The law on issuing identification cards for Serbs with foreign citizenship originating from this area should be adopted by the end of the year, and this will allow the people from the diaspora to enjoy equal treatment as RS citizens on many issues.

The Serb member of the BiH Presidency, Milorad Dodik, said that the identification cards would be issued to all those originating from this area who had received the citizenship of Austria, Germany or Australia.

– That card will enable the people from our territory to enjoy the status of domestic persons in Srpska in terms of real estate transactions, business establishment, and use of some other services. That law is being drafted and its adoption will be proposed as soon as the new convocation of the parliament is formed – Dodik said.

The RS Minister of European Integration and International Cooperation, Zlatan Klokić, said that he would do everything to realize the idea of the identification cards for Serbs as soon as possible.

– In this way, even those who were born outside Srpska’s borders will have their national identity. The motherland cares for them and they have not and will not be forgotten. They can always find a partner in the RS institutions to exercise the rights that we will guarantee them – Klokić said. He emphasized that the RS took care of its people regardless of whether they had been born abroad or in Srpska which they had left and after a certain time had taken the citizenship of another country.

– The goal is to make it easier for those people to start any business in the RS, both in terms of buying a property and establishing a company – Klokić said. He emphasized that some laws needed to be amended in order to issue the identification cards.

The Head of the RS Representative Office in Austria, Mladen Filipović, said that the identification card for Serbs was a national project, and underlined that this idea had resonated positively in Austria, where there was the third and even the fourth generation of our people who had gone there to live and work.

– Quite a few of these people took the citizenship of Austria, which does not allow any other citizenship. Because of this, many of our people had to renounce their RS-BiH citizenship. This project will allow our people here to have a stronger connection with Srpska – said Filipović.

He noted that there were many businessmen from our territory in Austria, and that they wanted to invest in Srpska.

– The assigning of identification cards will definitely facilitate access to investing in Srpska for our people, because the goal is for them to have equal treatment as those in the RS – concluded Filipović.

Register

Zlatan Klokić said that the number of natural persons and legal entities in the diaspora register had exceeded four digits.

– In the beginning, there was a certain apprehension with our people living and working abroad that we would be collecting a tax by creating that register, which is not true. Our goal is to have a record of how many of our people live and work abroad, but also to have profiles of those people. This facilitates their finding interlocutors for the realization of certain ideas in our territory – said Klokić.

Source and photo: Glas Srpske