Country profile: Serbia

A favourable climate and large cultivated areas create ideal conditions for varied agricultural production in Serbia. At the same time, however, complex and tangled land relations, a legacy of its past as a socialist Yugoslav state, exacerbate the issue of land ownership, even after the privatisation process in the 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, the price of agricultural land remains one of the lowest across Europe, which brings in unmanageable competition and land inequality between domestic family farms and transnational large-scale investors. Despite the country's attempts to address the issue of land control, particularly in light of candidateship to the European Union and recent amendments in the Land Code, various protests by local communities confirm that foreign investments in land still cause disputes and conflicts.

Download this country profile for a detailed description of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in Serbia.