The Serbian State Prosecutorial Council’s (SPC) Working Group tasked with amending the Code of Ethics for prosecutors held a meeting today to discuss the review of the Code and recommendations for further improvement of the SPC’s practices and gaps in the field of ethics, produced by the Council of Europe consultants.

The presentation of the review was followed by discussion of next steps aimed at finalising the text of the Code. Additionally, the Working Group members were familiarised with the research done by the Council of Europe on ethical usage of social media by individual judges and prosecutors. The findings of the research will be further contemplated in the forthcoming Working Group meetings with an aim to incorporate elements relevant to social media usage by prosecutors into the Code.

The meeting of the Working Group was held under the Action “Strengthening Independence and Accountability of the Judiciary” which is part of the “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey II”, a co-operation initiative co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe, which aims at assisting beneficiaries in the Western Balkans region and Turkey to comply with the Council of Europe standards and European Union acquis in the framework of the enlargement process.