July 5, 2025.
Link to the original article: https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/srbija-autoput-otvaranje-vucic-upotrebna-dozovola-bezbednost/33464786.html
At a time of months of protests and damaged trust in institutions after the collapse of a canopy at the newly reconstructed Railway Station in Novi Sad, a section of the Miloš Veliki highway was officially opened, which, according to available data, is not technically completed and does not have a use permit.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on July 5 that the section was “completely safe” for use and that he was proud that it had been completed “despite stumbling blocks from outside and inside.”
“There is no one in Serbia who knows the job better than (Minister of Construction) Aleksandra Sofronijević. The most professional woman has seen it all, look at what it looks like,” Vučić told reporters during a tour of the section, adding that he cannot respond to people “who wish their country harm.”
The day before the opening ceremony, the president of the state said that there is always “some paper missing”, and citizens were offered a personal word from the director of the public company Roads of Serbia as a guarantee of safety.
After the grand opening, the section will be open to traffic on July 6th.
Technical inspection report unavailable
According to the publicly available CEOP construction permit database, no occupancy permit has been issued for the Pakovraće – Požega highway section.
The last document that can be found in that database, relating to the construction of this section of the highway, is the report of the completion of works in a constructive sense dated July 2, 2025.
This notification indicates that all rough construction work has been completed, but not that the road is ready for use.
The procedures require that after the application for completion of the works is approved, a technical commission be formed whose task is to check whether the road is in accordance with the design and regulations.
Only if everything is in order, instead of issuing a permit, the Technical Inspection Commission may propose putting the road into trial operation, for a period not exceeding one year.
In the case of this section of the highway, it is not known what the Commission determined, nor when and under what conditions the trial permit was issued.
These questions and Radio Free Europe’s request to submit the technical commission’s report were not answered by the Ministry of Construction, which commissioned the work, nor by the public company Putevi Srbije, which is the project investor, until the publication of the text.
There is no usage permit for the Novi Sad Railway Station in the available documents.
‘The engineers were scared, but they signed’
The question of whether all procedures were followed in this case was raised after Insajder television announced that the engineers in charge of expert supervision unanimously refused to sign the documents that are a prerequisite for confirming that the section is completed, and therefore suitable for a positive report from the Commission for Technical Inspection and Trial Operation.
This was confirmed in a statement to Insider by the director of Serbian Roads, Zoran Drobnjak, who assessed that the engineers were scared “because of the situation with the canopy”, but that the problem had been resolved in the meantime.
“The engineers who are in charge of the contractors, the engineers who are in charge of supervision, they all signed. Is it safe, is it not safe – no. They were just asked to write what has been done and what still needs to be done. They wrote what needs to be done and it’s not a problem, we will do it. What’s the problem?” said Zoran Drobnjak, adding that he personally guarantees that the road is safe.
Drobnjak also confirmed that the road will be open despite the fact that one of the tunnels on this section does not have an automatic system for monitoring safety parameters.
Although the establishment of such a system is prescribed by the Regulation on Minimum Safety Requirements for Tunnels, on June 21, the Government of Serbia adopted amendments to the Regulation on the Conditions and Procedure for Establishing a Trial Operation Regime on State Roads, thereby practically nullifying those provisions of the Regulation.
The new regulation allows for the organization of round-the-clock on-call duty instead of an automatic surveillance system during the trial period.
“People will be on duty there and when everything is over, when we have done everything, they will still be there to control that the tunnel is safe,” said the director of Serbian Roads, Zoran Drobnjak, denying that the opening of this section was accelerated for political reasons.
What do the documents from Serbia and the Chinese company say about the reconstruction of the station in Novi Sad?
The current government has announced the completion of this section of the highway several times so far.
Construction began in 2019, and was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of December 2021. The deadlines have been constantly pushed back since then.
A few days ago, announcing the grand opening, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that the road “must be open by Monday”, July 7th.
“I’m getting eaten alive, this thing about the opening of the road to Požega is driving me crazy, every day they tell me ‘it’ll be tomorrow’. There’s always some paper missing or someone hasn’t signed something. There’s come a time when everyone is looking for a way to stop the state,” Vučić said.
Chinese credit and unknown costs
The main contractor for the Preljina – Požega highway section is the Chinese company China Communications Construction Company.
This company was also one of the main contractors for the construction of the high-speed railway from Novi Sad to the border with Hungary, a project that also included the reconstruction of the Novi Sad Railway Station.
However, work on the station building itself was entrusted to numerous subcontractors.
As in the case of the construction of the railway, the contract for the construction of the Miloš Veliki highway section was concluded with a Chinese company without a tender, based on the Agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation in the Field of Infrastructure between Serbia and China.
At least 19 subcontractors built the high-speed railway, but the Serbian government does not publish contracts with them
The Serbian government declared the construction of this section of the highway a project of public importance, and a loan of $445 million was taken from the Chinese EXIM Bank for its implementation.
Part of the money was provided from the Serbian budget because, according to data from the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, a total price of 523.5 million dollars was agreed with the Chinese contractor.
However, these are not the final costs.
According to data from the Report on the Work of the Government of Serbia, eight annexes to contracts have been signed in the last five years, at least half of which related to price changes.
The Ministry of Construction’s website currently describes this project as an investment worth 650 million dollars.
The Preljina – Požega section is 30.9 kilometers long.
At the end of January 2022, approximately 11 kilometers from Preljina to Pakovrač were opened to traffic.
The completion of the rest of the road, namely the Pakovraće – Požega section, has been awaited for years, partly because it passes through terrain that is very demanding for construction, with almost a third of the route consisting of bridges and tunnels.