According to what the Ministry of Justice of Serbia submitted as a proposal, and the voting machine of the Assembly of Serbia voted after discussion in the usual, urgent procedure - we are talking about notary tariffs - it turns out that we are richer than Croatia in the first place, and Czech Republic, which is even cheaper than Croatia. One notary point in Croatia costs around 1,6 euros, in Serbia around 1,5 euros. In Croatia, the salary is at least twice as high as the (overblown average) salary in Serbia, not to mention the Czech Republic.
The undersigned remembers the time when notarizing a signature at a notary - and they in Croatia are about to celebrate 20 years of existence in recent history (because they existed both there and in Serbia, and it is the last country to bring that profession back again) - cost HRK 16; it was about two euros, all with VAT, which was 18 percent in those times. Today, the price is higher: with 25 percent general VAT, the price of signature verification is around six euros, unlike in the Czech Republic, where the price is around one and a half euros.
Let's be clear: notaries, that is, notaries, are part of the tradition of our regional area. The socialist states abolished them and they are returning again after the fall of the Berlin Wall, some earlier, some later; Serbia at the latest. It is another service available to citizens and companies to do what they have to do more easily, quickly and efficiently in order to satisfy state and other rules, both in life and in business. We here passed the laws, but - as usual - their implementation in reality was a little behind. Only in 2012, even though we already had the Law on Public Notaries, did we start the notary exams. As always with those systemic laws, politics intervened, so until today the authorities have changed the rules: from the commissions to the regulations on taking those exams. Nothing new: it turned out that the last committee let most of them pass "through the sieve and sieve" (the motto of the first examination committee), that they were also the most represented in the appointments. We wrote about it in several past issues of Vremena. But that's not what it's about: even those who were not elected as notaries, from the first and stricter exam periods for notaries, did not question (most) of their colleagues who were appointed as holders of that office, on the contrary.
TAXES, FEES AND BOTTOMLESS STORMS: The current situation is that we have: a Chamber of Notaries educated beyond the legal norms (100 of them were supposed to be appointed, so that they could establish the chamber and choose the leadership, and there are only 94 of them); notaries - appointed by them - who were forced to start their work on September 1 without proper preparation (on the same morning several legal acts, independent of the executive power, of the Serbian Parliament, entered into force on the same morning), as well as the courts which, in parallel with the public notaries, they still have six months to certify signatures and contracts and other things. After that, it is not known, because so far only a little more than 180 candidates have passed the notary exam, and Serbia needs almost 400 of them. At the same time, some larger cities in the interior - because not all of them are in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš - notaries in this " the first round" they don't have yet, and when they will - it is not known...
I will return to my personal impression for a moment: I know at least two people who were appointed as notaries in this first round, they have absolutely all the qualifications for it: one of them was a lawyer, the other a professional associate in one of the higher courts; therefore, not everything was really political (I know at least two who were not named, by the way). At the same time, both of those candidates who were then appointed, as well as all the others in the total number of 94, are in a big problem today due to the lack of preparation for that "transitional period" that the weak opposition in the Serbian Parliament was looking for, and to which the ruling voting machinery turned a deaf ear. Future notaries went to practice in neighboring countries where the whole notary thing had already "taken root", all at their own expense and time (sacrificing their annual vacation, despite the stress due to an irresponsible state), all in order to fully prepare for that the famous "emergency procedure" voted on September 1, when they started working. And not only that: the state of Serbia immediately "slaughtered" them with a levy on the mandatory state coat of arms, which costs them 45.000 dinars, and they have not yet earned a single dinar.
Reading the new legal provisions on notary fees, it is quite clear that the whole story will cost citizens more than before, although there was never any order in all of this. Because the municipalities, which until now did various certifications, made their own price lists, which were very different, even out of proportion with the municipal average salaries. When it comes to the courts, one can find some connection between the prices of certification of this and that, from signatures to real estate sales contracts and others, but that also depended on local and city budgets. It is also a fact that until today we have not found out where all those fees from contracts certified in the courts go: some to the state, some to the municipality, some to the courts, but it is also a fact that nothing at all has been reflected in the better work of the employees in the courts and prosecutor's offices. On the contrary, that auxiliary "caste" - and quite specific, let's face it, they must know the rules of the trade and are not just ordinary administrative workers - is still in increasing problems and the (il)legal pockets into which the authorities stuff them. After all, you should ask Slađanka Milošević, head of the Trade Union of the Judiciary, what she would have to say about that, but no one asks her.
NOTARY MONOPOLY AND LAWYERS: Apart from the dubious process of appointing notaries - for which the appointees are not responsible, but the Ministry of Justice, let us remind you once again - which, as announced, will end up before the Constitutional Court, there is another constitutional problem. For the sale of real estate, a monopoly is prescribed for notaries - by the will of the legislator, the same Serbian Parliament, which blindly follows the will of the Government of Aleksandar Vučić and his (come on, and Selaković's) urgent actions - in violation of the constitutional rules on the legal profession. That profession, the legal profession, has always been a symbol - even in the worst times - of civil liberties, we could always choose a lawyer whom we trust to defend us against crazy accusations that we might be against the current regime, but also one to whom we could entrust the sale of our property or valuable Chinese vases, all the same.
Now it is different: in the future, every real estate trade contract will have to take the form of a so-called notary record. This, in short, means this: regardless of the fact that you have your own lawyer, who will draw up a contract for you, that contract must be checked by a notary public or he must draw up that contract for you. The lawyer appears to you as an unnecessary expense: if you pay him, you will also have to pay the notary, and the latter is the only one that counts. The Ministry of Justice of Serbia succinctly says: your costs are lower if a notary draws up a contract for you, you don't need a lawyer, so you have automatically reduced your costs!
Let's go in order: if the legal profession, like the notary, is a constitutional category, there is no possibility of giving a monopoly to some, at the expense of others, and this is exactly what happened with the recently adopted regulations. Namely, the legal professions take away the right to make real estate purchase and sale contracts with clients, but give it exclusively to notaries. Aside from the fact that there are not enough notaries, that the system has not yet been established, that the whole thing is more expensive than notary 1. September but earlier, when everything could be completed with a lawyer and court certification. There is also the question of who will check the status of the real estate, whether it is possibly burdened with a mortgage or debts, various resales... Lawyers checked it, notaries should, but what should notaries do if there is still no reliable database? You paid lawyers to perform according to archives and contracts, notaries do not have the slightest basis for that - without a database - and where are we then? In the situation: we pay double, for an unreliable outcome.
FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT TO STRASBOURG: The President of the Belgrade Bar Association, Slobodan Šoškić, a few days ago for "Radio Free Europe" included in the story the just adopted law on real estate transactions, which assigned certain legal actions exclusively to notaries and assessed that these latest legal solutions violate the Constitution of Serbia, the highest legal deed of the country. "This decision is unconstitutional, because in one segment you deprived lawyers of providing legal assistance, and they are, according to Article 67 of the Constitution, a legal assistance service." You cannot, by law, take away what is given by the general constitutional norm from the legal profession and give it exclusively to notaries. By doing so, in fact, you violated the constitutional position of the legal profession, you deprived them of legal assistance in one segment. The Constitution, namely, does not say that the provision of legal aid consists only in defending, only in representing, but also in drafting contracts - and that is legal aid. Therefore, by law, you have now taken that away from lawyers and given it exclusively to notaries at an enormously high rate. Therefore, you did not leave the solution that would be the only normal and acceptable one, which is to find a solution for drawing up the contract either with a lawyer or with a notary, which would create optimal conditions for the citizens to decide according to their discretion. "I will submit an initiative to the Constitutional Court of Serbia to assess the constitutionality of the Law on Real Estate Transactions, which states that such contracts are exclusively drawn up by notaries," announced Šoškić.
By the way, such a practice does not exist - as we said - in the countries of the region, no matter how much the uninformed assistant to the Minister of Justice Nela Kuburović tried to prove the opposite in the already mentioned show.
And again we have the same story, which fits in with the unsuccessful reform of the judiciary started under the former authorities (which, is it true, is to blame for everything), that a good idea is ruined from the beginning. Notaries, those who started working, neither guilty nor in debt, were placed on the altar of politics and abuse. And the Constitutional Court, as well as the one in Strasbourg, is probably waiting for these unelected, as well as lawyers for whom one of the segments of their work was transferred to someone else's monopoly.
It's a shame: notaries, if the state had given them a good start, could have alleviated many of the problems of the judiciary in Serbia. In this way, the burden of a sloppy state has been placed on the 94 of them: they neither prepared properly, nor have the support of the system, nor the public's awareness of how important they could be, in fact, for the citizens. It's a shame, irreparable damage.
