At one time there was a law in the Republic of Serbia ordering the court to check ex officio at the time of certification of the contract of sale of immovableness, whether the statutory preemption right has been respected. There is no such law since 1998, but the current Law on sale of immovable leaves a possibility of interpretation in favor of existence of a public protection of the preemption right. For this reason, the author, in the first section of her work, poses a general question: should there be a protection of the preemption right ex officio, or should such protection be available only at the request of the authorized person. In the second section of her work, the author draws attention to the necessity of existence of adequate rules that would prevent evasion of the preemption right, as well as the need to regulate precisely the legal effects of a request seeking protection of this right in case of breach of the right of priority.