It is a standard view that concessive clauses (concessives) cross-linguistically cannot be used in the scope of focus particles such as only, even, just, unlike the majority of other adverbial clauses (e.g. König 2006; Mizuno 2007). It is usually assumed that this is due to their lesser degree of integration with the main clause compared to other adverbial clauses (König 2006). We argue for an alternative view: standard concessives (concessives marking the standard concessive relation, cf. König 2006) are inherently focused, i.e. they compositionally include a (c)overt focus particle responsible for the scalar ranking of the asserted and presupposed propositions. We build on Lund’s (2017) decompositional analysis of even though in English to provide theoretical and quantitative evidence from Serbian that standard concessives include a focus particle, which bans their combination with other focus particles, due to complementary distribution. Specifically, we analyze three main concessive conjunctions in Serbian – iako, mada and premda (traditionally considered fully synonymous), addressing the question of why only iako is compatible with the focus particle čak ‘even’. We argue that this is a consequence of čak being an integral part of constructions with standard iako-concessives. We show that properties of concessives introduced by the three concessive conjunctions under discussion correlate with the meaning of (c)overt focus particles contained in them. We also sketch some consequences for the syntax of concessives.