The latest amendments of the Planning and Construction Act,[1] effective as of 6 November 2018, introduce the requirement for all construction and designing companies (including solo entrepreneurships) to obtain licenses for various types of design/construction works until 6 November 2019.
The licensing requirement that now applies across the board previously applied to the designing or construction of specific complex buildings, such as airports, chemistry industrial complexes, public railways, certain types of waste treatment facilities, renewable energy facilities with installed power of 10MW+. Those are the constructions with respect to which the permitting process is within the competence of the Ministry for Construction, Transportation and Infrastructure or, depending on the location, the authorities of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. With the amendments to the Planning and Construction Act, the licensing requirement is extended to any type of design or construction.
The licenses to companies registered in Serbia (including branches of foreign companies) will be issued by the Ministry for Construction Transportation and Infrastructure. The condition for obtaining the license is that the company has among its employees designers / engineers with adequate references for the specific type of works to which the license applies, and, in case of construction licenses, that the company itself has references for the specific type of works. The requirements for the licenses are supposed to be elaborated in the bylaws to be enacted by the Ministry for Construction until 5 January 2019. It is thus still to be seen whether the conditions will be clear and transparent. However, the general licensing requirement and the conditioning of the licenses with existing references may certainly have a foreclosure effect.
The contractors who do not have the requisite licenses will still be able to get construction contracts in Serbia provided their subcontractors have the relevant licenses.
