Home > 5.1 Nature of the referendum > SERBIA - Urgent Opinion on the Draft Law on the Referendum and the People's Initiative
 
 
 
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Paragraph 23
 

In issues which do not cover the whole territory of Serbia, the right to participate through the means of direct democracy belongs not only to those citizens who live in that territory, but also to those citizens whose ownership rights and obligations are concerned (Article 4.2; Article 21.2). This solution is quite unusual and can lead to an overly unbalanced result, since owners are not always as directly concerned by the decision to be taken as residents are. Moreover, it may be difficult to establish the situations in which ownership rights are affected, especially as the laws pertaining with human and minority rights and freedoms (including fundamental property rights) are excluded from the referendums by the Constitution. Sometimes, the question in a referendum may touch upon ownership rights just slightly with the key issue of the referendum being else. One property may be owned by a large number of co-owners and co-ownership may also be established in view of manipulating the referendum result. Owners who are not Serbian nationals are not entitled to the right to vote; nor are other people than owners whose rights and obligations may be affected by the result of the referendum as well. Thus, the inclusion of owners to the voters’ list may lead to politically disputable results and call in question the legitimacy of the referendum result. For these reasons, the Venice Commission recommends reconsidering the extension of the right to vote to those citizens whose ownership rights and obligations are concerned, or at least provide this extension in a detailed manner.