Decision over Guidelines Related to Ethnicity Column not Made by Court

The Constitutional Court didn’t make a decision on Thursday on whether the law on the basis of which Justice Minister Krenar Lloga issued the Guidelines, according to which there is an ethnicity column in birth, death, and marriage certificates, is mandatory. There were not enough votes to accept the initiative challenging the provisions regarding the ethnicity aspect.

The Court’s President, Dobrila Kacarska, was against mandatory reference to ethnicity in certificates. “If someone commits abuses, that means everyone else is a hostage. My personal right is whether I will state my nationality.

Nobody can force me to do so,” she noted. Lloga’s Guidelines remain frozen. He hoped judges would reject the initiative, which would see certificates containing the ethnicity column. “The law provides for what we have underlined in the new certificates. I expect the Court will reject Levica’s initiative and the law will be in force further,” he noted.