The right to protection of health: Modest achievements of the constitution of Serbia

This paper analyzes the Constitution of Republic of Serbia (2006) in order to determine: whether the guarantee of the right to protection of health is based on the values and principles of community law, that is, whether this constitutional right is in line with the key principles and objectives of EU legal documents, which are in this area of law very explicit. This paper considers whether the constitutional powers of the state provide efficient realization of the right to health; it analyzes whether the Constitution contains a satisfactory constitutional framework for further elaboration of the guaranteed rights. Scientific criteria used to evaluate the Constitution are based on the normative and comparative method; linguistic, systematic and doctrinal interpretation were used; case studies of European Court of Human Rights were consulted. The results are contradictory. On one hand, the Constitution of Serbia - the candidate country for EU membership - does not contain a key principle of community law: a high level of protection of human health, so the content and terminology should be amended and supplemented in this section. On the other hand, under conditions of a modest economic basis of society, even current constitutional guarantees of the right to health can easily become a "wish list" instead of attainable right.