The meeting was chaired by MP Milica Nikolic, Chairperson of the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues, and attended by Working Group members Ugljesa Mrdic, Ugljesa Markovic, Risto Kostov, Zagorka Aleksic, Ana Krstic, Uros Kandic, as well as substitute member Kristina Antic.

The meeting was also attended, at the invitation of the Chair by representatives of the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) Veljko Odalovic, MUP Acting Secretary Milan Andric, MUP Assistant Secretary Aleksandar Vasilijevic, Assistant Head of the Police Directorate and Jelena Simic, Assistant Head of the Directorate for Administrative Affairs, representative of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Jovan Knezevic, Acting Assistant Minister of the Sector for Civil Records and Registers, as well as members of the Republic Electoral Commission Maja Pejcic and Sofija Mandic.

The meeting was also attended by associates of the National Assembly Speaker and the Secretary General.

The meeting proceeded according to the following agenda:

Opening the meeting, MP Milica Nikolic informed the attending that, as Chairperson of the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues, she had convened the Eighth Meeting of the Working Group for the Improvement of the Electoral Process at the request of six members of the Working Group, pursuant to the National Assembly Rules of Procedure. This was because the Chairman of the Working Group, Nemanja Nenadic, had submitted a notification that, in accordance with the decision of Transparency Serbia to withdraw from further work in the Working Group, there were no conditions for him to act in the capacity of Working Group Chairman.

Milica Nikolic also noted that there was no decision-making quorum, but that the Working Group meeting would be held in accordance with the National Assembly Rules of Procedure so that the present members of the Working Group could become familiar with the elements of the latest version of the Proposal of amendments to the Law on the Unified Electoral Roll submitted by Working Group member Ugljesa Mrdic.

MP Ugljesa Mrdic briefly outlined the new elements of his proposal (he particularly emphasised the one stating that the future Commission for the Revision of the Unified Electoral Roll will have the character of a permanent body and that for each decision to be made, it will be necessary for at least seven out of ten members of the Commission to vote in favour, with the obligation that among those seven members there should be at least one representative of each of the three groups that will be represented in the Commission) and emphasised that he tried to maximally take into account the recommendations the ODIHR experts gave in their comments on his previous proposals.

Responding to the remark of REC member Sofija Mandic that the ODIHR insisted that its recommendations be implemented in a broad inclusive process that would include, in addition to representatives of the parliamentary majority and the opposition, the civil sector, the chair, Milica Nikolic, reminded those present that the members of the Working Group from the opposition and civil sector had withdrawn themselves some time ago and distanced themselves from the further work of the Working Group.

Ugljesa Mrdic, for his part, added that from the very beginning of its work, the members of the Working Group from the parliamentary majority were ready to compromise so that the Working Group could reach a jointly agreed proposal for amendments to the Law on the Unified Electoral Roll, and that his proposal is largely based (especially when it comes to the Commission's competences) on the solutions from the proposal submitted by CRTA.

Sofija Mandic appealed to the attending representatives of the Ministry of the Interior to speed up the procedure for deactivating the residence address through amendments to the bylaws, so that citizens who find out that persons unknown to them have been registered at their address can quickly and efficiently "deregister" such persons from their addresses.

Veljko Odalovic, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, responded that the address passivation procedure is a classic administrative procedure that is not so easy to implement and speed up because it is not carried out from the office but through field work. He added that the institute of address passivation is just one of many issues that all relevant factors in society should jointly address in order to reach new, quality legal solutions, which would ultimately result in increasing public trust in the electoral process.

Jovan Knezevic, Acting Assistant Minister of the Sector for Civil Records and Registers at the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, is of the opinion that the latest proposal by Ugljesa Mrdic, viewed through the prism of comparative law, is one of the most rigorous and restrictive laws when it comes to controlling the unified electoral roll. According to him, the proposed solutions send a clear message that the Republic of Serbia is ready to rank among the most prominent countries in Europe in terms of rigor and democratic principles in this area.

After a little over an hour of work, the chair concluded the Eighth Meeting of the Working Group for the Improvement of the Electoral Process, noting that the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Issues will soon be organising a Public Hearing so that the general public will have the opportunity to learn about and express their views on the latest proposal of amendments to the Law on the Unified Voters' Register submitted by MP Ugljesa Mrdic.