Metro

In the flood of agreements and memorandums concluded by representatives of Serbia with representatives of China, special attention was drawn to the announcement of the engagement of Chinese financiers and contractors in the construction of the Belgrade metro. So one job agreed without publicity and competition would be replaced by others, and the first one was not even completed. Namely, representatives of the City of Belgrade and the Republic of Serbia, eight years ago about the same thing, began to conclude agreements with companies and institutions from France.

Truly, in the meantime, a lot has changed. Among other things, the routes of the planned metro are changed just to suit the needs of a current investor (“Belgrade waterfront”) and one announced ("Tesla city" Bogoljub Karic in Makis). In addition to the route, it seems that there will be changes in the concept ("classic" or "light" subway).

As TS pointed out, infrastructure projects should not be conducted under the auspices of interstate agreements. The purpose of such agreements is to exclude competition, responsibility, the possibility of reviewing, and often also elementary transparency of the actions of the authorities. From the economic point of view, contracts concluded on the basis of such agreements may at best be as good as contracts concluded by tender. On the other hand, it is very likely that it will be harmful, either in terms of price, embedded technology, and warranty or related costs.

The troubles with these agreements are that they have a greater legal force than domestic laws, and the Constitution does not provide the possibility that they are reconsidered for possible harm.

Concerning the Belgrade metro, situation is interesting - Serbia currently has two agreements on the same thing, with France and China. Interstate agreements only provide the possibility of concluding a binding contract, and do not create an obligation to do so, and hypothetically, Serbia could have such agreements with 200 other countries and none of them would have an advantage over others. Of course, if a general agreement was followed with some more concrete arrangements, as it seems, was the case in relations with France and companies from that country, we may be faced with some claims for damages.