Deputy Director of the Judicial Academy Maja Prelić Simović appointed as substitute member of the Venice Commission
The Venice Commission is an advisory body of the Council of Europe established by the Committee of Ministers in 1990. The work of the Venice Commission is grounded in the three basic principles, which also form the foundation of the Council of Europe: democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The primary competence of the Commission is to assist states in drafting constitutional and legal acts through the opinions given by the Commission in order to bring their legal and institutional structures into line with European standards. Today, the Commission consists of 62 member states, including the 47 Council of Europe members. Each Member State of the Commission appoints a representative and an alternate representative, who act in an individual capacity as independent experts. The term of office of members is four years.
Cooperation between Serbia and the Venice Commission was established in 2001 when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia composed of Serbia and Montenegro obtained a status of an associate member. Since then, the Commission has been monitoring every significant change and reform in the Republic of Serbia through its opinions. The latest example of cooperation refers to the process of constitutional change in the field of judiciary, on which occasion the Venice Commission, at its 122nd plenary session held in June 2018, adopted the Opinion on the draft Amendments to the constitutional provisions on the judiciary and on October 22, 2018, published the Secretariat Memorandum on the compatibility of the draft Amendments to the Constitutional Provisions on the Judiciary with VC Opinion.