Serbia Passes Belgrade Waterfront Expropriation Law
Public interest for expropriation on Belgrade Waterfront now lasts until every building gets an occupancy permit, replacing the seven-year deadline that expired in 2022.
Serbia’s National Assembly passed amendments on Monday, August 31, to the Law on Establishing Public Interest and Special Procedures for Expropriation and Building Permits for the Belgrade Waterfront project. The vote began at 10 a.m., with the amendment one of 59 items on the agenda of an extraordinary session that Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic convened on August 24 at the request of 109 lawmakers.
The key change concerns Article 6. Until now, the law required that expropriation requests be filed no later than seven years after the law took effect, a deadline that had already expired in April 2022, seven years after the law entered into force in April 2015. Under the new wording, the public interest behind expropriation, and with it the ability to launch the procedure, now lasts until every building constructed within the complex receives an occupancy permit. There is no longer a fixed date: the deadline is tied to the completion of construction.
Article 2 is also being amended, aligning the law with the Spatial Plan for the Special Purpose Area of Belgrade Waterfront and all its later amendments. That plan, which covered 177.27 hectares in its first version from January 2015, was expanded by amendments in 2022 and 2025 to 328.96 hectares, an increase of roughly 150 hectares. In its explanation of the proposal, the Ministry of Finance stated that the expropriation of all properties within the spatial plan’s boundaries has not yet been completed, which is the formal justification for extending the deadline.
Serbian News wrote about the proposed amendment in late July, when the draft law entered public consultation that ran from July 28 to August 4, during which comments could be submitted to the Ministry of Finance. What was announced then formally became law on Monday.
During the debate, representatives of the ruling coalition announced their support for the proposed legislation, while opposition representatives criticized the amendments. First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Sinisa Mali rejected opposition claims made during the Assembly session that the land at the project site had been sold below its price and that the contract with the investor should be terminated, citing figures on the project’s results so far.
According to Mali, 900,000 square meters have been built at Belgrade Waterfront to date, 2.2 billion euros have been invested, and 10,000 jobs have been created. “We collected 1.1 billion euros in taxes alone from that investment,” the finance minister said, adding that the project’s estimated value currently stands at 4.4 billion euros, of which, he said, Serbian citizens own 33 percent, or around one and a half billion euros worth. “We have 10,000 new jobs at Belgrade Waterfront,” Mali repeated.
With the amendments formally adopted, the open question is no longer whether the expropriation deadline will be extended, but when the procedure, which according to the Ministry of Finance has not been completed for all properties within the spatial plan’s boundaries, will finally conclude, since that moment is now legally tied to the issuance of the last occupancy permit in the complex.
