Jelena Bojović, Program Director of NALED, stated for Tanjug TV that there are approximately 2.1 million unregistered buildings in Serbia, and about 40,000 cases are resolved annually.
"We have been working regularly with local governments since 2020 to assess how many cases they process, how many they can handle annually, and our estimate at that time was that around 40,000 cases are resolved each year," Bojović said.
She noted that from 2015 to the present, there hasn't been significant progress in the speed of resolving cases. According to NALED's estimates, with 2 million cases and a pace of 40,000 resolved annually, it would take about 40 years to legalize all of them unless the process speeds up or the number of staff working on legalization increases.
"This situation will remain unchanged unless the procedure is truly accelerated or the number of employees working on legalization is increased," she added.
Bojović highlighted that the largest number of illegal buildings is in Belgrade. She also presented several suggestions NALED considers beneficial for addressing the issue, including establishing a centralized registry of all submitted legalization requests.
"I don't think even we, as a state, know how many of these buildings there are, where the problems lie, why there is so much waiting, why some cases are resolved faster than others, and what the order of resolution is," Bojović mentioned.
She emphasized NALED's advocacy for establishing a centralized registry of all submitted legalization requests, including information about the buildings themselves, to assess on which land the building is constructed and how long the waiting period is.
"The highest public interest is to register all buildings and their owners. Regardless of whether someone built in accordance with urban planning regulations or not, the first step in the entire process must be to register the buildings in the cadastre and register the owner," Bojović stated.
Regarding recent changes in the law, she mentioned that the deadline for legalization has been abolished. Bojović expressed uncertainty about whether such a deadline should have been set at all, as the legalization of a building depends not only on the individual submitting the request.
She highlighted a key difference between legal and illegal buildings, noting that illegal buildings cannot be traded, connected to infrastructure, or used as collateral.
"People enter the legalization process to enable these functionalities for themselves," she concluded.
For the full video of her interview, you can watch it HERE.
