Institutions and Oversight

CRTA published a preliminary assessment of the implementation of ODIHR recommendations issued following the 2023 parliamentary and local elections. The update covers 25 recommendations and finds that the authorities have addressed only a narrow set of technical issues, while structural problems - including pressure on voters, capture of media regulators, and abuse of public office in campaigns - remain unaddressed. The assessment notes that legislative amendments adopted in May 2026 are largely cosmetic and were not the product of an inclusive consultative process.

CRTA launched Mandator, an interactive tool that shows how votes translate into seats in Serbia's National Assembly. The tool applies the D'Hondt method and official rules of Serbia's electoral system - including thresholds and minority coefficients that have changed since 2008 - to let users build their own scenarios, adjust coalitions, and load historical results from every parliamentary election. Mandator was built to demystify electoral arithmetic, showing in practice why vote shares do not translate directly into seat shares, and what happens to votes cast for parties that fall below the threshold. Scenarios can be downloaded as Excel files.

The Second Basic Court in Belgrade ruled that a public statement issued by the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation - responding to the Court of Appeal's 2024 acquittal of former State Security Service officers Miroslav Kurak, Ratko Romić, and Milan Radonjić for the 1999 murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija - violated the plaintiffs' honour and reputation. The court ordered the Foundation to pay 200,000 dinars in damages to each of the three plaintiffs, plus 435,000 dinars in legal costs, totalling approximately 8,800 euros. The court disregarded the Foundation's argument that the Supreme Court had subsequently found the acquittal to have been rendered with serious procedural violations. The Foundation announced it will appeal.