On November 1 2024, the roof of a newly €55 million renovated railway station in Novi Unhappy, Serbia’s 2d largest town, collapsed and killed 15 folks. The deaths sparked Serbia’s greatest wave of student-led anti-government protests since Yugoslavia’s disintegration in 2000.
The protests pose essentially the most severe risk to Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić’s energy since he was top minister in 2014, and president in 2017. The protest motion has highlighted Vučić’s rising authoritarian rule and in style corruption in Serbia.
Serbians imagine that the fatal roof cave in used to be led to by way of authorities corruption. The station used to be renovated by way of a Chinese language-led consortium as a part of China’s Belt and Highway Initiative investments and rising political ties with Serbia. The Chinese language consortium and Vučić refused to submit the railway station recovery procurement contract after protesters demanded it.
The protesters have 4 calls for: the e-newsletter of all procurement paperwork regarding the renovation of the station, a prevent to the prosecution of scholars arrested throughout the protests, the prosecution of police and safety forces occupied with attacking scholars throughout the protests and a 20% building up within the price range for upper training.
Then again, the Serbian authorities and media — maximum of which Vučić controls via a community of political patronage and cronyism – are downplaying the protests and dangerous scholars.
Vučić claims that overseas powers are in the back of the protests to topple him and destabilise Serbia. Russia and China have totally supported Vučić’s claims that Serbia is the objective of a western plot to orchestrate the protesters and overthrow Vučić.
Serbia’s historical past of corruption
Within the decade after former president Slobodan Milošević used to be overthrown, Serbia applied plenty of democratic and anti-corruption reforms. Consequently, the rustic climbed to 72nd position out of 180 international locations in Transparency Global’s Corruption Belief Index in 2013. Serbia opened EU club negotiations the next yr.
Then again, since Vučić took administrative center, Serbia has develop into extra authoritarian. Corruption is in style, and the federal government has exploited tensions and instability with maximum of its western Balkans neighbours, essentially Kosovo, for political achieve.
Serbia used to be downgraded to partially unfastened by way of Freedom Area in 2019, and the V-Dem Institute (Kinds of Democracy) labelled it as as an “electoral autocracy”. Serbia dropped to a hundred and fifth position in Transparency Global’s Corruption Belief Index in 2024.
Many global organisations tracking anti-corruption, human rights and democracy have reported Vučić’s authoritarian inclinations and corruption in Serbia.
A record from Amnesty Global revealed in December 2024 describes Serbia as a “digital prison”. It’s been reported that Serbian government are the usage of surveillance generation to watch and suppress the protesters and different political combatants.
The protests are the most important problem to his energy Vučić has confronted.
Andrej Cukic/EPA-EFE
Global reaction
The EU has most commonly stayed silent because the protests started. After receiving letters from NGOs and activists, EU Commissioner for Expansion Marta Kos mentioned that the EU is following the protests in Serbia, and sponsored the guideline of regulation and freedom of meeting.
It is a a ways cry from the EU’s reaction to protests in Georgia remaining yr. EU fee president Ursula von der Leyen mentioned “the Georgian people are fighting for democracy” – but has stayed silent at the protests in Serbia.
Some argue this (loss of) reaction is as a result of in August 2024, Vučić made a maintain the EU to supply lithium to the bloc – a boon to the EU’s electrical car manufacturing. There have been additionally in style protests in opposition to the lithium deal over its transparency and considerations that the mine would motive irreversible environmental destruction to Serbia’s Jadar Valley.
The United States has additionally stayed quiet. President Donald Trump’s mates had been just lately granted permission to construct a Trump resort in Belgrade. Additional, Rod Blagojevich, the previous governor of Illinois who served 8 years in jail for corruption, is being regarded as as the brand new US ambassador to Serbia. Blagojevich, whose father is from Serbia, expressed beef up for Vučić and visited the rustic.
What’s subsequent for Serbia?
Whilst this can be an indication that the protests are loosening Vučić’s grip, the motion has simplest intensified, spreading to greater than 200 cities on February 1.
Vučić has pledged to both shape a brand new authorities inside one month, or organise a brand new parliamentary election within the spring to deal with the protesters’ calls for. Then again, this may slightly paper over the cracks of systemic corruption in Serbia.
The coed motion has printed how democracy and the guideline of regulation have eroded since Vučić got here to energy in 2014.
The protests have additionally uncovered the global neighborhood’s complicity in supporting Vučić underneath the basis that he’s a positive spouse for regional cooperation and balance within the western Balkans.
However to have an enduring have an effect on in Serbia, the protesters must additionally call for a transitional authorities to adopt anti-corruption and democratic reforms to support the guideline of regulation, and to organise the following elections.
On the middle of those reforms will have to be constitutional adjustments, corresponding to time period limits on elected public administrative center. Analysis presentations stricter time period limits can cut back the prices of corruption, abuse of energy and assaults at the rule of regulation and democracy.
Time period limits would additionally save you figures with authoritarian inclinations, like Vučić, from changing into the state themselves with limitless and unaccountable energy.
The EU additionally has a task to play right here. Through no longer hanging drive on Vučić, the EU is empowering his authoritarian inclinations. 2d, in EU club negotiations, it must introduce electoral reform as a brand new requirement for all EU candidate international locations.
Different leaders within the western Balkans have followed equivalent authoritarian authorities fashions and patronage techniques as Serbia to handle energy. Those would undermine and threaten the EU rule of regulation, in the event that they had been to enroll in the bloc as of late.
The EU will have to additionally publicly beef up pupil protesters who need Serbia to develop into extra democratic and responsible. In the end, the scholars are preventing for the very beliefs on which the EU used to be based.
