As the procurement regulatory framework is largely aligned with the acquis, the Reform Agenda focuses on the key implementation problem — the total absence of transparency and exemption from procurement rules for major investments conducted under intergovernmental agreements and special laws. This focus is justified: in 2024, contracts exempted from the Law on Public Procurement still amounted to EUR 5.7 billion, of which EUR 1.2 billion came through intergovernmental agreements alone. Even within the ordinary system, competition remains weak, with single-bid tenders accounting for over half of all procedures. The authorities have not systematically implemented the Reform Agenda transparency requirement but have argued there is room for interpretation. Transparency monitoring should be strengthened immediately using all available sources, and operational improvements to procurement design should begin in parallel with the formal reform process.
VIII.1 Public Procurement in the Reform Agenda
As Serbia's public procurement framework is broadly aligned with the acquis, the Reform Agenda addresses the main implementation distortion: the continued use of special laws, decrees, and intergovernmental agreements to exempt major investment projects from ordinary procurement discipline. The reform is operationalised through two steps (Table 12): first, increasing transparency by publishing project-specific information on contracts concluded under intergovernmental agreements, with publication to begin in December 2024 and a formal milestone by June 2025; and second, repealing the special laws and decrees that derogate from ordinary procurement legislation by June 2027. The first step, by specifying particular data points to be published, implicitly allows selectivity about what is disclosed — a formulation that weakens the transparency objective. The second step is the more consequential commitment, since special laws and decrees account for the bulk of exempted procurement value, well beyond what is attributable to intergovernmental agreements alone.
Table 12: Reform Agenda — Public Procurement
| Reform Step | Reform Indicator | Step deadline | Baseline | Sources of verification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The level of transparency regarding all projects contracted under intergovernmental agreements is increased by introducing project-specific information on the website of the ministry in charge of implementing the project on any completed, ongoing and new procurement contracts under intergovernmental agreements. All contracts under intergovernmental agreements will be published starting from December 2024, including: name of the project; basic procurement contract information; contracting authority; main contractor and procurement procedure followed | Degree of transparency of intergovernmental agreements | June 2025 | There is no obligation to publish project-specific information on contracts under intergovernmental agreements, however some project-specific information is published | Websites of ministries in charge of project implementation – links to the projects of IGA in their competence for each ministry |
| 2. All special and other laws/decrees introducing derogations from the public procurement legislation are lifted | Status of laws/decrees introducing derogations from PP legislation | June 2027 | Some laws/decrees introducing derogations from the public procurement legislation exist | Conclusions of the Government, Official Gazettes and links to the web sites of relevant ministries |
Source: Ministry of European Integration, 2024.
By end-2025, the December 2024 starting date for publication had passed without systematic implementation. Some partial information on intergovernmental-agreement contracts had appeared on individual ministry websites, but no unified disclosure standard had been established and the scope and completeness of published information varied across ministries. The authorities claimed the measure was being implemented and argued that the Reform Agenda's formulation left room for interpretation regarding what must be disclosed. No preparatory action toward repealing special laws derogating from procurement legislation was publicly documented.
VIII.2 Diagnosis
The central procurement problem remains that major projects continue to proceed under special laws and decrees, and under intergovernmental agreements, outside the ordinary application of the Law on Public Procurement. The European Commission's 2025 report identifies this directly and adds that transparency for such projects remains limited. This is not a peripheral segment: in 2024, the total value of contracts exempted from the Law on Public Procurement amounted to EUR 5.7 billion (European Commission, 2025a). Intergovernmental agreements accounted for EUR 1.2 billion of this, but the larger share is attributable to special laws and government decrees that exempt projects deemed to be of strategic importance — including, most recently, the EXPO 2027 law, which explicitly removes procurement for the exhibition and associated infrastructure from the scope of the Law on Public Procurement. The Reform Agenda postpones the repeal of these derogations until June 2027, meaning that the most consequential investments of the current cycle will be contracted before the ordinary rules apply.
Serbia already has most modern procurement instruments on paper — life-cycle costing, price-quality awards, pre-tender market research, performance-based specifications — but the binding constraint is implementation capacity and incentives, not missing legal tools. Competition within the part of the system that formally operates under the Law on Public Procurement remains weak. In 2024, the average number of bids per tender increased only marginally, from 2.4 to 2.5, while tenders with only one submitted bid still accounted for 50.75% of all procedures (Public Procurement Office, 2025). This is well above levels recorded in comparable EU countries such as Germany (20%), France (22%), Croatia (27%), and Hungary (34%), and is closest to weaker performers such as Romania (44%) and Poland (56%) (European Commission, 2025b). At this level, these figures clearly signal limited contestability even within the ordinary system.
Even within the ordinary system, the available monitoring data are too coarse to assess whether procurement design is widening access where it matters most. SMEs accounted for more than three-quarters of awarded contracts and around 73% of total value in 2024, but these aggregates do not capture concentration in high-value tenders. Reporting on award criteria records only the use of criteria beyond price without distinguishing where such criteria are legally required. Systematic statistics on lotting are not publicly available, preventing evidence-based assessment of whether large tenders are being structured to enable entry.
The result is a dual weakness. Major investment projects operate outside ordinary procurement discipline entirely, under special laws whose repeal is not scheduled until mid-2027. Within the formal system, the legal tools exist but are underutilised, competition remains weak, and monitoring indicators lack the diagnostic depth needed to identify where intervention would have the greatest effect. The state's main demand channel does not yet function as a consistently transparent, contestable, and efficiency-enhancing mechanism for allocating public contracts.
VIII.3 Recommendations
As Serbia's procurement framework is already broadly aligned with the Reform Agenda, improvements during the current investment cycle will depend mainly on whether the existing rules are applied in practice. A substantial advocacy and independent monitoring effort should be invested in raising transparency of procurement, especially those conducted through special regulations, as well as enhancing competition within high-value tenders that formally remain under the Law on Public Procurement. Practical steps that do not require legislative change can begin now: building the capacity of contracting authorities to conduct credible pre-tender market research, improving tender design so that it enables entry rather than deters it, and applying quality-based criteria where they improve value for money.
These operational improvements would yield benefits in the current system immediately and prepare the ground for the moment when coverage expands. Without such preparation, the risk is that repeal produces formal coverage without substantive improvement — replicating the pattern, visible across Serbia's institutional landscape, of adequate frameworks paired with weak implementation.