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AN OVERVIEW OF GENERAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION IN SERBIA
turnover was returned to legal flows, citizens’ living standards improved, salaries grew,
trust in the banking system was restored, foreign debt was halved and privatization
process started. Serbia’s international position improved, too, the country returned to
international institutions 5 from which it was excluded after the disintegration of SFRY as
a result of UN sanctions, and foreign investors and companies started coming to Serbia.
§ 4. After ten years of deconstruction of all institutions, international isolation and
economic regress, it was not realistic to expect that Serbia would recover over night.
However, after tragic assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić on 12 March 2003, reforms in
Serbia have lost their momentum. All subsequent governments did not have strength to
explain clearly to the citizens of Serbia what transition meant and what its price was, for
which reason in the last several years institutional, political and economic reforms have
been going on at a very slow pace; the elites support them only declaratively, in fear that
they would lose voters’ support, whereby the losers of transition have not been spared,
but quite the opposite.
§ 5. Over the last decade, Serbia experienced two significant territorial changes.
Montenegro, the other federal unit of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and later of
the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, declared its independence on 21 May 2006 6 ,
while on 5 June the National Assembly of Serbia declared Serbia a legal successor of the
State Union 7 . In this way, Serbia restored its status of an independent state, which was
accompanied by strong resistance of nationalist and right-wing politicians, it had given
up in support of the Yugoslav idea in 1918.
§ 6. Two years later, on 17 February 2008, the Kosovo Assembly unilaterally declared
the independence of this province, which was soon recognized by the majority of world
forces. 8 Kosovo had been under the international protectorate since the end of the NATO
bombing of Serbia in 1999. Negotiations on its status lasted for several years, but without
success. The Republic of Serbia still treats Kosovo as its inseparable part and does not
recognize declared independence, putting enormous energy and resources in lobbying
worldwide in order to prevent further recognitions and to maintain parallel administrative
structure in the parts of Kosovo with larger concentration of Serbian population 9 . The
issue of legality of the declaration of independence of Kosovo was raised before the
International Court of Justice in The Hague. This Court issued its advisory opinion on
22 July 2010, in which it found the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo not to be in
contrast to international law. 10
5
Inter alia, FRY was readmitted to the UN and IMF.
6
Official Gazette of the Republic of Montenegro, no. 36/2006 of 5 June 2006.
7
The Decision on the Obligation of State Authorities of the Republic of Serbia in Realization of Prerogatives of the Republic of Serbia as a Legal
Successor of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, Official Gazette of RS, no. 8/2006.
8
http://www.assembly-kosova.org/?cid=2,128,1635
9
http://www.kolikokostakosovo.info/
10
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/141/15987.pdf
HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA - Report for the period 2000-2010 15