On the quality of recent civil law legislation in Serbia

As Serbia does not have a civil law codification, one of the specific challenges in adoption of civil law legislation, especially in parts of civil law which are not regulated by specific codifications, is to preserve a systemic approach to civil law legislation. A systemic approach stands for insistence on all civil law legislation being mutually and internally compliant and, other than in absolutely necessary, no exemptions from certain general rules and principles determined in the civil law doctrine. Such an approach is a typical feature of the continental European legal circle and has numerous advantages which come down to a high level of legal certainty. Analysis of certain provisions of the Law on Registered Pledges on Movable Assets (provisions on excerpts from the Pledges Registry as an executive document), Law on Mortgage (provisions on the right of the creditor to sell the mortgaged asset out of court in his/her own right), Law on Real Estate Transaction (provisions on prohibition of verification of a contract on real estate transaction if the same assigner has already concluded such a contract) and Law on State Survey and Cadastre (provisions on what is entered into the registry as immovables, i.e. what an immovable asset is), clearly shows that a systemic approach in civil law regulation, and more concretely property law, was completely neglected in newer civil law legislation and, further on, that such a neglect is one of the reasons for problems in practical implementation of legislation. Emphasising that the best way to overcome this problem is a codification, primarily for the nowadays not codified property law, this work suggests the establishment of an expert body which would, until the codification is adopted, have a task to monitor legislative procedure and ensure the systemic compliance of drafts of different civil law legislation.