Bearing in mind that adopting of new Law in its final phase, we invite administration to hasten the procedure and provide the Draft of the Law to be at the first following session of the Parliament.
We would also like to remind, that we have submitted the Initiative for assessment of constitutionality of Law on public gatherings to the Constitutional court in April 2009, because it had allowed prohibition of peaceful gatherings by the Police Directorate, which was opposite to the Constitution and international standards. The Constitution does not define that freedom of peaceful gathering may be prohibited by the decision of the competent body. Article 52 of the Constitution defines that the freedom of peaceful gathering may only be limited temporarily by the decision of competent body in order to prevent disorder or criminal acts, endangering health, moral and for the security of people and property. Thus, this Article of the Law on public gathering is not harmonized with the Constitution. The Court adopted the Initiative and three Articles – 10, 11 and 26 and proclaimed it as invalid.
After this, Ministry of Interior submitted urgently to the Parliament Law Proposal on public gathering in order to compensate legal gap that appeared after the abolishing of these three Articles. At the end of 2014, the Parliament adopted Amendments by which organizing of peaceful gathering at 50 meters distance from the building of the Government and the Parliament has not been possible. This decision is in force even nowadays, so we can say that this represents limitation in exercising of one of the fundamental rights, which is opposite to the Constitution and international standards.
According to the agenda of the Government for 2015, adoption of new Law on public gatherings was planned. In December 2014, Ministry of Interior published invitation to nongovernmental organizations dealing with human rights to propose a candidate for the Working group that would work on new Law. In that procedure, Milan Radović, representative of Civic Alliance was elected. During 2015, Working group prepared the Draft of new Law. New solution, if adopted, shall provide respect of the right to peaceful gathering in accordance with the Constitution and international standards.
Sincerely,
Boris Raonić
President of Civic Alliance
