Politics and Economy

The Republic of Serbia is a parliamentary democracy. It has two autonomous provinces – Vojvodina in the north, and Kosovo-Metohija in the south. Vojvodina has its own government and assembly that deal with local issues. Kosovo-Metohija is under UN administration, and has an undefined status - Albanians believe that it is an independent area, and Serbs that it is still part of Serbia. Since neither of the sides is willing to compromise on its demands, this complicated question is due to be resolved by the UN Security Council in 2007. Forced by the civil wars of the 1990s, a great number of people from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo-Metohija fled to Serbia that still has the largest number of refugees in Europe. This complicated situation is, for the great part, the result of the criminal regime (1989 – 2000) of Slobodan Milošević which also left the legacy of the quite unstable political situation. Every new parliamentary election (regular ones are held every four years) is of uncertain outcome. The three main political parties are DSS (centre right), DS (centre) and SRS (far right). In order to form a government these three have to bargain between themselves and to cooperate with other smaller parties. Presidential elections are direct, but the post has limited prerogatives. The public turnout is sometimes below fifty percent. The reason for this is a general disillusionment with the pace of political changes and due to the still tough economic situation. Painful and unpopular transitional decisions are hard to make and so necessary economic reforms are still far from being accomplished. Although largely inefficient, the system works much better than it did few years ago. Crime and corruption rates have been lowered, but the citizens’ distrust of institutions is still very high. A big boost for the economy has occurred through loans from European and international institutions. The introduction of the regulated procedures create more opportunities for banking and foreign investments. Although it cannot be said that the economy is doing good, the political system doesn’t follow even this slow pace of progression.