Financing
Establishing sustainable financing in the fields of environmental protection and climate change is one of the most important issues and most urgent reform tasks within the entire environmental protection system in the Republic of Serbia. Chapter 27 – Environment and Climate Change is considered one of the most technically complex and financially most demanding chapters in the EU integration process, as it involves not only the transposition of extensive European legislation but also its full implementation.
Horizontal Legislation
The most significant advances in terms of legislation have been made through the adoption of the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment and the Law on Strategic Environmental Assessment. However, although the adoption of these Laws was long awaited and the new Laws bring certain improvements to the framework for environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment, neither of the acts resulted in full alignment with Directives 2014/52/ EU and 2001/42/EC.
Air Quality
A new Law on Air Protection has been adopted which, by all accounts, will not address the root causes of pollution. Civil society organizations particularly highlight the issue of local air quality monitoring, lack of alignment with the National Emission Reduction Plan (NERP), as well as the fact that supervision and penal provisions have not been significantly improved.
Waste Management
In 2024, a record number of landfill fires – as many as 2,171 was recorded in Serbia, the majority of which took place in the regions of Belgrade (369), Novi Sad (258) and Niš (200). This state of affairs shows that an average of six landfills were on fire every day. This count includes only those fires officially recorded by the Sector for Emergency Management of the Ministry of Interior, whereas the actual number of fires is much higher, given that not all fires have been officially reported.
Water Quality
The Water Council has not been established. The new Water Law, the General Flood Defense Plan and a regulation that would closer define the method for defining water land boundaries have not been adopted. The Action Plan for the Implementation of the Water Management Strategy and the Flood Risk Management Plan remain mere drafts, and the annual Water Management Program has been amended multiple times. Only those plans that are updated annually on a smaller scale, such as the Operational Flood Defense Plan and the Annual Water Status Monitoring Program, can be said to have been timely adopted.
Chemicals Management
Ten years after the signing, the Republic of Serbia finally ratified the Minamata Convention on Mercury in December 2024 by adopting the Law on the Ratification of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. By doing so, it has undertaken the obligation to implement a series of measures in the coming years to align with the provisions of this convention.
Noise
Minimum progress was recorded in the field of noise protection. There is still no continuous noise monitoring in Serbia – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – only indicative monitoring. Although the Law on Environmental Noise Protection (which came into force in October 2021) set a one-year deadline for the adoption of by-laws, only four out of a total of seven had been adopted by the end of May 2025. The by-laws that would define in detail the methods for assessing noise indicators, determining acoustic zones and managing the noise information system have still not been enacted
Climate Change
Even though the Law on Climate Change was adopted in early 2021, it still cannot be fully implemented, because a substantial number of by-laws are missing. During this reporting period, only one such document was adopted – the Regulation on the List of Authorities and Organizations Responsible for Implementing Adaptation Measures and on the Content and Format of Reports on Implemented Climate Change Adaptation Measures.
Forestry
During the reporting period, no significant changes occurred in the overall state of forestry in the Republic of Serbia. The main challenges from the previous period remain relevant, with particular emphasis on the need to improve the legislative framework and align it with European Union requirements.
Industrial Pollution and Risk Management
Industry is one of the main sources of pollution in Serbia due to outdated technologies and equipment, as well as low energy and raw material efficiency. All of these are consequences of insufficient investments aimed at improving the current state of affairs, but also of the slow pace of application of regulations governing the issuance of integrated permits that ensure prevention and control of environmental pollution.