The fourth meeting of the Working Group for regulation of Internships was held on Thursday, the 30th of December 2021 at the premises of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs. About 30 representatives of state administration bodies, international organisations, trade unions, employers' associations and civil society organisations attended the meeting.
During the meeting individually each comment and proposal was discussed that arrived at the ministry's address after the public discussion ended. Most discussed were proposals concerning age restrictions for interns, then the amount of compensation for interns and administrative procedures for employers to hire interns.
Members of the working group were most opposed to an article of the draft law limiting the intern from performing internship only within the acquired level of qualifications during the first 9 months after finishing school. BOS team wrote about this and other perceived dilemmas in the Draft Law on Internships in this article.
In the new year, the Ministry published a Report on Conducted Public Discussion, a document in which the interested public can be informed in detail about all the comments and ambiguity that have been discussed both at the presentations of the Draft Law within the public discussion and at the working group meetings. The report can be found on the website of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs, as well as on the BOS’s Internships portal, on this link.
In the coming period, the Government of the Republic of Serbia should accept the Draft Law and determine the proposal that is further sent to the National Assembly. The bill that is enacted can be included on the agenda of the National Assembly session within no less than 15 days from the date of its submission.
The legal framework for regulating practices is important in order to prevent abuses and ensure quality, as previous legal analyses and research by the BOS show, and in order to reach an adequate solution, it is important that a broad consultation process is implemented.