Mass legalization needs to be a priority for the new Government
Digitization of the procedure and massive legalization of illegal buildings, introduction of the eSpace system for the creation of spatial and urban plans and simplification of the procedure for setting up mobile telephony base stations are three key priorities that NALED’s Property and Investments Alliance will nominate to the new Government of Serbia to be resolved in the next two years.
Among the priorities chosen by the members of the Alliance are the abolition of conversion with a fee that left 5,000 hectares of construction land locked, better tax treatment of independent producers of green energy, the so-called prosumers, as well as the settlement of disputes over agricultural land between cooperatives and the companies that bought that land, arising from unclear interpretation of the Law on Cooperatives. The Alliance's focus is therefore on the faster removal of obstacles that make investments in Serbia difficult or blocked.
- We will continue to work on initiatives that will make Serbia the best place to invest, and for that, we first need to better define the property and legal relations. I would also like to point out the importance of solving the burning issue of energy transition, which requires the formation of an incentive system for green energy sources - said the new president of the Property and Investments Alliance, Andrija Vuković from MK Group.
The Alliance’s key results highlighted at the session include the contribution to the establishment of two important electronic systems - eAuctions, which facilitated almost 14,500 auctions for the sale of property in execution procedures in 2021 and introduced transparency in this procedure, as well as the eCounter which included more than 1.5 million submitted requests for cadaster registration in four years, while reducing the average time of resolving requests to only 5.26 days.
The Director of the Republic Geodetic Auhtority, Borko Drašković, announced that a new Law on Legalization will soon be adopted, which will make official the mass legalization in digital form, just as NALED proposed. He pointed out that in the previous period, a lot was done to improve the entire RGA system.
- Digitization of registration procedures in the cadastre enabled communication between different state authorities, which eased citizens of going to several counters and shortened the registration procedure to five days. Reforms are still ongoing and NALED is our ally in this - said Drašković.
The implementation of mass legalization is particularly highlighted, bearing in mind that more than 2.5 million illegal objects were recorded on the satellite image of the RGA. Due to limited resources, cities and municipalities manage to solve an average of slightly more than 20 cases per month, while each officer receives more than 1,100 requests. At that rate, the legislation would be completed only in a few decades, although the deadline for completion is next year. The absence of legalization makes it impossible for citizens to fully use their property, trade it more easily, pledge it for a loan, etc.
New leadership
The Alliance has chosen its new leadership and for the next two years it will be led by Andrija Vuković, Director of MK Group and its Finance and Risk department. The vice-presidents will be Marko Jović, General Affairs Director in A1, Tanja Vukotić Marinković, Registrar at APR, Dejan Vuković, Founder and Leading Partner in Law Office Vuković and Partners, while local governments will be represented by the Mayor of Užice, Jelena Raković Radivojević.
