TRANSPARENCY

How citizens can point out irregularities in the work of public enterprises and public utility companies, which operate in a very non-transparent manner in Serbia, read in the case study written by the Program Director of Transparency Serbia, Nemanja Nenadić.

Defense topics are most often sensationalized, leading to militaristic narratives in the region. For the sake of greater trust in the region, it is necessary to discuss these topics based on facts. This was highlighted during a discussion held on Monday, March 14, where the Balkan Defense Monitor, a pioneering comparative report on defense systems in the Western Balkans, was presented.

A group of civil society organisations and experts hereby points out that the way laws and by-laws are passed, amended and abolished shows a true picture of the catastrophic state of democracy in Serbia. The content, enactment and urgent abolishment of the decree stipulating that scientific and other research of importance for the country's defense, conducted in cooperation with foreign entities, will require the approval of competent authorities, violates all principles of democracy, rule of law and freedom of expression.

How is the right to free access to information of public importance legally regulated, what are the problems in the implementation and what awaits us in the future when it comes to this area, read in the article of the lawyer and member of the Civil Committee for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Whistleblowers Rodoljub Sabic.

On the occasion of the release of the recent Freedom House “Nations in Transit” report in which Serbia found itself in the category of a “hybrid regime” instead of a democratic country for the first time in 17 years, we express serious concern for the state of democratic institutions in Serbia. We call on the Government of the Republic Serbia to take these assessments seriously and work hard towards ensuring the conditions for the improvement of democracy and media freedom in the country, and call on the European Union and its Member States to adequately recognise these issues as crucial in the process of European integration.

How much has housing construction for members of the security forces disrupted the public procurement system, analyzed Nemanja Nenadic, Program Director of Transparency Serbia.

We draw the attention of the domestic and international public to the unacceptable recent moves by the state authorities in Serbia during the state of emergency introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which undermine democracy, rule of law, basic human rights and especially freedom of media.

Monitoring the state of democracy and freedom of expression and the media in Serbia will be in the focus of a new Cross-Sectoral Working Group of the National Convention on the European Union (NCEU) for political criteria, which was established on January 24, 2020 in Belgrade.

Civil society organizations and the media have the opportunity to file requests for misdemeanour proceedings in cases where their right to free access to information of public importance has been violated as a legal entity, the Misdemeanour Court of Appeal ruled. With this interpretation, the dilemma was solved that caused the misdemeanour courts to reject dozens of requests by civil society organizations across Serbia. At the Second Session of ...