Serbia Backsliding on EU Accession Progress, NGOs Warn

A coalition of NGOs entitled prEUgovor, which monitors Serbia's EU accession process, said on Thursday in a new report that key reforms in areas like the rule of law have stagnated or are even going backwards.

"Although the EU highlights the rule of law as a priority for reforms, it seems that the executive and legislative powers in Serbia are abusing the process of accession negotiations and the fact that [the country] is currently being given 'concessions' on the reform agenda due to the much-hoped-for completion of [Belgrade's] dialogue [to normalise relations] with Pristina," said the prEUgovor report.  

The report assesses the Serbia's progress in the EU accession process, as well as the fulfilment of criteria for chapters 23 and 24 of EU legislation - which include the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security - during the period from April to September this year.

During that period, the Serbian authorities adopted a series of laws "that are worse than the current ones", said the NGO coalition made of Anti-Trafficking Action, the Autonomous Women's Centre, the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, the Centre for Applied European Studies, the Centre for Investigative Journalism, Group 484 and Transparency Serbia. 

Serbia has been an EU candidate country since March 2012, while accession negotiations started in January 2014. 

Since then 12 of a total of 35 chapters have been opened for negotiation, two of which have since been provisionally closed.

The EU's 2018 report on Serbia's progress, published in June, said that the overall pace of negotiations will continue to depend on Serbia's progress in reforms and in particular on a more intense pace of reforms on the rule of law and in the...