President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić stated on Sunday (September 21) that there are 4,8 million illegal buildings in Serbia and that he will propose the law "Finally Own Your Own" which will enable citizens to legalize houses or apartments at a price of one hundred to one thousand euros, how much will it cost to legalize an apartment in the center of Belgrade.
"Our idea is to register all objects in digital form with a simple application, without complicated procedures, and decide on ownership," said Vučić at a press conference, reports FoNet.
He said that it is only necessary for citizens to send an electronic application.
"You send one ordinary piece of paper and by the New Year, within 60 days, you have a completely legal facility," said Vučić.
He stated that the price of legalization for about 70 percent of illegal buildings will be one hundred euros.
"The most expensive will be for an apartment in Terazije of 200 square meters. You pay a thousand euros for that and the apartment becomes legal, registered, you have the right of ownership," said Vučić.
He said that this is "extraordinary news for the citizens of Serbia".
Who will it not apply to?
The President of Serbia said that there are two basic conditions for which these measures will not apply.
"It's for those who built on other people's private land, so they have no legal basis to get legalization. I can't build something on your land and say let's legalize this. And it's another for those who built in a protected area. Those buildings will most often become the property of the state, unless they are located on an area that is important for expropriation for some important state facility, in which case they are demolished."
Facilitated legalization of progressive squares?
However, this law also raises some questions. First of all, the media have been writing for years about businessmen close to the Serbian Progressive Party, whose buildings and palaces are springing up all over Serbia, and are being legalized in a controversial way. For example, "Vreme" already wrote about the disputed squares which are built in Belgrade by the former football player and Red Star coach Dejan Stanković.
At the beginning of this year Nemanja Stajić, the former secretary of the Secretariat for Legalization Affairs in Belgrade, was arrested because of the suspicion that he approved the legalization of a number of illegally built buildings, which, as is suspected, earned him and his family more than 6,5 million euros.
The investigation against Stajić was launched in 2022, six months after the Crime and Corruption Research Network published the testimonies of several construction investors who blamed Stajić and his secretariat for corruption and illegal construction, but the arrest took place only after the announcement by the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, that a fierce fight against corruption would begin, Crik said.
"We started investigating Nemanja Stajić and his brother back in 2021, when we started investigating illegal construction in Belgrade," Milica Vojinović, Krik journalist, told Vreme in February. "It turned out that Stajić's own brother has an offshore company, through which they have been building in Belgrade for years."
As BIRN learned, the Stajić brothers were released from prison in September of this year, and with a guarantee of a total of one million euros.
Sources: FoNet/Vreme
