At the presentation of the Sixth Report on Implementation of the Action Plan for the Realization of the Rights of National Minorities, Assistant Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Ivana Antić pointed out the most important activities that the Ministry had conducted in the course of the fourth quarter of 2017. She noted that MPALSG activated the Budget Fund for National Minorities after 15 years, and that for this purpose, the 2018 budget of the Republic of Serbia provided 12 times the amount as compared to the previous one (RSD 1.8 million to RSD 21.8 million). She said that amendments to the laws in the field of protection of minority rights and national minority councils were adopted in an extremely transparent and inclusive process of public consultations, already at the level of working versions of the texts of the legislation. Antić pointed out intensive and enhanced dialogue between state bodies, local self-government units and national minority councils as one of the added values of the work on this document. Director of the Office for Human and Minority Rights, Suzana Paunović, emphasized that the AP Implementation Report refers to the IV quarter of 2017 and that the implementation of the Action Plan for Minorities is regularly monitored. She stated that 11 out of 76 stakeholders did not submit their attachments for this reporting cycle. 8 out of these 11 are national minority councils. Paunović said that two thirds of matured activities for this reporting period had been implemented or was successfully being implemented. The director of OHMR pointed out that in the previous period, trainings aimed at raising the quality of reporting had been held, and that the attachments for the Sixth Report on the Implementation of the AP for Minorities were delivered by 40 local self-government units and 20 councils for inter-ethnic relations.
