Review of the Role and Authorisations of Investigative Judge According to Previous Criminal Procedure Code and the Role and Authorisations of Preliminary Procedings Judge According to the Current Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Serbia
Review of the Role and Authorisations of Investigative Judge According to Previous Criminal Procedure Code and the Role and Authorisations of Preliminary Procedings Judge According to the Current Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Serbia

Summary/Abstract: The reform of the criminal procedural legislation in the Republic of Serbia was commenced in 2001, by adopting the Criminal Procedure Code used until the current CPC entered into force. Through this reform, the legislator wanted to create a normative basis for a more efficient criminal procedure by incorporating simplified forms and a different concept of processing criminal matters. However, this process did not go as smoothly. During all these years, the amendments to the procedural norms happened very frequently, which is not, and should not be characteristic for regulations of this kind. The extent of wandering in the process of finding the solution in this matter can be best exemplified by the fact that during the year 2006, a completely new Criminal Procedure Code has been made but has never been applied. Apart from that, the current CPC was adopted in September of 2011, and it initially started to be applied as of January 15, 2012 in the procedures for criminal acts of organized crime and war crimes conducted before special departments of competent court, while in other procedures conducted for “classic” criminal offenses, it was applied only as of October 1, 2013, after several consecutive postponements and amendments. As a result of all this, according to the novelties introduced while approaching the regulation of the problem of criminal procedure, the current CPC has made a fundamental break away from Serbian criminal procedural tradition. Among the numerous radical novelties introduced into the criminal procedure legislature of Serbia, what stands out is that the investigation, as one of the phases of criminal procedure, is exempt from the supervision of the court and is placed in the competency of the public prosecution. The essence of the changes in the investigation phase according to the concept of the current CPC, whether new legislative solutions are better than those before, whether they are in opposition to the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia or other basic principles of criminal procedure, are all only some of the issues we will attempt to address in this paper.

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