ODIHR’s needs assessment confirms what CRTA has documented, and what citizens already sense

On 30 July 2026, ODIHR published the report of its Needs Assessment Mission and recommended a full Election Observation Mission for Serbia's anticipated early elections. The report maps the concerns raised by its interlocutors, CRTA among them, rather than delivering ODIHR's own verdict.

Read next to CRTA's monitoring, those concerns are familiar. On the electoral laws, ODIHR finds that recent amendments addressed some recommendations while leaving systemic ones unaddressed - the same conclusion CRTA reached in its analyses of the 2026 reform package and in its findings on the implementation of ODIHR recommendations.

On the media regulator, the mission's interlocutors flagged the functioning of REM as a matter of particular importance. CRTA has documented how Serbia was left without a working media regulator for some 20 months; even after the Council resumed work in July, it has twice failed to elect its own president.

On the voter register, interlocutors questioned whether the new independent audit can produce meaningful results before the vote. CRTA's own assessment goes further: months in, the commission still lacks the full data access the law guarantees it, with 45 of the 69 planned checks blocked.

The fourth strand is the public. CRTA's June 2026 survey finds trust in the core institutions of the state at or below one in three - government 34%, parliament 31%, political parties 19% - and a majority, 55%, saying the March 2026 local elections were not free and fair.

CRTA's position is that the ODIHR needs assessment does not stand alone. It externally confirms problems CRTA monitors continuously, and those problems are already reflected in how citizens see their institutions and their elections. That convergence - an international assessment, independent monitoring and public opinion pointing the same way - is what these elections will be measured against.

The NAM finds that the amendments adopted since 2023 addressed a number of ODIHR recommendations - a voter-register audit, mandatory training for officials, campaign spending limits, third-party campaigning rules - while many longstanding recommendations remain unaddressed, and that opposition and civil society interlocutors described the process as fragmented, selective and insufficiently inclusive.

This is the conclusion CRTA reached independently. CRTA analysed the 2026 reform package - the four laws adopted in May 2026 and the draft Law on Financing Political Activities - and, in its findings on the implementation of ODIHR recommendations across all cycles since 2020, assessed that a large share of the priority recommendations remain unfulfilled or only partially fulfilled. Among them is the recurring recommendation to separate the state from the ruling party, a priority since 2024, which remains unaddressed - the systemic problem from which the misuse of public resources and pressure on voters both flow.

The mission's interlocutors identified the composition and effective functioning of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) as a matter of particular importance - it is also an EU accession benchmark - and the report notes that the Council resumed work only on 10-11 July 2026 after a prolonged deadlock, with a backlog it puts at over 100 pending cases.

CRTA has documented this paralysis in detail. Its REM dossier, How Serbia was left without a functioning media regulator, traces how the country went some 20 months without a properly constituted Council. And the story did not end with the July reinstatement that the NAM records: at its constitutive session on 20 July and again on 30 July, the reconstituted Council twice failed to elect a president. Until it elects a president, the Council cannot begin its work - which leaves the body responsible for guaranteeing balanced coverage of the election campaign unable to function, just as that campaign approaches.

The NAM notes that the independent Audit Commission for the voter register was established earlier in 2026 but that, according to what the mission was told, its members gained full access to the data they need only on 6 July, and that opposition and civil society interlocutors doubted whether the audit could produce meaningful results before the elections.

CRTA has followed the commission from the start, and its July 2026 assessment sharpens that picture: the access actually granted still falls short of what the law requires. Of the 69 checks in the audit methodology, only 12 can be carried out in full and 12 in part, while 45 remain blocked for want of data. The full access mandated by Article 22j of the Law on the Unified Voter Register has still not been provided - the 31 May deadline for it has passed, the commission has been working for months, and its report to the National Assembly is due on 28 October. The concern is therefore not the existence of the audit commission, which CRTA has called for, but whether, denied the data the law entitles it to, it can deliver the thorough, independent review of the register that a credible election requires.

The NAM repeatedly records declining public trust in state institutions as a concern raised by its interlocutors. CRTA's June 2026 public opinion survey, conducted face-to-face with the Democracy Action Lab at Stanford, puts numbers to it. Trust in the core institutions of the state sits at or below one in three: the government at 34%, the National Assembly at 31%, political parties at 19%. Trust in the presidency as an institution has fallen from 60% in early 2023 to 35% today. The judiciary stands at 40%, the police at 44%.

The doubt reaches the vote itself. A majority of citizens - 55% - said the March 2026 local elections, held in ten municipalities, were not free and fair; a year earlier, half said the same of the December 2023 parliamentary elections. Those March elections are the very contests at which, the NAM notes, domestic and international observers documented significant irregularities, violence and a proliferation of pseudo-observers. The external assessment and the public's own judgment point to the same events.

The ODIHR needs assessment does not stand alone, and should not be read as if it did. On each of its main strands - the electoral laws, the media regulator, the voter register - it independently confirms a problem CRTA has been documenting on crta.plus throughout the 2026 reform cycle. And those problems are not confined to institutions and expert reports: CRTA's June 2026 survey shows they are already reflected in how citizens see their state, with trust in the government, parliament and parties at or below a third, and a majority convinced that the most recent elections were not free and fair. An international assessment, independent monitoring and public opinion are pointing in the same direction. A robust ODIHR observation mission can document how the coming elections are run, but the underlying problems it, CRTA and citizens all identify will be resolved only by genuine reform - above all, by ending the fusion of state and ruling party from which so many of the others follow.