During the adoption of the Law on legalization, the assumption was that there were about 1.5 million illegal buildings, but the census determined that there were more than two million of them, of which about 975,000 were residential buildings. Data from the Ministry of Construction show that the results of legislation in the past five years are more than modest. By July of last year, slightly less than 300,000 buildings were legalized, and there were 1,920,561 requests for legalization in the decision-making process. These are the last data previously provided to Euronews Serbia from the relevant ministry.
According to the data of the Ministry of Construction, about 150,000 decisions were made for all six previously valid laws that regulated the field of legalization until November 2015, which were in force for 17 years. Seven years after its adoption, it is clear that even the last one, the Law on Legislation, did not produce the expected results, despite the fact that the procedure was simplified.
How to “mass legalization”?
Jasmina Radovanović says that, due to the large number of pending cases, it is necessary to classify them first and to somehow create an order in which those that are the simplest, that is, those that have “clean papers” would be dealt with as a priority.
“Not all objects are of the same complexity. If someone has built in their yard, it is certainly less of a problem than if it is on someone else’s land or in a protected area. That should be sorted out and the process accelerated. On the other hand, there is a lot of waiting for the consent of the holders of public authority , for facilities that are built in protected zones. Then the competent authorities must also obtain the consent of the holders of public permits – Srbijašume, EPS, Srbijavode… Sometimes they neither receive them, nor respond to them, and sometimes they are quite late, which also slows down the procedures “, says Radovanović.
She says that there is a proposal to divide the objects by category and by specification – in which place they were built, in what dimensions, what is the complexity of those objects – is it only a deviation from the building permit or is the entire object illegal, is it made in protected zones, where there is absolutely no possibility for the safety of citizens or the state to build.
“One of the holders of public authority should say which are the red zones and in which it is absolutely impossible to build and legalize. On the other hand, we also proposed to introduce payment in installments, to relieve the applicants as much as possible, because and the lack of money proved to be one of the obstacles to legalization”, says Radovanović.
When RGZ made a satellite image in 2015, it was supposed to be a section, but that did not stop the wild construction. Radovanović says that now everyone is using different data that is not certain, but he notes that the RGZ found on the recordings that there are five million unregistered objects.
“The number of 2.5 million objects of illegal construction is most often mentioned. When we did the research in 2020, we asked local governments if they had new reports of illegal construction and if they were aware that it still exists on their territory, and half answered that it does, so it has definitely not been stopped. We need to find a way, apart from solving these existing cases, which are open, and how to stand in the way of future illegal builders”, the Euronews Serbia interviewee points out.
She also says that the importance of this procedure is so great that it should be raised to the republican level and help local governments deal with illegal construction. NALED proposed to form a commission, which will be made up of representatives of the ministry, holders of public authority, RGZ in cooperation with local self-governments and to network in order to speed up the process.
Illegal objects as “dead property”
Experts and real estate agents have been pointing out for years that legalization also stops some other procedures, especially the buying and selling of houses and apartments, which is not allowed for illegal objects. Radovanović says that this is why we have bankruptcy procedures that last for years, because bankruptcy trustees cannot distribute them to potential buyers.
“These are all situations due to which the effects of lengthy legalization procedures spill over into other procedures that suffer and cannot be resolved. In order to sell real estate, you must certify the contract with a notary public, and the law prohibits the sale of such objects. In the regime of legalization such real estate cannot be disposed of further”, explains Radovanović.
This was also pointed out by lawyer Dejan Vuković, who drew attention to the fact that unregistered buildings represent huge, but “dead” property.
“They cannot be in circulation, and if those five million objects are multiplied by the average real estate value of 50,000 euros, you get 25 billion euros”, said Vuković.
Demolition of illegal buildings is expensive for municipalities
Although according to the current Law on Legislation from 2015, amended in 2018, wild construction is treated as a criminal offense and such a building must be removed, the number of “wild” buildings that have been demolished is symbolic. Apparently, many builders took this as a message to continue as before. It is estimated that thousands of buildings have sprung up in the meantime, after the adoption of the law in 2015, which was supposed to be the “zero point” after which all those who start building illegally will be demolished.
“The percentage of local self-governments that carried out the demolition of buildings is small. First of all, because it is a very expensive procedure. It happened that no company would apply for a demolition tender, especially in small communities where everyone knows each other, and the problem is that some of them do not have funds in their budgets for those purposes”, says Radovanović.
She also says that many local governments simply waited for the legal deadline, November 2023, to pass, and then see what they would do with those items for which they had not found a solution on how to legalize them and practically kept them in drawers waiting for a reaction. state when the term expires. With the annulment of the deadline, by the Constitutional Court, those procedures are further prolonged, and wild objects that have no reason to be legalized still resist demolition, Euronews writes.
