[JURIST] Officials from the monitoring committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) [official website] released a draft resolution [text; press release] Monday praising Serbia for the reforms it has made since joining the Council of Europe (COE) in 2003 but stressing that the country still has work to do. The committee particularly praised the Serbian government's continued efforts towards European integration, indicated most recently by the September 9 ratification of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) [text, PDF; JURIST report] between the EU and Serbia. The country has also shown increased cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website], but the committee officials cautioned that the Serbian government must use peaceful methods in its dealings with Kosovo, strengthen its democratic government, and institute more aggressive legal and judicial reforms. In the resolution, the committee members recommended that the COE:

[W]orks with the Serbian authorities to develop, where appropriate, new targeted co-operation programmes in the fields of strengthening of democratic institutions, local and regional democracy, reform of the judiciary and of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the fight against corruption, human rights, mass media, and education, making full use in particular of new funding opportunities, including within the framework of the European Union’s Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA).