Slavic-speaking Western Balkan states: Journal emphasises continental European orientation in legal transformation
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- Published: January 16, 2026
At first glance, support for legal reform in the former socialist states seems to consist exclusively of helping to free the law from the ideas of the former social system and align it with the principles of the democratic constitutional state and, in the case of current or potential accession candidates, with the acquis of the EU.
In fact, however, another task has been added in the meantime. Competition between legal systems and the lack of ‘master plans’ on the part of the respective national legislators often result in laws that mix institutions and principles from different legal systems. Such ‘hybrid’ laws then cause considerable problems in practice, for example due to uncoordinated regulations based on different fundamental principles, thus hindering the transformation process.
It was this consideration that led to the founding of the journal ‘Kontinentalno pravo – časopis za održiv i skladan razvoj prava’ (‘Continental Law – Journal for Sustainable and Appropriate Legal Development’, KoPra for short) eight years ago, the latest edition of which was presented at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade at the beginning of December.
As usual, the journal, which was made possible by a project grant from the Federal Foreign Office, contains analyses of newly enacted and planned laws, examining in particular the extent to which these represent a legislative ‘deterioration’ due to the mixing of different, sometimes contradictory influences. In this regard, an article by the Deputy President of the Serbian Constitutional Court, Prof Dr Milan Škulić, analyses recent and upcoming further amendments to the Serbian Criminal Code, while Prof Dr Miloš Živković examines the new Serbian consumer protection regulations in the area of financial services. Another focus of the publication is comparative law essays, such as the contribution by the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Prof Dr Dr h c Dr h c Holger Fleischer, LL.M. (Univ. of Michigan) ‘Auf dem Marktplatz der Rechtsformideen: Rechtsvergleichende Wege zur Ausgestaltung des Rechtsformentableaus im Gesellschaftsrecht’ (On the marketplace of legal form ideas: Comparative law approaches to the design of the legal form tableau in company law), which was published in German in the Juristen-Zeitung 2024 and is being made available here for the first time in translation for the region.
Other authors include the two judges at the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dr Adnan Baručija and Goran Nezirović, who report on current developments in civil procedure law in their home country. This article also highlights that the journal not only has readers across the region, but is also a forum for authors from different countries.
The articles in the journal are published in Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, with a German translation of the foreword and short summaries in German, so that it is possible to understand the content and development of the publication even without relevant language skills. The current issue can be found here.
