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Fifth annual shadow report “State of Democracy in Serbia 2021” now available online

Inter Party Dialogue; Photo: EU Delegation in Serbia

Centre for Contemporary Politics has published the shadow report “State of Democracy in Serbia 2021”. The report covers five areas: elections, parliament, governance, civil society and freedom of expression, in accordance with the Copenhagen criteria for the EU membership and European Commission Reports on candidate countries.

“State of Democracy in Serbia 2021” covers the period from October 2020 to September 2021.

“Since 2017, when the first shadow report of the Centre for Contemporary Politics on the state of democracy in Serbia came out, there has been a clear weakening of democratic institutions, both according to foreign and domestic organizations and experts”, the introduction reads.

After the controversial parliamentary and local elections in June 2020, but also other serious problems covered by the previous report, the previous shadow report posed a question whether Serbia is still a democratic country, and whether it is moving away from membership in the European Union because of this.

“A year later, both questions remain open. In Serbia, there is an almost one-party parliament without opposition, civil society and the media are under pressure, while media pluralism is even more endangered. On the other hand, Serbia has not taken the slightest step towards membership in the European Union in the last year, not opening any new chapters or clusters of chapters in this period”, this year’s report reads. 

The shadow report was published within the project “Civil Society as a Force of Change in Serbia’s EU Accession – CS4EU” conducted by the Belgrade Open School with support from the Kingdom of Sweden. The conference on the presentation of the document was supported by European Fund for the Balkans.

The complete report can be found on this link: State of Democracy in Serbia 2021.

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