No demolition - no police assistance

Apparently, the lack of police assistance for the demolition of restaurants in Kopaonik is neither the only one, nor the biggest problem when it comes to the removal of illegal objects. Transparency Serbia tried to determine whether the police provided assistance to the inspectors of the Ministry of Construction (MGSI) in the past, that is, whether the MGSI inspectors tried to remove illegal objects before they asked for help from the police in the past cases.

We remind that, in the case of non-breach of the illegal building at the top of Kopaonik, it was announced that MGSI does not want to act without police support, and that the MUP will not provide assistance before attempting to execute without them. Ministries are called for different provisions of the regulations on this issue.

In order to determine how the practice was before this case, we asked MGSI for a copy of the request that was submitted to the police station in Brus to work on demolition assistance. We also asked for information on the number of cases during 2017 and 2018, or in the earlier period for which they have data, the Ministry requested assistance from the MUP to remove the facility or its part, in how many cases the MUP refused to provide assistance because it was not there was evidence of an attempt to remove the object without the help of the police, and in how many cases the Ministry provided this assistance.

The first respond we received was partial - we learned that in 2015 decisions of republic construction inspectors were carried out at four locations in national parks and nature parks, with the assistance of the police.  

On the additional request sent because most of the questions from the first one were not answered, we received information on the working number of the letter sent to the police station in Brus, as well as information that prevented us from checking whether the case on Kopaonik was a lonely case or one in a row, due to the systemic problem - the non-compliance of the regulations after the Law on Police was amended.

Namely, it was not possible to determine from the MGSI response what was the previous practice - because from January 2017 until August 2018 there was no removal of facilities under the orders of the inspectors of MGSI, nor with the assistance of the police or without it.