Serbia Regulatory Index - Public Consultations Improving, but Regulatory Implementation Remains a Challenge
Although progress has been made in involving stakeholders and the business community in the preparation of relevant legislation, there is still a need to improve legislative planning, ensure more effective implementation of laws, and reduce regulatory burdens. This is shown by the latest Serbia Regulatory Index (in Serbian: Regulatorni indeks Srbije - RIS), a tool developed by NALED to monitor and assess six key stages in the process of drafting and implementing regulations important for businesses. Over the past year, institutions achieved 50 out of a possible 100 points.
According to the 2025 report, prepared with the support of the Swedish Government, the highest-rated area was the responsiveness of institutions, as ministries responded to requests for access to information of public importance in 84% of cases.
Stakeholder engagement in the legislative process has shown improvement. The SRI analyzed 41 laws relevant to the business sector, and public consultations were held for 16 new laws and 16 amendments to existing legislation. However, the composition of working groups and contact details of officials whom businesses could approach were not publicly disclosed, while public hearings in the National Assembly were not organized. Consequently, the SRI recommends further efforts to improve the transparency of legislative procedures.
“Business predictability remains one of the key challenges for the economy. This year’s SRI therefore recommends that Government work plans be adopted regularly and on time, and that a systematic mechanism be established to monitor deadlines for the adoption of secondary legislation. In practice, we often see new laws being enacted while the corresponding rulebooks remain outdated, creating uncertainty and confusion among businesses regarding the implementation of regulations,” said **Jelena Bojović**, Program Director at NALED. She added that, alongside the SRI, which focuses on the regulatory process, NALED also publishes the **Grey Book**, which provides 100 concrete recommendations for improving regulations and creating a more business-friendly environment.
As in previous years, the timeliness of regulatory implementation remained the lowest-rated area. Of the 210 pieces of secondary legislation that were due to be adopted during 2025, only eight, or 4%, were enacted, while the average waiting time for the adoption of secondary legislation was 727 days.
Institutions attempt to compensate for this shortcoming by issuing opinions on the application of regulations at the request of businesses. Thirteen out of 25 ministries that submitted data issued a total of 1,577 opinions on the implementation of legal provisions during 2025. However, these opinions are generally neither publicly available nor legally binding and therefore cannot serve as a substitute for secondary legislation. To address this issue at least partially, NALED’s Grey Book proposes the introduction of a public electronic registry of institutional opinions.
The predictability of the legislative process was further weakened by the fact that the Government Work Plan was not adopted for the second consecutive year. Moreover, nearly three-fifths of all laws enacted were not included in the latest available work plan, making it more difficult for businesses to prepare for new obligations and increasing compliance costs. Encouragingly, the Government Work Plan for 2026 was adopted within the prescribed deadline, which is expected to positively affect the results of the next SRI edition.
The quality of legislative drafting also declined slightly. Regulatory impact assessments were formally prepared for all 44 laws that required them, but only half were assessed as complete. The most significant decline was recorded in the quality of explanatory memoranda accompanying draft laws, as the rationale for amendments often consisted merely of repeating the proposed provisions.
The administrative burden on businesses remains high, amounting to 2.7% of GDP, indicating that companies continue to face substantial compliance costs that need to be reduced.
