Serbia: “Reinforcement of consumer protection in Serbia as a response to the new market challenges”

Details: Published: December 16, 2021

EU-Twinning-Project

Reinforcement of Consumer Protection, Serbia as a Response to the New Market Challenges
June 2021 – June 2023
IRZ Juniorpartner
Budget: 1,5 Mio. Euro
Responsible at the IRZ: Katharina Tegeder, Lea Plum

IRZ is implementing the project “Reinforcement of consumer protection in Serbia as a response to the new market challenges” as a junior partner, together with the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, under the coordination of Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic. This project, with a runtime of 24 months and a budget of 1.5 Million Euro, has started its implementation in June of 2021.

Consumer protection in Serbia is an area of public policy that has been predominantly influenced by and is legally shaped under the auspices of the European integration process. Consumer Protection policy in Serbia is standalone autonomous policy which is largely impacted and characterized by the standards and practices of the EU legal framework.

According to the European Commission's progress reports, in the period from 2016 to the last report for 2020, the assessment of Serbia's preparedness on the topics of consumer and health protection is moderately prepared. Each report notes some of the progress made in the previous year, however, the recommendations for these topics are the same throughout that period, and address the need to strengthen:

administrative capacity of competent consumer protection authorities, market surveillance and sanitary inspection;
general management capacity, human resources and financial sustainability of the public health insurance fund.

In this context, the aim of the project is to improve the administrative and institutional capacities of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Sector for Consumer Protection of the Republic of Serbia .

The project is built around seven Components:

First Component: Assistance to ensuring national legal framework of consumer protection in line with the EU Acquis provided
Second component: Assistance to ensuring an effective legal enforcement of consumer protection provided - bearing in mind that new Law on Consumer Protection will be adopted at the beginning of 2021
Third component: Functional ADR system in the consumer protection field established
Fourth component: Regionally balanced provision of consumer protection services established
Fifth component: New market challenges such as consumer protection within online transactions adequately responded
Sixth component: Capacities, resources and competencies of the consumer protection institutional system reinforced
Seventh component: Public awareness on Consumer rights raised