Date of issuance: 23 October 2018
No. 07-00-338/2018-02 Date: 20 July 2018
OPINION
The opinion was issued in the procedure following a complaint by the organization P. against the City Assembly of Kraljevo, regarding discrimination based on age, citizenship, and financial status. The complaint stated that the City Assembly of Kraljevo adopted the Decision on Exercising the Right to Financial Assistance for Families with Multiple Children from the Territory of the City of Kraljevo, which contains discriminatory conditions for granting financial aid. Specifically, Article 4 of the Decision established a requirement that parents must have citizenship of the Republic of Serbia and that children must be between 7 and 15 years of age. Furthermore, the second paragraph of the same article excluded parents who are entitled to social assistance from the Center for Social Work. According to the complaint, this resulted in discrimination against parents who do not hold Serbian citizenship, children younger than 7 and older than 15, as well as individuals entitled to social assistance. In his statement, the President of the City Assembly of Kraljevo did not dispute that the Decision prescribed the age requirement for children but pointed out that the intention was to support families with children attending primary school, which is mandatory for all. Regarding the conditions concerning citizenship and the exclusion of parents entitled to social assistance, he did not provide specific comments. During the procedure, the aforementioned conditions were analyzed from the perspective of anti-discrimination regulations. The Commissioner subsequently issued the opinion that, by prescribing the conditions in the Decision on Exercising the Right to Financial Assistance for Families with Multiple Children in the Territory of the City of Kraljevo, namely, in Article 1: the condition that this right is exercised by unemployed parents, guardians, or adoptive parents with two or more children aged 7 to 15, and in Article 4 the condition that parents, guardians, or adoptive parents must hold citizenship of the Republic of Serbia (paragraph 1), while excluding from this right parents entitled to social assistance from the Center for Social Work (paragraph 2), violations of Articles 6 and 8 of the Law on the Prohibition of Discrimination occurred. The Commissioner for the Protection of Equality recommended that the City Assembly of Kraljevo undertake measures within its competence to harmonize the Decision on Exercising the Right to Financial Assistance for Families with Multiple Children from the Territory of the City of Kraljevo with anti-discrimination regulations.
COMMISSIONER FOR THE PROTECTION OF EQUALITY
Brankica Janković
