Pastor: Changes to Serbia's Constitution needed

SUBOTICA - The Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM) is in favor of changing the Constitution of Serbia, and other parliamentary parties take the similar stance, head of the SVM parliamentary group Balint Pastor has said.

The Constitution, as the supreme law of the state, must reflect changes in the society, and should lay down an adequate legal framework for development. That's why it is the SVM's stand that the Constitution should be changed, and other parliamentary parties take the similar stance, Pastor said.

The viewpoints differ only with regard to the parts of the supreme law that should be changed, Pastor told Magyar Szo, the Hungarian language daily published in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

He underlined that the process of changing the Constitution should not be the same as in 2006.

That parliament took into consideration formal requests, without considering opinions of experts on constitutional law, he said, seeing this is the reason for shortcomings in the current Constitution.

The SVM would like to introduce changes to the Constitution that would expand the part that relates to human and national minority rights, he noted.

These changes should strengthen the constitutional role of national minority councils and regulate the issues relating to personal data protection, Internet use and some other issues that have been built into the foundations of Europe's developed democracies in the last 15-20 years, Pastor said.

In addition to this, we want Vojvodina to get more powers, or to widen the competences of the province, he underlined.

Pastor said that a taskforce should be set up that would draft changes to the Constitution, which would certainly have to...