With the Constitutional Court remaining silent, EXPO projects continue to be awarded without competition

The Constitutional Court has still not ruled on the initiative submitted by Transparency Serbia to declare unconstitutional a provision of the special “EXPO Law,” which exempts EXPO-related projects from the application of the Law on Public Procurement. Transparency’s latest analysis shows that this inaction has enabled special EXPO companies to award contracts worth more than €330 million with an extremely low level of competition – in as many as 86% of cases, only a single acceptable bid was submitted. In addition, we remind that most public works tied to the event – such as the “national stadium” – were contracted without any public call or bidding, through direct agreement with Power China.

The special law for EXPO (Law on Special Procedures for the Implementation of the International Specialized Exhibition EXPO Belgrade 2027), adopted at the end of 2023, was passed in a procedure that disregarded the Law on Public Administration, the Law on the Prevention of Corruption, as well as the Rules of Procedure of both the Government and the Parliament .

This Law excludes the application of the Law on Public Procurement to all procurements carried out by special “EXPO companies.” Their procurement is instead governed by a Government Decree which, while resembling a legal procedure in some respects, lacks the essential safeguards of the public procurement system. By removing the Law on Public Procurement, companies that detect discriminatory criteria in tenders can no longer challenge them, and the Public Procurement Office has lost its oversight role, eliminating a crucial mechanism for preventing damage.

In January 2024, Transparency Serbia submitted a reasoned initiative to the Constitutional Court, pointing out that Article 14 of the special EXPO Law is unconstitutional and contradicts Serbia’s Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU. Despite several urgencies and supplements to this initiative2 , the most recent submitted six months ago3 , there is still no indication of when the Court will consider the case.

Meanwhile, as the latest analysis of TS shows, out of 72 procurement procedures4 conducted based on an unconstitutional provision, the average number of submitted bids was only 1.56, while the average number of valid bids was just 1.19. In 86% of cases, contracts were awarded to the sole company from which state-owned enterprises received an acceptable offer. In this manner, EXPO companies have so far awarded contracts worth 39.47 billion dinars, or slightly more than €330 million. This analysis captures only part of the damage caused by the state’s contracting practices related to EXPO. According to data published by the Ministry of Finance5 , the Government of Serbia, through “direct contracting with the contractor”, meaning without any tender or transparency, entrusted Power China between April 2023 and March 2024 with the construction of access infrastructure to the “national stadium,” the stadium itself, preparatory works for the exhibition facilities, and the facilities’ construction. According to the Fiscal Strategy, the current estimated value of the stadium and related facilities, explicitly linked to EXPO, exceeds 207 billion dinars. However, it is certain that this figure does not cover all procurements associated with the event.