Organised Crime Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade. Photo: BIRN.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday signed a set of legal amendments that EU, Serbian lawyers and anti-graft campaigners have warned will weaken the role of the Organised Crime Prosecutor’s Office.

The legislative changes aim to strengthen the role of specific high-ranking prosecutors, but also to adapt the Serbian justice system to the needs of Expo 2027, a showpiece government project that has attracted controversy.

The Organised Crime Prosecutor’s Office warned on January 19, before the adoption of the changes, that the legal amendments mean it will be left without a significant number of public prosecutors.

“This would directly reduce [the Prosecutor’s Office’s] efficiency and effectiveness,” the office said, adding that this would “in practice, ultimately lead to a complete blockage of proceedings in the most complex and most sensitive criminal cases”.

The Organised Crime Prosecutor’s Office is in charge of one of the most high-profile ongoing legal cases in Serbia, concerning the Novi Sad railway station disater, which killed 16 and sparked a wave of anti-government protests. Another is the case against Minister of Culture, Nikola Selakovic.

The Prosecutor’s Office stated before the adoption of the amendments that they would have “extremely severe and far-reaching consequences for the functioning of the judicial system”.

Serbia is an EU candidate country, and Marta Kos, EU Commissioner for Enlargement, wrote on X on Wednesday that adopting the laws would be a step back for Serbia on its EU path.

“The vote of Serbia’s parliament to limit the independence of the judiciary is a serious step back on Serbia’s EU path,” Kos said, adding that “at a time of great progress for enlargement, when Montenegro and Albania are moving fast, Serbia risks taking the opposite direction”.

“This is not what we want,” she added.

Anti-graft watchdog organisation Transparency Serbia said in a press release on Friday that the amendments will reduce the capacity of the Prosecutor’s Office Crime to investigate corruption involving high-ranking public officials.

“The consequences are all the more serious, given that the effectiveness of prosecuting ‘high-level corruption’ has so far not been satisfactory,” it said.

Other changes to the laws seem designed to strengthen control of the courts by the ruling party, critics claimed.

Until now, prosecutors who receive mandatory instructions for action in a particular case from their superiors, but who believe the instruction is against the law, could complain to the High Prosecutorial Council Commission. Under the new changes, they will have to complain instead to the head of the Prosecutor’s Office.

Another change is that the High-Tech Prosecution Office becomes part of the Belgrade Higher Prosecution Office, which is already widely seen as under the influence of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.

The Supreme Prosecution Office’s “tasks of international cooperation of importance for the public prosecution” will from now have to be carried out with approval from the Justice Minister.

As explained in the rationale of the law, the Expo 2027 international exhibition will lead to an increase in the number of cases in the Belgrade Municipality of Surcin due to the expansion of construction, an increase in the number of construction-related and property-law proceedings, as well as a rise in litigation and non-litigation proceedings.

Ugljesa Mrdic, a Serbian Progressive Party MP and chair of parliament’s Committee on the Judiciary, Public Administration and Local Self-Government, said that the move will rectify problems with a judiciary he claimed had been “hijacked” by opponents of Vucic and his government amid the ongoing protests.

“As the proposer of the law, I am grateful to all members of parliament who voted for the adoption of the set of judicial laws, because they made a historic contribution to Serbia reclaiming a hijacked judiciary that was part of a colour revolution and a way to overthrow the legally elected authorities in our country”, Mrdic said, Politika reported. The term ‘colour revolutions’ refers to the protest movements that ousted autocratic regimes in Georgia and Ukraine.

But the Belgrade Bar Association issued a statement expressing concerns that the changes will curb judicial independence.

The Bar Association argued that the amendments are an attempt to “undermine the principle of the separation of powers, establish control over the work of the public prosecution, and jeopardise the independence of the judiciary.”