ODIHR Opinion Confirms That the Debate on the Proposed Amendments to the Law on Financing Political Activities Is Premature

The proposed amendments to the Law on Financing Political Activities do not meet some of ODIHR’s key recommendations, according to Transparency Serbia¹, and this assessment has now been confirmed in the ODIHR opinion published today². Since it is evident that the authorities will need to amend and supplement the proposal in order to obtain a positive opinion, the public hearings scheduled for this week are premature.

As ODIHR notes, the main unresolved issues concern sanctions, which should be “proportionate and dissuasive,” the timely allocation of budget funds for campaign financing, measures to protect against the misuse of public resources, and measures to encourage greater participation of women in political life.

With regard to oversight and enforcement of the Law, which, according to Transparency Serbia’s experience, is a much greater problem than deficiencies in any legal provision, ODIHR calls for clearer definitions of the Anti-Corruption Agency’s competences and deadlines for action and points out that the methodology used for conducting checks should also be publicly available.

On these issues, Transparency Serbia recalls that it previously proposed concrete solutions for better defining criminal offences related to illegal political financing.³ Regarding the Agency’s responsibilities, TS also proposed a model for defining them in the Law, including obligations of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption during oversight procedures.⁴ Had such obligations existed, it would not have been possible for a political party to organize a rally costing millions of euros, involving direct participation of public institutions and accompanied by widespread public allegations of pressure on public sector employees to attend, without the Agency establishing facts regarding the legality of financing immediately after the event.

In its opinion, ODIHR confirmed Transparency Serbia’s position that campaign spending limits are excessively high⁵, both for national elections (€6–7 million) and local elections (between €400,000 and €1 million per city or municipality), although it did not propose specific thresholds. Taking into account spending caps in countries comparable to Serbia (the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovakia), Transparency Serbia proposed a ceiling of 300 million dinars (approximately €2.5 million) for parliamentary elections.⁶ Additionally, although ODIHR called for sanctions in cases of violations of these rules, such sanctions are absent from the draft law.

Regarding the regulation of “third-party campaigning”, aimed at preventing indirect circumvention of campaign finance rules, ODIHR confirmed that the relevant provisions need further clarification. Similar clarification is requested for several other provisions.

A new element in this opinion is the recommendation to explicitly regulate campaign financing by electoral candidates themselves, which the current law does not recognize. Introducing such rules would be logical, particularly in presidential elections, since there is no justified reason for individuals wishing to finance their own campaigns to be subject to the same donation limits as any other citizen (approximately €5,000 under the new proposal). However, Transparency Serbia emphasizes that such a system would require a robust verification mechanism to determine whether the funds genuinely belong to the candidate or to concealed donors.

Transparency Serbia also recalls that the draft law contains a harmful amendment that would encourage the submission of electoral lists solely to obtain budget funding. Although the obligation formally remains for electoral list submitters and presidential candidate nominators receiving less than 1% of the vote to return allocated funds to the budget, abolishing the requirement to provide an “electoral guarantee” would make enforcement impossible in most cases. In the event of simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections, based on previous experience, TS estimates the damage could amount to approximately €2.5 million. For this reason, Transparency Serbia addressed the Finance Committee of the National Assembly with a proposal to mitigate these harmful effects by introducing personal and joint liability of individuals where recovery from a party or citizens’ group proves impossible.⁷

Since the authorities will inevitably have to submit a revised draft law if they wish to obtain a positive ODIHR opinion, the public hearings announced for this week⁸ are premature. Furthermore, meaningful public participation could be better ensured if the draft law were prepared by the Ministry and submitted by the Government, since this would create an obligation to explain the reasons for accepting or rejecting each proposal received during public consultation.

¹ https://www.transparentnost.org.rs/sr/aktivnosti-2/saoptenja/13043-izmene-zakona-o-finansiranju-politickih-aktivnosti-ne-ispunjavaju-kljucne-preporuke-odhir

2

https://odihr.osce.org/sites/default/files/documents/official_documents/2026/06/ODIHR_Legal_Opinion_SRB_CF%20 Law_29.06.2026.pdf

³ https://preugovor.org/upload/document/preugovor_amandmani_na_kz_final_sr.pdf

4

https://www.parlament.gov.rs/upload/documents/dokumenta/16%20PREDLOG%20TS%20PREPORUKA%20ODIHR%2 016%202023%2017%202022%204%202017.docx

⁵ According to the current proposal, no electoral list or presidential candidate would be allowed to incur campaign expenses exceeding €6 million (€7 million in the case of two rounds of presidential elections). This means that in the case of concurrent elections, the limit would amount to €12 million (€13 million). For comparison, this is higher than the total reported campaign expenditures of the coalition led by the SNS in 2022 (around €10 million), when parliamentary, presidential, and Belgrade elections were held simultaneously. Considering that over the past decade the largest ruling party has consistently spent more in national elections than all other parties combined, while in some local elections parties in power accounted for as much as 90% of all reported campaign expenditures, it is clear that this provision would not achieve the objective for which spending limits are introduced.

⁶ https://www.transparentnost.org.rs/images/dokumenti_uz_vesti/TS_komentari_i_predlozi_ZFPA_Maj_2024.pdf

⁷ https://www.transparentnost.org.rs/images/Dopis_Odboru_za_finansije_-_predlog_ZFPA.pdf

⁸ https://www.parlament.gov.rs/aktivnosti/narodna-skupstina/radna-tela/javna-slusanja.3012.html?submitted=true&odbor=0&saziv=0&offset=5