Illegally built facilities will be destroyed even without the final decision of the court, according to the amendments to the Law on Legalization, which will come into force on November 6th.
Also, real estate agencies will not be allowed to sell these facilities and no business activities will be allowed in them. These are just some of the new solutions that will help local governments in Serbia to finally tackle the problem of illegal construction.
On Thursday, the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic, said that from December 2015 to the date, a total of 500 illegally constructed buildings were demolished and that about 183,000 legalization decisions were issued.
“Amendments to the laws are final because they are the last instance. Now we only need to apply this law in its entirety, from the very beginning to the end, “Mihajlovic said and appealed to the citizens not to build illegally, and those who are in the process of legalization to finalize it as soon as possible because that property will not be considered functional in the future.
Amendments to the Law on Legalization were initiated by the City of Belgrade in order to correct the defects in the regulation and the problems faced by the field inspectors.
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“This will allow us to demolish all illegally built facilities and buildings without having to wait for court orders. In practice, this means that when someone refuses to legalize their property, then the city, the state or the municipal authorities, depending on the competence, will be allowed to demolish the facility waiting for the relevant procedure to be finalized before the Administrative Court. In the past, some of these procedures took 15 years to be finalized. Also, the owners of illegally built facilities and buildings will not be allowed to sell them until they are legalized”, said the Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesic,
The Amendments also stipulate that public companies will not be able to use public infrastructure, and those who do so will be fined with 1 to 3 million dinars. Also, people will not be able to open a shop or a catering facility if the building in which they will open their business is built without a permit.
Every facility that is undergoing the process of legalization will be recorded as such in the cadastre, which is a signal to the buyers not to purchase such properties. As for buildings and houses that have been illegally constructed, inspectors will put up a notification on the relevant plot, as a warning that that particular property has not been legalized.
This year, the city of Belgrade has issued permits for the construction of buildings spanning 850,000 square meters and there are about 1,500 legal construction sites in the city at the moment. 270,000 buildings and houses in Belgrade are currently undergoing legalization process. Belgrade’s budget loses as many as 30 million euro a year due to illegal construction.
NEW REGULATION
* Every building that was built without a permit after November 27th, 2015 will be demolished.
* The owner of the plot on which the illegal building was built is held as the person responsible for the illegal construction
* The facility/building has to be visible on a satellite image in order to be legalized
* The owners will have to pay taxes on the building undergoing legalization
* The owner of an illegally built facility can initiate the procedure before the Administrative Court, and if the court decides in favour of the owner of an illegal facility, the state authorities will have to pay compensation to the owner.
(Vecernje Novosti, 02.11.2018)
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