During a summer in which European leaders have focused on shuttle diplomacy with Donald Trump over trade and Ukraine, they have maintained a discreet silence regarding another crisis in Europe’s east. For more than nine months, mass student-led protests in Serbia have been challenging the authoritarian rule of Aleksandar Vučić, who has been in office as prime minister and president for 11 years. Up to now, Brussels has largely opted to look away.
The catalyst for some of the largest demonstrations in Serbia’s history was the collapse of a newly renovated railway station roof in the country’s second city, Novi Sad, leading to the deaths of 16 people. The disaster was widely attributed to entrenched fraud and corruption presided over by Mr Vučić’s ruling Serbian Progressive party, and swiftly became the spark for a movement for democratic reform. The students are demanding early elections and a new era of transparency and accountability, in what remains an EU candidate country.
As anger and frustration in the streets has mounted, Mr Vučić’s response has become increasingly draconian. Groundlessly claiming that foreign agitators were seeking an “imported revolution”, the president launched a ruthless crackdown on civil society groups in receipt of foreign funds. On the streets, orchestrated mobs this month attacked protesters and reportedly looted businesses owned by opponents of Mr Vučić. There have been widespread reports of police brutality. Amid the spiral of violence, one recent anti-government demonstration in Belgrade took place under the slogan “Let’s show them we’re not a punchbag”.
The protesters deserve more support and solidarity from the EU than they are receiving. Autocratic and cynical, Mr Vučić is a malign presence in the politics of the western Balkans. Beyond Serbia’s borders, he has long cultivated an insidious and destabilising ethno-nationalist agenda in relation to Kosovo and Republika Srpska – the ethnic Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At home, he has increasingly become a menace to democracy.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe found that Serbia’s parliamentary elections last year were marred by media bias and the use of government patronage networks to influence the vote. The authoritarian response to the protests – which have spread to the small-town heartlands of Mr Vučić’s support – has contributed to a collapse in public trust in a leader who has harnessed the power of the state to serve his own political interests.
If it wished to use it, the EU has considerable economic leverage to deploy. The bloc provides more than 60% of foreign direct investment into Serbia and has pledged €1.6bn to Belgrade by 2027, tied to future reforms. But Brussels is loth to see the country slip any further into Russia’s orbit and has, as a consequence, soft-pedalled any criticism of Mr Vučić. For his part, the president has played a wily geopolitical balancing act, sending arms via third parties to Kyiv, as well as Moscow, and granting the EU crucial access to Serbia’s significant lithium reserves.
Following this summer’s violence, Mr Vučić belatedly called last week for a dialogue with protesters. But what Serbia needs is free and fair elections, and the reversal of the authoritarian creep of the past decade. At a time when the EU’s liberal values are being challenged in Washington as well as Moscow and Beijing, it needs to stand up for them far more robustly in a battle for democratic reform taking place just outside its own borders.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
