Vojvodina MPs on Nov. 7 supported the legal-technical harmonization of the Vojvodina Statute and the proposed Law on Determination of Vojvodina's Jurisdiction, in favor of which two thirds of the MPs voted.

Some 80 MPs voted for the documents handed in urgently by the Vojvodina Executive Committee, whereas 20 of them voted against and one MP abstained from voting. The ruling League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina MPs did not take part in the assembly's work, and the Forward Serbia caucus also left the premises.

The legal-technical harmonization refers to several points included in the proposed Statute, passed in the Vojvodina assembly over a year ago, though they are no longer mentioned in the proposed Law on Determination of Vojvodina's Jurisdiction, adopted by the Serbian government.

Corrections in the statute text mostly refer to the manner of conducting referendums in Vojvodina, the issue of the province's assets, to be defined by a special law, as well as to the closure of inter-regional agreements, not international contracts, as it was stated in the first place.

MPs also passed the Socialist Party of Serbia's amendments, which stated that Vojvodina's statute cannot define its territory as being a part of central Europe, but only as an autonomous province of citizens who live in it, and an inseparable part of the Republic of Serbia.

The Socialists assess that Vojvodina may found representing offices in European regions and in Brussels with the Serbian government's consent, and the party also submitted an amendment which stipulates that Novi Sad cannot be considered a capital city, but a main administrative center of Vojvodina.

The Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia MPs severely criticized the ruling coalition, assessing the debate as illegitimate and counter-constitutional, and accused the ruling majority of separatism.

The Executive Committee President Bojan Pajtic stated that, after the statute and the accompanying jurisdiction law are adopted, the province will be more autonomous than before, but significantly less so than a number of regions in Europe.

The Democratic Party of Serbia President Vojislav Kostunica on Nov. 8 assessed the Statute of Vojvodina as separatist and anti-constitutional, intending to make "a country within a country."