With democratisation efforts since the early 2000s and the EU accession negotiations (starting from 2014) Serbia is taking important steps towards social, political and economic development. The reforms undertaken are largely being driven by Serbia’s commitment to EU accession.

Serbia is formally committed to the Agenda 2030 and a certain dialogue on sustainable development is taking place. Yet, the framework conditions for a constructive cooperation between public institutions and non-state actors on sustainable development are not conducive. Moreover, following the 2020 elections, the Inter-ministerial working group on the 2030 Agenda (IMWG) was not re-established. Hence, despite previous announcements by the Government of Serbia (GoS), the work on (participatory) preparation of a National Development Plan has not started yet.

Outcome 1: Local and national institutions meaningfully involve non-state actors in decision and policy making in order to foster the mainstreaming and implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Outcome 2: Non-state actors (CSOs, businesses, academia) participate in decision-making and monitoring of the government’s work relevant to the 2030 Agenda.

Expected results:  

• The capacities of relevant state institutions for fostering the systematic implementation of the 2030 Agenda have improved
• Twenty local governments, local CSOs, citizens and the private sector have intensified their cooperation for sustainable and participatory local development and policy-making processes
• The internal coordination and engagement of nonstate actors by the SDGs4All Platform have improved
• Available and disaggregated data and evidence for 2030 Agenda mainstreaming, monitoring and implementation has increased

Results from previous phases:  

Thanks to the project, an increasingly evidence-based dialogue on sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda is taking place, both at the national and partly at the local level. The project has successfully supported the establishment of the SDGs4All-Platform (multi-stakeholder platform) which is focussing on providing inputs to national and local policymaking, and managed to enhance joint non-state advocacy efforts around the Agenda 2030.

Several sectoral policies (e.g. Law on social entrepreneurship, Gender equality law and strategy) and local development plans (e.g. for Priboj, Pirot), adopted in a participatory manner, have integrated the 2030 Agenda. The SDGs were successfully mainstreamed in the Economic Reform Program. The number of SDG indicators, published annually by the statistical office has been increased from 44 to 117.