A Special Law Will Undermine Not Only the General Staff Building but the Legal System as Well

The draft of the special law concerning the land plots of the former General Staff, which the Parliament is set to place on the agenda in an expedited procedure, represents a combination of the two most dangerous forms of corruption – the legalization of law violations and the tailoring of general rules to fit hidden interests in one specific case.

When the investigation established a well-founded suspicion that members of the Government of Serbia and others, following orders from the Government, had violated rules and committed criminal acts in order to implement a project arranged outside of all legal procedures, MPs came to their aid by proposing a “special law” that would adapt the rules to those arrangements. Since the law was not formally proposed by the Government but directly by MPs, the mandatory public consultation was avoided, as well as the obligation to obtain an assessment of corruption risks, which is required for laws in this field.

Of everything written in this “Law,” what is most striking is the information that is missing: which project it concerns; how it has already been determined, without mentioning the project itself, that 30,000 square meters of buildings will be constructed; why it is declared a project of importance for the Republic of Serbia; on what basis it was prepared; and under what legal grounds the future construction has been or will be contracted.

This lex specialis, unlike its “relatives” – the special laws on “Belgrade Waterfront,” EXPO 2027, and the Morava Corridor, as well as the repealed Law on Linear Infrastructure – for now does not exclude the application of the Public Procurement Law and the Law on Public-Private Partnerships.

Nevertheless, there is no reason for optimism that, after resolving “minor issues” such as revoking the status of cultural heritage and approving the construction of high-rises in Nemanjina Street, a competitive procedure for selecting the most favorable strategic partner will follow. On the contrary, this very topic was negotiated and contracts were signed a year and a half ago by former Minister Vesić, who is currently under investigation in another case.

There is no doubt that public opinion in Serbia is divided over whether the former General Staff building should be restored or demolished. On the other hand, as shown by Transparency Serbia’s survey from March this year, even a large majority of those citizens who otherwise support the Government’s actions do not consider contracting without tenders and adopting “special laws” for individual projects to be justified.

The Government of Serbia refused to provide Transparency Serbia with the signed documents, giving a nonsensical explanation - that the requester must specify which particular information is needed from the copies of the documents (such as contracts, consents of state bodies, etc.). After TS clarified that it was requesting “all information contained in those documents,” the Government rejected the request as “improper.”

By all indications, another contract with a familiar “strategic partner” of the Serbian Government is in the making, again without any competition. In the absence of competition, the Government would significantly reduce its own negotiating space, which threatens to cause harmful consequences for public property. Citizens have already seen how that works in the case of “Belgrade Waterfront” - the state contributed land whose market-based sale could have brought around one billion euros and much more, while the private partner invested 150 million euros and borrowed another 150 million. A joint venture was then established, in which the Republic of Serbia received a disproportionately small ownership share - only 32%.

Since the proposed lex specialis (Law on Special Procedures for the Implementation of the Project for the Revitalization and Development of the Site in Belgrade between Kneza Miloša, Masarikova, Birčaninova, and Resavska Streets) contains no provisions related to contracting the project, it remains to be seen whether in this case the Government will again use an intergovernmental agreement (as with “Belgrade Waterfront”) to justify bypassing the legal procurement procedures, or whether such provisions will be added to the law at a later stage.