must fulfil the legal requirements for acquiring the citizenship of Serbia by descent, which means that he or she needs, first of all, citizenship certificate of (at least one) parent. However, the persons who addressed Praxis often did not have any such evidence. Therefore, we first had to obtain international birth certificates through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then the parents’ citizenship certificates, as well as some other evidence, such as certificate on changes in permanent residence. Even if we disregard a rather expensive fee for obtaining foreign birth certificates through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (EUR 26), it happened very often that it was not possible to obtain a birth certificate, because at the time of registering the child into birth registry books in the country of birth the parents did not have personal documents, and therefore the registration was not completed and/or the wrong information on parents were entered. In such cases, in order to obtain an international birth certificate from the country of birth, it is necessary to provide the parents’ birth certificate (and marriage certificate) from Serbia (also on the international form), and in some cases (primarily for the children born in Germany) also the verified copy and translation of passport, which incurs additional costs. The delivery of documents to foreign registry offices and communication with foreign authorities is performed through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and through the Serbian diplomatic and consular missions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs usually informs the clients that the procedures of correction or supplement of registration may last between three and six months, but these deadlines are often exceeded. In fact, so far Praxis has had several successfully completed procedures of this type and it is too early to assess whether and to which extent this procedure is effective and efficient. Besides, it happened that some registry offices requested the international birth certificate to be translated by a sworn court interpreter in order to perform the registration into birth registry books, explaining that it is the only way to enter the personal names and the names of cities written in a foreign language in the international certificate. Responding to the Praxis’ request for the issuance of opinion, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local SelfGovernment indirectly confirmed that such practice was justified.21 As regards the procedures of registration into birth registry books of the persons born abroad, we shall illustrate the irregular procedure through the case of one Praxis’ beneficiary that the registry office refused to register into birth registry books, although she fulfilled all legal requirements and possessed all necessary evidence. Instead, she was instructed to first conduct a procedure for determining citizenship before the Ministry of Interior, and to request the registration into birth registry books only after completing that procedure. The beneficiary complied with the instruction and initiated a procedure of determining citizenship. However, the Ministry of Interior - correctly judging that in this case that procedure should not be conducted before that authority, but that the registration should be performed by registrars – invited the beneficiary to withdraw the request for determining citizenship. After that, the beneficiary again submitted the request for registration into birth registry books to the registry 21 In its opinion, the Ministry states that the information is entered into civil registry books according to the rules of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script (and that it can also be written in the original form in the brackets), and if the certificate “does not contain the information entered in the civil registry books in the way regulated under the Law on Registry Books and the Instruction on Administering Registry Books and Forms of Registry Books, pursuant to Article 21 of the Law on Registry Books the registrar shall check and establish such information in accordance with the law governing the general administrative procedure“. Opinion of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, no. 200-00-73/2016-26 of 21 March 2016 15