Coalition prEUgovor wishes you merry holidays, a healthy and fruitful 2021!
Thank you for following our work during the past year, that has been extraordinary and challenging in many ways.
In 2020 Serbia has continued accession negotiations without the Chief of the Negotiating Team and has not opened new chapters due to the lack of reforms in the area of the Rule of Law.
In case you missed something, here is an overview of prEUgovor’s key publications in the year behind us:
PrEUgovor reported on reforms in political criteria and Chapters 23 and 24 in May and November 2020. The findings show discontinuation of reforms and deterioration in some areas. The state of emergency introduced in the first half of 2020 due to the pandemic only exposed, accelerated and deepened the trend of state capture and the collapse of standards of democracy and the Rule of Law in Serbia. The second semester was marked by general elections, anti-Government protests and delayed formation of institutions. In the meantime, the long-awaited Revised Action Plans for Chapters 23 and 24 were adopted.
In the latest prEUgovor policy paper, Group 484 provided review of some key measures introduced during the state of emergency aimed at asylum seekers and migrants, the relevant provisions of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights case-law related to the derogation from the ECHR provisions, as well as a brief overview of the measures applied to migrants and asylum seekers in other European countries during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
In December, Transparency Serbia suggested how to make public administration in Serbia more open and closer to the citizens in the new publication of the prEUgovor coalition, within the public debate on the proposal of the new decennial Public Administration Reform Strategy and the accompanying action plan.
An Open Door: Can the New Methodology Revive the Political Will for Enlargement?
The new enlargement methodology presented in February introduces clustering negotiation chapters, rewards for reform champions and penalties for laggards, and promises greater politicization of the process. Serbia has so far opened only the first cluster in its entirety, four in part and has not yet reached the ‘Grean Deal’ cluster. What does this mean for the further accession process read and see in the article by BCSP Researcher Jelena Pejić Nikić.
About prEUgovor
Coalition prEUgovor is a network of civil society organisations formed in order to monitor the implementation of policies relating to the accession negotiations between Serbia and the EU, with an emphasis on Chapters 23 and 24 of the Acquis. In doing so, the coalition aims to use the EU integration process to help accomplish substantial progress in the further democratisation of the Serbian society.
Members of the coalition are: ASTRA - Anti-Trafficking Action, Autonomous Women’s Centre (AWC), Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP), Centre for Investigative Journalism in Serbia (CINS), Centre for Applied European Studies (CPES), Group 484 and Transparency Serbia (TS).
Follow prEUgovor activities on the official website, Facebook page and Twitter account.