On May 21st 2026, the German Federal Government published its official response to a parliamentary inquiry submitted by Die Linke, covering 32 questions concerning legal violations, corruption, procurement irregularities, safety risks, and environmental concerns related to EXPO 2027 Belgrade. The response confirms that the German government is aware of the Formal Notice submitted by Serbian civil society organisations to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) on 5 July 2025, acknowledges the BIE Executive Committee’s discussion of the document in September 2025, and explicitly endorses the European Commission’s assessment that Serbia has circumvented standard public procurement law through the EXPO special legislation (lex specialis). On the contested Mrdić judicial reforms, the government notes the Venice Commission’s April 2026 opinion and calls on Serbia to align its judiciary with EU standards, whilst declining to disclose the content of bilateral diplomatic exchanges.
What is equally revealing, however, is the sheer volume of questions to which the Federal Government offered no substantive answer whatsoever, responding instead with the formulaic declaration that it possesses “no information of its own.” This applies to questions concerning the €330 million in contracts awarded under conditions of near-absent competition, the potential overlap between companies involved in the Novi Sad railway station collapse and EXPO construction projects, the warnings issued by the Serbian Academy of Sciences regarding irreversible environmental damage, the absence of environmental impact assessments for the Surčin site, and the widespread use of undeclared labour on EXPO construction grounds. For a participating state that has commissioned companies to represent it at this event, and that publicly links its export promotion instruments to integrity criteria, such systematic ignorance is not a neutral bureaucratic position. We read this as a political choice, and one that civil society cannot accept.
- You can find the original inquiry by the German MPs on the parliament’s website
- You can find our translation of the inquiry in English here
For media coverage, read the articles by Mašina, Forbes, or N1 (English)