The European Commission released its 2025 Enlargement Package, offering a comprehensive assessment of progress across all candidate countries.
According to the Commission, growing polarisation and mass protests that have continued since November 2024 reflect widespread public disappointment over corruption, lack of accountability. This has led to an increasingly difficult environment, where divisive rhetoric has resulted in a serious erosion of trust among stakeholders, which, in turn, impacts the accession process.
The report notes that reforms in Serbia have significantly slowed down. Some positive developments were acknowledged, such as the relaunch of the procedure for selecting new members of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) and progress on the Law on the Unified Voter Register. However, these steps still need to be finalised and effectively implemented.
Enlargement Package 2025 – Rights of a Child
The European Commission’s 2025 report on Serbia highlights serious and persistent gaps in the protection of children’s rights, showing that this area remains one of the weakest parts of Serbia’s EU accession progress.
The legal framework on the rights of the child needs to be further aligned with the EU acquis and European standards, including the European Commission Recommendation on integrated child protection, and enforcement must be improved.
Serbia has not yet ratified the Third Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communication procedure.
Many children joined the recent protests, which the authorities criticised, despite the Convention on the Rights of the Child guaranteeing children the right to freedom of assembly and expression in a safe and peaceful manner.
- In October 2024, Serbia adopted a special protocol for the protection of children from violence in the social protection sector; other sectoral protocols in health, judiciary and police are still missing.
- A new strategy on violence against children has not been adopted, although the previous one expired in 2023.
- Serbia still lacks a national action plan for the rights of the child.
- The Council on the Rights of the Child did not meet in 2024 and, to date, in 2025. It has yet to be supported by a technical body and a cross-sectoral group.
- The Law against domestic violence needs to be amended to ensure that every child who is a witness or victim of domestic violence is included in the court’s individual protection plan.
- Serbia needs to amend its family law to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment of children in the family and to ban child marriage.
- A new Law on juvenile offenders and protection of minors in criminal proceedings has yet to be adopted to guarantee child-friendly justice and equal access to legal protection.
Statistical data on vulnerable groups is still needed, with a breakdown by age and sex and including Roma children and children with disabilities.
- Although relatively few children are placed in institutions (under 100 per 100,000), violations of child rights in large-scale institutions remain a concern.
- Children with disabilities, who are vulnerable to multiple forms of exclusion and abuse, constitute the largest group of children in institutions, as they are over-represented (70%) among children living in residential large-scale institutions.
- Serbia does not fully enforce the ban on placing children under three years of age in residential care.
Online Child Safety and Protection from Sexual Exploitation (Chapter 24)
A new strategy and action plan for the fight against cybercrime has yet to be adopted. The Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code are not yet harmonised with the Second Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.
Serbia also needs to address the Lanzarote Committee’s recommendations on the Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. In addition, the legal framework needs to be aligned with the Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography.
Education and inclusion
The coverage of children with early childhood education and care education (ECEC) is stable at 62.1 % in 2024 (61.2% in 2023) for age 6 months to 6.5 years. However, further efforts are needed to increase participation in preschool education, including through ensuring equitable ECEC for the most disadvantaged children. The enrolment rate in mandatory ECEC has been broadly stable, though decreasing to 96.2% during the 2024/2025 school year (97.2% in 2023/2024).
Measures to reduce school drop-out and segregation must be more consistently enforced, with particular attention to the inclusion of women and girls in education and training.
The number of students supported by individual education plans (IEPs) increased significantly in the 2024/2025 school year. However, children with disabilities still do not have access to teaching assistants, and assistive technology resource centres need to become fully operational to support inclusive education.
The issue of children living in residential care who do not attend school or who have dropped out requires urgent and adequate attention.
Free textbooks are now provided to a broader range of vulnerable students, improving access to learning materials.
Report: 2025 Communication on EU Enlargement Policy – Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood