Serbian lawmakers have greenlit a controversial luxury hotel project on a site scarred by NATO airstrikes, overriding cultural safeguards amid ongoing fraud probes into endorsing officials.
The decision, passed Friday, clears the path for a half-billion-dollar Trump-branded complex on the ruins of Belgrade's former General Staff military headquarters, a modernist landmark devastated in 1999.
Parliament invoked an extraordinary constitutional provision to declare the development a national priority, stripping the site's protected status and fast-tracking demolition despite plans stalling earlier due to charges against culture officials for falsifying documents.
The project, proposed in 2013 by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, involves a 175-room hotel, retail space, over 1,500 residential units, and a memorial to NATO bombing victims under a 99-year lease with Kushner's firm. Supporters view it as a revitalization of long-vacant ruins and a diplomatic gesture toward the Trump administration.
The General Staff complex, completed in the 1960s, stands as a symbol of post-World War II Yugoslav architecture and resilience against the 1999 NATO campaign over Kosovo.
Lawmaker Milenko Jovanov, introducing the bill, argued it would breathe new life into the bombed-out structures while emphasizing opportunities for Serbia to advance economically and diplomatically.
He noted potential improvements in relations with the United States, strained by a 35 percent tariff on Serbian imports and sanctions affecting key allies, as Serbia balances ties with Moscow and the West.
The legislation takes effect Saturday, advanced by President Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party and allies holding a parliamentary majority. Vucic's office distanced itself, deferring to Finance Minister Sinisa Mali, who is linked to Trump ally Richard Grenell.
Opposition figures decried the law as sacrificing history for favoritism, with one lawmaker calling the site a symbol of resistance now set to host champagne where bombs fell.
Preservationists, students, and anticorruption protesters condemned the haste as evading oversight, while Professor Vladimir Obradovic labeled it a modus operandi to sidestep institutions and foster corruption under development pretexts.
The extraordinary provision, intended for crises, has aided other Vucic initiatives before appeals, even as prosecutors charged officials this year and accused Vucic of undue influence via media criticism.
Anticorruption protests have raged for over a year, intensified by a deadly train station collapse killing 16, with a victim's mother beginning a hunger strike outside Parliament this week.
The European Commission voiced fresh worries over Serbia's rule-of-law erosion in its EU accession report, urging reforms, though the law's passage was assured by the ruling majority despite widespread outcry.