citizenship should be entered into birth registry books at the same time.17 However, even after the issuance of this opinion, some registry offices continued with the old practice, and did not enter the fact of citizenship into birth registry books. Unfortunately, such cases occurred also this year. Praxis then sent separate requests to the registry offices asking for the registration of the fact of citizenship into birth registry books, and this year all such requests were granted. There were also some examples of good practice in which some registry offices, instead of referring the parties to a lengthy procedure of determining citizenship, accepted to enter the fact of citizenship even in situations where several months, and even more than a year had passed after the birth registration. And still, some registry offices refused to act in the same way, with the explanation that the fact of citizenship was entered in birth registry books simultaneously with the registration of the fact of birth. Therefore, in such cases the parties had to conduct the procedures for determining citizenship. As already said, in the aforementioned opinion, the MoI stated that in implementing court decisions (and decisions of registry offices and social welfare centres) the fact of citizenship should be registered simultaneously, but also stressed that the fact of citizenship should be registered even if the authority did not have evidence of the citizenship of parents, and subsequently, within an appropriate time their citizenship certificates would be provided. It is obvious that some registry offices have interpreted this legal standard "within an appropriate time" rather narrowly, while others have been more flexible. PROCEDURES FOR DETERMINING CITIZENSHIP AND ACQUISITION OF CITIZENSHIP BY NATURALISATION: The persons whose fact of citizenship has not been registered in civil registry books for some reason, regardless of whether these persons were registered at birth or after conducting some of the mentioned procedures, have to initiate a procedure for determining citizenship or for acquisition of citizenship by naturalisation before the Ministry of Interior. In the previous years, in these cases the parties encountered the first obstacle already at the time of trying to submit a request. In fact, it often happens that the officers in police stations, for some reason, refuse to receive a request or require additional evidence to receive it, despite the fact that the law orders the authority to receive any request and issue an appropriate confirmation of receipt18. In this regard, this year the situation was much better and only in a few cases the Praxis beneficiaries faced this kind of problems, which were resolved after the intervention of Praxis lawyers and the requests were successfully submitted. The general impression is that the actions of police stations officers have greatly improved. However, certain problems were still encountered in relation to establishing the identity of applicants in initiating the procedure. In fact, the applicants usually do not possess any identification document and it is, therefore, necessary to establish their identity on the basis of the statements of two witnesses. The Ministry of Interior insists that witnesses give statements in the presence of a police officer and that witnesses are close relatives. However, it seems that not all police officers are familiar with this MoI’s position, given that it happened sometimes that the applicants were required to ensure the verification of witness statements in the municipality or without stressing to the applicants that the witnesses must be relatives. This then leads to unnecessary delays in procedures because the request is therefore returned to be supplemented, which may cause a delay of several months. 17 Opinion of the MoI; see Footnote 15. Article 56, paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Law on General Administrative Procedure, Official Gazette of FRY, nos. 33/97 and 31/2001 and the Official Gazette of RS, no. 30/2010 18 13