Amendments to the Agreement on Legal Cooperation between the Ministries of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia Agreed



Expert Teams of the Ministry of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia have agreed in Belgrade amendments to the international agreements between the two countries, which regulate recognition and enforcement of court decisions in criminal matters and overall international legal assistance in criminal and civil matters.

Agreed amendments to the Agreement on mutual execution of court decisions in criminal matters will enable the enforcement of prison sentence for persons who, after the conviction in one country, escape to the other country. It is about over a hundred of fugitives, who tried in this way to avoid the prison sentence. Amendments to the Agreement abolish the principle of "volunteerism" in the execution of criminal sanctions, because prior to the amendments it was defined that convicted persons must give their consent to serve their punishment in the other country.  The official signing of the Agreement on mutual execution of court decisions in criminal matters is planed for the end of the next month.

At the same time, agreed amendments to the Agreement on international legal assistance in civil and criminal matters will generally improve international legal assistance between the two countries. Amendments also provide the possibility of direct communication between the competent bodies of the two countries. Thus, in criminal procedures, courts will not have to wait for extracts from the criminal records of the other country and therefore to delay the procedure, because they will be able to obtain those extracts directly from a competent body of the other country. Previously, those data were obtained in a far more complex way, so the accepted solution presents huge improvement in those procedures.    

Expert Teams of the Ministries were led by Mr. Jusuf Halilagic, Secretary of the Ministry of Justice of BiH and Mr. Vojkan Simic, Assistant Minister of Justice of the Republic of Serbia.