22 Jul The Textbook Law Cements Political Control Over Education
July 22, 2025
Civic Initiatives warns the public about the Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Textbooks, which will cement political control over education in Serbia, and calls on the Government of Serbia to withdraw the proposal from parliamentary procedure.
By introducing “textbooks of national importance,” the new law establishes a state monopoly over educational content and enables ideological shaping of curricula, particularly in subjects such as history, Serbian language and literature, and geography. The new textbooks will not be scientifically and pedagogically independent, as evidenced by the complete absence of any mechanisms for expert quality control or professional peer review. Students will likely be exposed in schools to the same kind of populist demagoguery that dominates the media space under the control of the ruling party.
The law further provides for the complete monopolization of publishing, granting the public publisher, the Institute for Textbooks, exclusive rights to publish textbooks in as many as eight primary school subjects deemed of “national importance.” It is not clearly defined who selects the authors of these national textbooks, how they are selected, or by what criteria, nor is it clarified what constitutes “national importance.” The draft law is thus in direct contradiction with core European values such as pluralism, transparency, and free competition in the textbook market, and represents a step backward in fulfilling Serbia’s obligations as a candidate country for EU membership.
Additionally, the drafting process has been marked by significant shortcomings with regard to transparency and participation. The website of the Ministry of Education, as well as the eConsultation portal, contain no record of the report on the public consultation process, although, pursuant to Article 41 of the Government Rules of Procedure, the report was required to be published within 15 days of the consultation’s conclusion, which was on 19 June 2025. The public consultation report attached to the draft law does not indicate which comments from the public were accepted, whether partially or fully—only stating that some were accepted. Several relevant associations have stated that they never received responses to the comments they submitted on the draft. The public was denied access to the final version of the draft law before it was placed on the Government’s agenda for adoption.
If the National Assembly adopts the draft law in its current form, the government will institutionalize political control over education, particularly in the context of increasingly frequent attempts at historical revisionism and nationalist reinterpretations of the past. Therefore, we urge the Government of Serbia to withdraw the draft law and put an end to the instrumentalization of education for personal and party-political purposes, as well as the violation of international obligations in this area.