BELGRADE – The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) called on the Serbian authorities to allow the publication of the second report from the Fourth Evaluation Round as soon as possible, in which the level of compliance with the recommendations of this Council of Europe body was assessed as “globally unsatisfactory”.
On the official GRECO website, the report on Serbia has the status of “confidential” and is not available to the public. In order for it to become public, it is necessary for the Serbian government to allow its publication.
The same invitation as to Serbia was sent to Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey, and the decision was made at the 86th plenary session of GRECO, which sat from October 26 to 29, 2020 in Strasbourg.
We recall that the Fourth Evaluation Round refers to the prevention of corruption in relation to MPs, judges and prosecutors, and that two compliance reports have been published so far.
The first evaluation report published in March 2018 also concluded that Serbia’s compliance was “globally unsatisfactory” because none of the 13 GRECO recommendations was fully implemented. The next report, Interim Compliance Report published in April 2019 said that none of the recommendations had been fully implemented, but that the number of partly implemented recommendations had grown from seven to 10, which was then enough for GRECO to no longer consider Serbia’s compliance “globally unsatisfactory.”
The successful implementation of the reform of the Serbian Constitution in the area of the judiciary, which is currently at a standstill, will have a great impact on fulfilling GRECO’s recommendations, given that several recommendations concern ensuring the independence of judges and prosecutors
GRECO is a body set up by the Council of Europe (CoE) to monitor member state compliance with CoE anti-corruption standards.