Statut Vojvodine: izazov građanskoj ustavnosti i ustavnom patriotizmu
The statute of Vojvodina - a challenge to civil constitutionality and constitutional Patriotism

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the way in which the Proposal of the Statute of Vojvodina treats its citizens, which is the main constitutional principle of political organization. The constitution of the Republic of Serbia, adopted in 2006, is based on the concept of civil constitutionality, which leads to the view that the citizens’ right to provincial autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution so as to limit state power comes from citizens’ equal status within the Republic, or to be more precise, that beneficiaries of the right to provincial autonomy are citizens of the Republic who reside in the aforementioned province. On the other hand, the Proposal of the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina introduces an unknown category of citizens of Vojvodina, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, and creates legal framework for them to become more privileged in terms of rights and freedoms than other citizens of the Republic of Serbia. Furthermore, the Proposal of the Statute deviates from multicultural society concept in a certain way, i.e. by eliminating the state from the process of proclaiming and enforcing minority rights, which limits it to provincial borders. The Proposal weakens the essence of social cohesion and changes the political system by pushing democratic citizenry into ethnic identities. This undermines the original basis for „constitutional patriotism“ as defined by Habermas.

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