Serbia adopts Green Agenda strategy running to 2033

The Serbian government adopted the Environmental Protection Strategy, formally titled the Green Agenda for the Republic of Serbia, at its session on Thursday, July 30. The document runs through 2033. Environment Minister Sara Pavkov announced it the same day at 12.27 p.m.

The Green Agenda was not the only item on the table. At the same session the cabinet approved four tax bills, widened the list of medicines covered by the Republic Health Insurance Fund (RFZO), and scrapped the 2025 decrees on teaching loads at universities.

Pavkov placed the strategy in a longer line of papers her ministry has produced since 2021.

“This is the 11th strategic document in the past five years, and it is the crowning one, with an action plan through 2033 built on five pillars”

Her own figure sets the pace: 11 strategic documents in five years works out to roughly one every five or six months. Which is why the test of this one is its action plan, not its adoption.

What is in the Green Agenda through 2033?

The strategy rests on five pillars and comes with an action plan running to 2033. Pavkov said implementation will require billions of dinars and that Serbia has backing from the European Union and the wider international community. Local governments, she said, can apply for money for sewage networks, transfer stations and collectors.

The minister cited two results already on the ground. This year Serbia handed out more than 12,000 waste bins and 3,000 containers, and sulphur dioxide emissions in Bor have fallen since January 2026.

She tied the adoption itself to external deadlines.

“This was one of the additional obligations Serbia has fulfilled today”

The tax package heads to parliament

The same logic, alignment with EU law and with the Reform Agenda, sits behind the fiscal half of the session. The government approved amendments to four laws:

• the Law on Mandatory Social Insurance Contributions
• the Corporate Income Tax Law
• the Personal Income Tax Law
• the Tobacco Law

The tobacco amendments spell out inspection powers, push back deadlines for marking products, and set rules for stock already counted in warehouses. All four bills now go to the National Assembly, so nothing takes effect before the parliamentary debate.

Medicines, then the faculties

The cabinet cut co-payments on 769 medicines from the A1 List and cleared 145 new medicines for sale on prescription, among them therapies for rare, oncological and cardiovascular conditions.

The same session repealed the 2025 decrees on teaching loads, a decision we covered separately. The earlier arrangement is back: 20 hours of research and 20 hours of teaching per week at universities and faculties, and 10 hours of professional work with 30 hours of teaching at academies and vocational colleges. The 2025 decrees were introduced to make up classes lost earlier, and the government says that reason no longer applies.

The first hard date to come out of all this is fiscal rather than environmental. If the Green Agenda action plan needs billions of dinars, the first real measure of the document will be the line item in the 2027 draft budget.