal (neighborhood) unit and its bodies are explicitly defined. Urban municipalities are given new competences.“
“The City of Belgrade is something beyond a city; it is a genuine metropolitan region. Previous version of the Draft law depicted it more explicitly. If Belgrade was endowed with this status it would provide a whole new set of links with other big European cities in the future and develop new quality regional cooperation.”
Željko Ožegović: “Implementation of this Draft law would represent a major turning point in the functioning of the City of Belgrade.
“Introducing communal police units is a prerequisite for more efficient work and a chance for imposing communal order in local communities”.
“With this Draft law, public discussions on passing and adoption of budget would become a legal obligation for all urban municipalities and the City of Belgrade as well.”
Dušan Vasiljević: ”While the City Council is annulled at the City level it does exist at the level of Belgrade municipalities. What we have done to enhance the position of municipal chair is that in the election process for members of the Council the chair passes the proposal to the municipal Assembly. The Assembly elects them but there is no possibility, as it is possible now, for the Assembly to elect members that chair did not propose. This strengthens the role and the position of those elected directly by the citizens.“
“In this Draft law, City Assembly has 90 members, 61 of them from central and 29 from suburban municipalities.“
“The process of electing the council members of sub-municipal (neighborhood) unit is also interesting. The Draft law says this body has 5 to 9 members and that citizens vote for as many candidates as there are members in the Council. This is new in our election system that decreases the influence of the political parties as there can be no political party next to the name of the candidate on the election lists.“
“The discrepancy in income per capita between, for instance, the municipality
of Stari grad and Sopot, the richest and the poorest municipality in Belgrade,
is bigger than the difference by the same criteria among all other municipalities
in Serbia. This Draft law tries to put an end to this problem by introducing
mechanisms for fiscal equalization (Robin Hood approach) that is based
on own source revenues – municipalities that have at least twice as much
income per capita than the Belgrade average must transfer part of their
revenue (30-50%) to a City equalization fund. The fund would be used as
sustenance for those municipalities whose own source revenue per capita
is below the City average.”
Download the Draft law here (in Serbian)
Press clipping:
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