Serbia: State-owned Agricultural Land for Use for Non-agricultural Purpose
The new Regulation on the Conditions, Manner and Procedure for Awarding State-owned Agricultural Land for Non-agricultural Use entered into force on 10 September 2022. Replacing its predecessor, the new regulation introduces novelties and modifies certain existing solutions.
Namely, it is no longer possible to award state-owned agricultural land for the purpose of constructing facilities of national interest such as parking lots for construction machinery or facilities for energy or utility infrastructures, telecommunications and/or protection against natural disasters. Enabled now is the awarding of such land for the purpose of conducting geological exploration works such as exploitation of petroleum and/or natural gas. There is also no limitation in terms of the class of agricultural land that may be awarded, but in terms of arable agricultural land, only sixth, seventh and eighth class of may be awarded. The obligation of holding public auctions for awarding the land also no longer exists.
Other novelties relate to the procedure and technical aspects of awarding state-owned agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, such as facilitating the process of applying for the awarding of land by interested parties, certain mandatory documents are now obtained by the competent local authorities (e.g. information on location, minutes of the agricultural inspector on the state of the land, etc.), while some are submitted in later phases, but only by the party selected as the user of the subject land.
