Serbian Justice Minister, Vladan Batic, said that Serbia...

Serbian Justice Minister, Vladan Batic, said that Serbia had accepted Council of Europe and EU demands to strike the death penalty from the republican penal code as a condition for membership of the institutions."Since this is a condition for joining the EU, we accepted the suggestion and struck off the death penalty and replaced it with 20 years imprisonment in the draft amendments and changes to the Serbian penal code," he said."We have a conflict between the republican and the federal constitutions and the republican and federal penal codes, and we have a situation where not a single execution has been carried out in Serbia since 1992 which makes maintaining the death penalty irrelevant," Batic said.