Serbia Lagging on EU Accession Work, Report Says

A new report by the NGO coalition PrEUgovor says Serbia has made little progress in addressing the issues in Chapters 23 and 24, which are the most important chapters in Serbia's accession negotiations with the EU.

The only real progress was observed in terms of normalization of relations between Serbia and the former province of Kosovo.

One major setback is detected in the area of the rule of law because of what the NGO calls the government's pressure on the work of independent regulatory institutions. Ministers also often go beyond the law with their arbitrary decisions.

"The authorities do not care about the rule of law a lot. Ministers determine when to respect the law ... The Minister of Police, for example, has large discretionary powers and a lot of things depend on political will," Predrag Petrovic, from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, said.

Tanja Ignjatovic, from the Autonomous Women's Center, said that little progress was visible in the protection of women against gender-based violence, either.

The situation has in fact worsened, she said, noting the fact that 26 women were murdered in Serbia only in the first half of 2015, which is the same number as during the whole of last year.

Ignjatovic also expressed concern about the election of Brankica Jankovic as the new Commissioner for Equality. "The new candidate is not eligible for that position since she has no empirical or academic expertise in this area. Non-governmental organizations were not consulted at all and everything was done in only one day," Ignjatovic claimed.

The report also says no progress has been made in the fight against human trafficking and Serbia has not adopted a strategy and action plan in this field for three years.

Chapters...