This is followed by stating that ‘the Law on Prevention of Corruption includes explicit standards for complaints and the responsibility of the ACA to try to rectify faulty complaints, which is not included in the Law on financing political activities’.66 In Chapter VI, the Law on financing political activities defined guidelines for action and decision-making in cases of violations of the law, where it is noted that the ACA has the option to act sua sponte but that this procedure can also be initiated by natural persons or legal entities, whereby the procedure to determine whether there were violations of this law in election campaigns can also be initiated pursuant to reports from political parties, coalitions of political parties or citizens’ groups that are submitters of candidate lists or proponents of candidates in the election.67 The ACA notifies that the procedure has been initiated within 24 hours from receiving the report and the institution has five days to investigate and issue a decision confirming whether there was a violation of this law in the election campaign or not. The ACA must publish these decisions on its webpage within 24 hours from their issue. Everything not regulated by this law is regulated by the Law on General Administrative Procedure.68 IFES highlights that, ‘although using an internal complaint management procedure based on its own practice, the ACA would benefit from coding its processes and procedures in written form’.69 The ACA notified the local observer mission (CRTA) about receiving a total of 39 reports from natural persons and legal entities regarding the 2020 election campaign (four reports were related to circumstances indicative of suspicion regarding a violation of the provisions of the Law on financing political activities during an election campaign), while 32 proceedings were initiated and 31 decisions made pursuant to other reports.70 When it comes to penal provisions, they are accurately regulated in the Law on financing political activities. However, according to the ODIHR report after the July 2020 elections, legal sanctions ‘are not graduated and allow for inconsistent implementation’, stating that the ACA denied as unfounded the majority of 25 received complaints for abuse of public resources and irregularities in the financing of election campaigns.71 Fines for violations of Article 50 of the Law on Prevention of Corruption that regulates membership and office holding in a political organization were raised in 2019 and now are between 100 and 150 thousand Dinars, while the Law on Public Enterprises stipulates fines for responsible individuals if they utilize, or have knowledge of utilization of public enterprise resources for political purposes contrary to the ban, without taking preventative action. Ibid. The Law on financing political activities, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 43/2011, 123/2014 and 88/2019 68 Ibid. 69 IFES, Technical Election Assessment Mission (TEAM) in Serbia, 2021 70 CRTA, 2020 parliamentary elections, Final report with recommendations, 2021 https://crta.rs/wpcontent/uploads/2020/10/Parlamentarni-izbori-2020_Crta_Zavrsni-izvestaj.pdf 71 ODIHR Special Election Assessment Mission Final Report, Parliamentary Elections. 21 June 2020: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/a/3/466026.pdf 66 67 43