Missed opportunities for the prevention of corruption within the executive authority and the police

GRECO's assessment that Serbia has fulfilled only one of the 24 recommendations from the fifth round of evaluation in two years calls into question the existence of strategic commitment and will to combat corruption, but also confirms the findings of the TS from the beginning of this year.

The lack of action of the authorities is even more difficult to understand, when we take into account that the fulfillment of all GRECO recommendations was listed as one of the main priorities in the report of the European Commission for Serbia from November 2023.

Moreover, the exposé of the new Prime Minister does not mention these obligations of Serbia at all, nor any plans on how to tackle these issues.

This round of evaluation is related to the prevention of corruption at the top of the executive authority and the police, and many of these recommendations are of extreme importance, of course, if they were to actually be met.

Although the reason for not fulfilling some of the recommendations is that the draft amendments to the laws that had been in preparation (the Law on Prevention of Corruption, the Law on Internal Affairs) have not yet been adopted, this certainly cannot be a justification for many recommendations. There was no legal obstacle for the Government and all ministries to publish information on who the special advisers were, for all laws to be presented for public discussion, for the Government to elect the missing members of the Anti-Corruption Council and start considering the reports of this body, or for the Director of the Agency to provide for the verification of data submitted by the highest officials of the executive power - new or outgoing members of the Government and the President of the Republic - in the control plan of the reports on assets and income.

In the context of numerous suspicions of hidden influences on the decisions proposed by the executive power, it is particularly worrying that there has been no progress when it comes to the greater transparency of lobbying, nor the improvement of legal protection of access to information requested from the Government of Serbia.

Regarding the last question, we would like to emphasize that TS has been conducting administrative disputes against the Government of Serbia for seven years now, due to its persistent and unfounded refusal to disclose the feasibility study of the concession for Belgrade Airport.