Entanglement of State and Party Affairs and Absence of Oversight

Contrary to the main recommendation from the June ODIHR report — "measures should be taken to ensure the separation of the state and party and the impartiality of the public administration during the campaign" — Serbia has moved even further away from achieving these goals. This scenario has not been prevented, despite the Serbian Government’s commitment under the Reform Agenda to adopt, by the end of this year, key legal measures to fulfill all essential recommendations of the Venice Commission and ODIHR. Meeting these would make Serbia eligible for €27,175,246.75 in aid from the EU Development Plan.

No regulations have been adopted to encompass all forms of misuse of public resources or to clearly distinguish party-political activities from official state duties. Moreover, key institutions responsible for enforcing existing rules — the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Agency for Prevention of Corruption — still fail to do so. The line between the state and the party continues to blur, especially as the ruling parties now promote their key activities not under their own banners but through statements and announcements by state officials, presenting them as part of a new political movement framed under the narrative of “defending the state.”

For weeks now, the organization of what is described as an “all-people,” “all-Serbian,” “non-partisan,” “patriotic” rally/gathering in Belgrade from April 11 to 13 has been announced — yet it remains unclear who the official organizer of the event is. This information is crucial for the enforcement of the Law on Financing Political Activities and the Law on Preventing Corruption. However, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption, responsible for overseeing the application of these laws, has not made any statements, and the Ministry of Interior has neither provided nor published this information.

The President of the Republic called for the gathering, stating he was doing so on behalf of the “Movement for the People and the State.” This citizens' association was registered on 28 March 2025, but aside from a physical address, it has no website or other contact information. The association was registered by a person not listed among the founding committee members of the Movement, making it impossible to determine whether it is the same organization or what the President’s role and status within it might be. Following this, party leaders — including from SNS and SPS — invited citizens to the rally. Meanwhile, most of the event’s paid promotion is not being conducted by registered political parties or the “Movement for the People and the State,” but by the Center for Social Stability, which is also registered as an association.

Although public officials have mostly been careful not to issue event invitations from official government addresses, some ministers and mayors have violated this rule. According to an announcement by the Minister of Finance, the event will feature presentations by local governments and “Poštanska štedionica” (a state-owned bank), which, if it materializes, would also constitute misuse of public resources. Similarly, the grounds for the involvement of public companies such as Belgrade's Parking Service and Waterworks and Sewerage remain unclear.

So far, public prosecutors have not responded to numerous public claims that employees in public enterprises, institutions, and local governments are being pressured to attend the event, nor is there evidence they acted in previous similar situations.

The most evident example that the existing institutional oversight mechanisms fail to function, even in legally simpler cases, is the “Serbia of Hope” rally held in front of the National Assembly in spring 2023. Although it is indisputably confirmed that the Serbian Progressive Party organized the rally on 26 May 2023, and that the event incurred multimillion costs, two years later it remains unknown whether those expenses were ever recorded. The SNS’s 2023 annual financial report does not mention this rally. Meanwhile, despite the deadline for the Agency for Prevention of Corruption control expiring in February 2025, the Agency has yet to publish findings for nine political entities, including SNS.