The Chairman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, Predrag Markovic, convened the First Special Sitting of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in 2006 for 8 pm on Saturday 30 September.

The following one-item agenda was proposed for the sitting:

- Proposal of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, with its associated Proposal of the Decision Calling a Republic Referendum to Confirm the new Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, proposed by 231 deputies.

Mr Markovic invited the President of the Republic of Serbia, Boris Tadic, to attend the sitting, which was also attended by the Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, and Serbian cabinet ministers.

Addressing the National Assembly at the start of the discussion, President Tadic expressed his pleasure at the broad consent of all political factors in parliament for the adoption of the nation’s highest legal document, meaning that the new Constitution comprised the values of all who took part in its drafting. At the same time, according to Tadic, it was very important for Serbia to have declared itself a society wishing to belong to European principles and values.

Tadic underlined that the new Constitution, a marked improvement over all previous ones, expressed the developmental character of Serbia’s society and state, and defined Serbia as a nation protecting the rights of individuals, communities, ethnicities, and minorities, thereby making it ‘a harmonised country, made fundamentally solid, anchored in a constitutional and legal sense, and oriented towards European integrations’.

Tadic stressed as key the need for Serbia to form all its institutions, as an independent nation and a member of the UN, to be able to fully converse with the international community in its capacity as a state.

Addressing the deputies, the Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, underlined that the adoption of a constitution was a historic act for any nation, and all the more so for Serbia at this time, ‘when two of the most important national and state aims have naturally melded into one’.

‘The new Constitution establishes Serbia as a legally ordered country, and sets seal on the fact that Kosovo and Metohia has always been, and would always remain, an integral part of Serbia’s territory’, Kostunica remarked.

Reiterating the fact that the present convocation of the National Assembly had adopted a large number of important laws, Kostunica said that these would only acquire their full meaning with the adoption of the new Constitution, as they would become integral parts of a large, ordered whole. ‘So that Serbia could develop, progress, and become a functional state, and so that its citizens could live well, we have worked together to make a firm and mighty foundation of this house, called the Serbian Constitution’, Kostunica emphasised, adding that the deputies, as proposers of the Constitution, and the Government had a historic responsibility for adopting it.