“Urgent” Procurement Has Been Illegal for 2½ Years: Election Booth Screens

Transparency Serbia says Serbia’s election commission had two and a half years to address recommendations on voting privacy, yet treated the purchase of voting-booth screens as an emergency.

The organization has asked the Public Procurement Office to determine whether the Republic Electoral Commission, known as RIK, violated the law. According to the partially available decision launching the procurement, RIK chose a negotiated procedure without publishing a public call.

Serbian procurement law allows the least transparent procedure only when unforeseen events create an urgency that makes an open process impossible. The law also says the circumstances behind exceptional urgency cannot result from the contracting authority’s own actions.

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to fulfill ODIHR recommendations

RIK reportedly justified the purchase by pointing to an August 24 instruction on the design of voting screens, adopted “to fulfill ODIHR recommendations.” It also said there would not be enough time to use other procedures if elections were held by the end of October.

Transparency Serbia disputes that reasoning. It says the ODIHR recommendations were already known from the organization’s report on the December 2023 elections. It also questions the assumption of an October election, noting that regular parliamentary elections are due in December 2027 and that snap elections require specific constitutional and political steps that have not occurred. The only basis cited so far is President Aleksandar Vučić’s announcements that elections could take place on October 18 or 25, 2026. The organization also notes that a forthcoming budget revision does not include funding for snap parliamentary elections.

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Nothing of that has happened yet.