Certificate of No Criminal Record in Serbia: What If You Are a Foreign National Who Has Not Registered Your Stay?

Imagine that you are a Canadian citizen applying for citizenship in the United States of America and, for that purpose, you are required to obtain a certificate of no criminal record from every country in which you have resided for more than six months. Alternatively, imagine that you are an Indian citizen who, on your way to Spain, spent a certain period of time in the Republic of Serbia and is now required to obtain a certificate of no criminal record from every country in which you have resided for more than 90 days during the past three years in order to obtain a temporary residence permit in Slovakia.

However, what happens if you have not duly registered your stay in the Republic of Serbia? In such circumstances, you may encounter difficulties obtaining a Certificate of No Criminal Record through the regular procedure. This requires initiating a special procedure in order to obtain the appropriate documentation necessary to exercise your rights abroad.

A Certificate of No Criminal Record is obtained by submitting an application to the competent organisational unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia (MUP), specifically the unit responsible for the area in which you had your last registered place of residence.

You may submit the application in person or authorise a lawyer to act on your behalf on the basis of a duly signed Power of Attorney. The time limit for issuing a Certificate of No Criminal Record is, as a rule, eight days. However, you should also take into account the additional time required to obtain an Apostille stamp, a certified translation by a sworn translator, and arrange delivery of the documents to you. To avoid having to travel to the Republic of Serbia solely for the purpose of obtaining this document, our law office can provide legal assistance throughout the entire procedure, including obtaining the Certificate of No Criminal Record and arranging for its delivery to your address.

However, obtaining a Certificate of No Criminal Record through the regular procedure generally requires that you have been duly registered in the relevant records maintained by the competent authorities during your stay in the Republic of Serbia, meaning that you have been assigned a Foreigner Identification Number (EBS). If this is not the case, but you still need proof that you have no criminal record for proceedings abroad, an alternative procedure may be considered to obtain the appropriate documentation required to exercise your rights abroad.

Such situations may arise for various reasons. For example, consider a Russian citizen who, relying on the visa-free regime, stayed in the Republic of Serbia over an extended period but left the country and re-entered it every 30 days, corresponding to the permitted visa-free period of stay, without duly registering their stay. Another example would be a Montenegrin citizen who studied in the Republic of Serbia during the dissolution of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, when registering one's stay under such circumstances was not common practice, resulting in their stay not being formally recorded by the competent authorities.

In such circumstances, one possible course of action is to submit a request to the Ministry of the Interior for the issuance of a certificate confirming that the individual has not had a registered permanent or temporary residence in the territory of the Republic of Serbia. Although this document does not formally constitute a Certificate of No Criminal Record, nor does it directly confirm that the individual has never been convicted of a criminal offence, it provides indirect proof that the individual was not convicted of any criminal offence during their stay in the Republic of Serbia.

Another available option is to prepare a legal opinion, which may also serve as indirect evidence that the individual has not been convicted of a criminal offence. This document provides a detailed analysis of the legal and factual circumstances of the particular case, as well as the objective reasons preventing the individual from obtaining a standard Certificate of No Criminal Record from the competent authorities of the Republic of Serbia.

Based on our law office's experience, foreign authorities have accepted both of the above options in practice as valid forms of indirect evidence. However, their ultimate acceptance always depends on the formal requirements and discretionary practices of the relevant foreign jurisdiction.

In practice, foreign nationals who need a Certificate of No Criminal Record are sometimes unsure whether their stay in the Republic of Serbia was duly registered and whether they complied with all the obligations prescribed by Serbian law. In such circumstances, before obtaining the relevant documentation, it is first necessary to establish whether records of the individual's stay exist in the official registers maintained by the competent authorities.

If the checks reveal that the individual had no registered permanent or temporary residence recorded in the Republic of Serbia, the next step is to submit an application for the issuance of an official certificate confirming this fact.

The significance of obtaining this certificate, as previously mentioned, lies in the fact that, under certain circumstances, it may serve as indirect evidence of the absence of criminal convictions in the Republic of Serbia before foreign authorities. In particular, where an individual had no registered permanent or temporary residence in the Republic of Serbia and, consequently, did not have the corresponding registered status required to obtain a Certificate of No Criminal Record through the regular procedure, a certificate confirming that the individual had no registered residence may constitute relevant supporting documentation for the assessment of their status during their stay in Serbia.

As regards the time required to obtain this document, the general statutory time limit for acting on the application is 30 days, in accordance with the Law on General Administrative Procedure. However, we would like to point out that, based on our law office's experience, the procedure has taken considerably longer than the statutory deadline in a significant number of cases. In any event, the actual duration of the procedure depends on the specific circumstances of each individual case.

As regards the authority competent to issue this certificate, the application is primarily submitted to the Border Police Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia. However, depending on the circumstances of the particular case, the application may also fall within the competence of the relevant organisational unit of the competent police administration responsible for matters relating to foreign nationals and the suppression of irregular migration.

Once the certificate confirming that the individual had no registered permanent or temporary residence in the Republic of Serbia has been obtained, it is necessary to consider the requirements for its acceptance by the competent authorities of the foreign country in which it is to be used. As with a Certificate of No Criminal Record, the use of this public document abroad generally requires an Apostille, which authenticates the signature, the capacity in which the signatory of the public document has acted, and the authenticity of the seal or stamp affixed to the document.

In the Republic of Serbia, an Apostille is issued by the Basic Court with territorial jurisdiction over the seat of the authority that issued the relevant document. When submitting the application, proof of payment of the applicable court fee must also be provided, which currently amounts to RSD 3,100.00.

A document bearing an Apostille stamp may be used in countries that are parties to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, subject to the conditions set out therein. However, if the document is to be submitted to an authority in a country that is not a party to the Convention, a full legalisation procedure must be completed, which involves additional steps.

In addition to legalisation, depending on the requirements of the institution to which the documents are to be submitted, it may also be necessary to obtain a translation of the document into the official language of the country in which it is to be used. The translation must be prepared by a certified court interpreter authorised for the relevant language. Translation costs depend on the language and the volume of the documentation and generally range from EUR 13 to EUR 17 per translation page.

In view of the growing number of foreign nationals coming to and residing in the Republic of Serbia, we believe that it would be appropriate to establish a uniform and clearly defined procedure for verifying and documenting their previous periods of stay in cases where no corresponding information is available in the official records. It is particularly important to address this matter systematically, given that foreign nationals often need such documents within a short timeframe and that any unnecessary delays in obtaining them may further hinder their ability to exercise their rights abroad.

Obtaining proof of a foreign national's stay and status in the Republic of Serbia can be a stressful and frustrating experience, particularly when combined with time constraints and in circumstances where the stay was not registered or the relevant information was not recorded in a manner that allows the issuance of the required certificates.

Until a uniform and clearly defined procedure for handling such cases is established, our law office remains at your disposal to provide legal assistance and support in obtaining the necessary documentation, with the aim of ensuring that the process of regularising your status abroad proceeds as efficiently as possible and without unnecessary difficulties.