Harmful consequences of changes in judicial regulations on the fight against corruption

Changes to judicial regulations will likely reduce the possibilities of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime to investigate possible corruption of high-ranking public officials. The consequences of the legal changes are even more harmful because the performance in prosecuting "high corruption" has not been satisfactory until now, and all of this is happening in a situation where a current minister has been officially accused of corruption for the first time in 30 years.

Amendments to the Law on Public Prosecution, adopted by the National Assembly on January 28, 2026, will directly affect the entire work of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (TOK). Now, instead of the 25 foreseen, it has 20 prosecutors, 11 of whom were sent from other prosecutor's offices. Within 30 days from the beginning of the application of the amended Law, they will be returned to their initial prosecutor's offices. Although it is hypothetically possible that the High Council of Prosecutions will send new prosecutors to the TOK in the meantime, this cannot be counted on due to frequent decision-making blocks in this institution.

These legal changes followed the denial of support from the police and other executive authorities in certain prosecutorial investigations and the announcement by the minister, of a review of the need for TOK to exist at all. All of this is obviously caused by the opening of investigations that also include some current or recent ministers.

The ability to review all important issues when amending regulations is significantly reduced in all five judicial laws that were adopted on at the same session, due to the fact that no public discussion or public hearing was organized, by applying an urgent procedure without a justifiable reason, by merging the discussion with unrelated laws, as well as because the proponent did not request an opinion from the High Council of the Judiciary, the High Council of the Prosecution and the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. Additionally, when it comes to the most harmful change in the regulations - the reduction in the number of prosecutors in the TOK - there was not even basic transparency - this provision was included based on an amendment by a member of parliament, which has not been published on the parliamentary website to this day.

Transparency Serbia believes that certain other changes in regulations will also have a harmful effect on the fight against corruption. This particularly refers to the extension of the permitted duration of „acting“ status in the courts and prosecutor's offices, the deletion of the rule that the collegium of public prosecutors declares the proposed annual plan and work report, as well as the introduction of the obligation for the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office to ask the Minister of Justice for consent for any type of international cooperation, while the deadlines and criteria for granting consent are not prescribed at all.

In the case of some other legal interventions (eg, the method of selecting prosecutors for high-tech crime, establishing new courts and judicial units, deciding on objections from public prosecutors), some arguments for changes were provided, but the adopted solutions are not the best, and especially not the only possible ones. These are very serious issues that had to be considered through consultations with a wide range of actors, primarily those from the judiciary itself.

We also note that some procedural rules were violated during these changes. If the Parliamentary Rules of Procedure had been respected, the proposed changes to some laws would not have been included in the agenda, because the explanation did not contain all the mandatory elements or clearly false information was provided - eg. that the establishment of the court will not cause any costs for the budget.

Regardless of whether these changes to the law will be announced by a presidential decree, whether the Constitutional Court will do something about the "procedural error" that its newly elected president spoke about, and whether the parliament will "urgently revise" the laws on the advice of the Commissioner for the Enlargement of the European Union, this case shows that it is necessary to change the rules of the National Assembly. This is necessary in order to prevent the exclusion of anti-corruption mechanisms in the preparation of regulations in all future cases when the law is proposed by parliamentarians.