Serbia took the last place in the competition this year Of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia according to the index of openness of the executive power, it is written in this year's report of the organization "Partners of Serbia".
"Vreme" also wrote last year about the openness of the work of the authorities in Serbia, which is monitored by the organization "Partneri Srbija". And then we asked ourselves "who needs it, and it doesn't work". clear thing, power in an authoritarian state, he does whatever he can "below the grain", does not publish, does not report and, ultimately, does not bear any responsibility for what he does. This year, however, it seems that things are even worse. "Anyway", say "Partners of Serbia" already at the beginning of this year's report ("Openness of the executive power in Serbia and the region"), "everything is decided by the president and his environment". Should the government's openness be further explained after such a finding?
"The general impression is that key decisions are not made at meetings anyway Vlade, already in a narrow circle around the president of the state. Although formally the president of the state has no authority under the Constitution, he de facto dictates the direction of the government, which can be seen in everyday practice: on television, the president regularly announces decisions on which projects will be financed from the budget, which village will get a road or how much aid will be given to citizens after an accident. This kind of personalized decision-making outside the institutions undermines the principles of responsibility and the division of power", states "Partneri Serbia".
But let's see what the problem is with the openness of the executive branch.
LANTERNS ON THE TABLE
"The principles of openness in practice are more and more often suppressed in front of other interests, most often the interest of staying in power", state "Partners", adding that the openness of institutions still depends on the goodwill of individuals, as well as that "many institutions have stagnated or regressed, which indicates that the declarative commitment to European values and open governance is often not followed by actual reforms".
The central role in decision-making - at least formally - still belongs to the Government of Serbia. However, how does the Government make decisions?
"For the second year in a row, the government has not published a work plan (the last plan available to the public was for 2023), nor does it regularly report on its work. The Action Plan for the implementation of the Government Program 2023-2026 is publicly available, which has not been updated, nor has implementation reports been published," write "Partners".
They state that "the way of planning and then making decisions is completely non-transparent", and that parts of plans, obligations and reporting on planned activities "can be found out by the public rather from the strategic documents created in connection with the process of accession to EU, only because Serbia is obliged to report about it to the European institutions".
To be sure, there are no broadcasts of government sessions, nor any direct insight into the discussions that take place at government sessions, and there are no publicly available transcripts from the sessions. Maybe, just maybe, the transcripts are not even needed - just imagine the surprise of the public after the liberation of Serbia, when it is established that the transcripts from the Government sessions exist, but also that they do not contain any discussions, because the ministers did not come there to discuss but to vote for what was given to be voted on.
Overall, the Government of the Republic of Serbia, in the competition of four countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, took the last place according to the index of openness.
BARENESS TO THE BONE
Paradoxically, although the Government of Serbia is the last, the ministries in that government are rated the best of all four countries. How? So that ministries in other countries recorded a serious drop in openness... At the same time, the vast majority of Serbian administrative bodies do not meet even a third of all openness criteria.
And what are those criteria?
More than 100 indicators are grouped into four openness criteria: transparency, accessibility, integrity and efficiency. And here it should be said that "Partners Serbia" does not only measure legal obligations, but also measures the relationship between what has been done and the examples of best practice - what institutions should strive for. And the extent to which our government fulfills those criteria is indicated by the fact that our executive power fulfills only about half of the mentioned indicators.
At the same time, both the Government of Serbia and the Government of Vojvodina "show only a basic level of transparency", as the publication of key documents such as work plans, as well as annual, semi-annual and quarterly work reports, is missing, the report states.
The website of the Government of Serbia (and the Government of Vojvodina) "is characterized by the complete absence of financial plans and reports, final accounts, as well as quarterly reporting on spending", they do not contain budgets, nor reports on the implementation of the budget, the report further states.
By the way, as a good example of accessibility, "Partners of Serbia" cite a request that the Ministry of Defense did not want to answer: they did not want to say what the number of employees in this ministry was in 2024.
Three ministries did not respond at all to the "Partner" request for access to information of public importance, and only six out of a total of 25 ministries filled out the requested questionnaire, compared to 10 from last year.
However, when it comes to the transparency of the Government of Serbia, the situation was best described by the most important and difficult event that happened during that period - the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad. The entire previous year was marked by the fall of a canopy in Novi Sad, the death of 16 citizens and the largest demonstrations and protests that Serbia has ever seen. The government is accused of being to blame for the fall of the canopy, as a result of corruption and incompetence.
And not only that.
This accident, writes "Partneri Srbija", exposed the problem of lack of transparency in the implementation of large public projects.
"Among the main demands of the student and civil protests that followed, was the publication of complete documentation related to the reconstruction of the station. The government initially refused this request citing the alleged secrecy of the contracts concluded with the Chinese contractor. However, under public pressure, part of the documentation was subsequently published, and it turned out that the specific contracts were never marked as secret in accordance with the current laws of the Republic of Serbia," writes "Partners".
"Partners of Serbia" state that the exclusion of large state projects from the general regime of transparency has become a rule in Serbia and they state the Expo 2027 project, for which a proposal for a special law has been submitted, which is currently being discussed in the Serbian Parliament, all in order to avoid the application of the Law on Public Procurement.
STRENGTHENING AUTHORITARIAN METHODS
And finally, the bottom line:
"(...) Cases of police brutality, apprehension, eavesdropping and intimidation of protest participants and activists are recorded daily. The seriousness of the pressure on civil liberties is also illustrated by the fact that during the large March 2025 protest, a sonic device was allegedly used to break up the demonstrations. In this regard, the European Court of Human Rights in March 2025 asked Serbia for explanations and issued a measure for the state to 'prevent the use of sonic weapons or similar devices' against citizens. Such occurrences, once unimaginable, they indicate a trend of strengthening authoritarian methods. While not declaratively deviating from democracy, the Serbian government in practice increasingly shows intolerance towards criticism, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," the report states.
Cooperation of governments in the region with civil society
"Although declarative cooperation with the civil sector exists, as can be seen from strategic documents and a search of institutions' websites, numerous cases point to the deterioration of the environment for the work of civil society organizations, independent media and activists. In Serbia, at the beginning of 2025, a police raid on the premises of five civil society organizations was recorded, while an Amnesty International report pointed to the use of spyware against journalists and activists.
In North Macedonia, after students booed the minister of education during the commemoration of the accident caused by a fire in a discotheque in Kočani, the journalist who shared the video became the target of a coordinated online campaign of smears and death threats, without any institutional reaction.
In the Republika Srpska, the criminalization of defamation caused media protests and justified fear.
In Montenegro, the adoption of the Law on Agents of Foreign Influence was announced at the end of last year. Although activities on its preparation have not been initiated, the initiators have never officially given up on that idea, while in some media close to the government, a campaign directed against the civil sector continues," writes "Partneri Serbia".
Is there anything worth doing?
As one of the few things that was improved during 2024 in terms of transparency, "Partners Serbia" state that the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Protection of Personal Data introduced the Unified Information System of Work Informants, which facilitated access to informants about the work of the institutions that created it, as well as access to information in it, since all informants are uniform. All that remains is for all institutions to enter all the required data and to regularly update the Informants...
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