European Central: Serbia's Anti-Government Movement is Losing Momentum
Serbia is no stranger to protests. Since 2018, President Aleksandar Vučić has faced a number of anti-government movements. In 2023, thousands gathered in Belgrade to protest the presidential elections, alleging major voting fraud and irregularities. Most protestors were tired of the populist and increasingly authoritarian policies of Vučić after a decade of rule.
Over the past seven months, however, Serbia has seen its largest protests ever, driven primarily by students but also supported by a wide range of members of Serbian society, from taxi drivers and farmers to lawyers.
The cause? The collapse on November 1 of a concrete canopy at the railway station building in Serbia’s second-largest city of Novi Sad. The accident killed 16 people, and re-ignited Serbia’s longstanding issues with government corruption, which many believe, alongside alleged poor oversight and shoddy construction work, to have led to the collapse.
These protests were initially focused on the incident itself, but grew to encompass the broader dissatisfaction with Serbia’s authoritarian rule and desire for transparency from the government. The heavily redacted documents published so far by the government and symbolic indictment of 16 people, including former construction minister Goran Vesic, have proven insufficient for the student-led protests.
More recently, the protests have become a flashpoint for the growing calls for a snap election, which have been explicitly rejected by both former Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, who leads the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), and President Vučić. They have argued that snap polls would “lead the country into catastrophe”.
However, in recent weeks, while the protests have remained strong, hope is beginning to fade amongst the opposition.
A Slowly Atrophying Movement
Ever since the movement began, President Vučić has targeted both the press and academia in an attempt to ease the dissent. His party’s grip on Serbian media has been strong for years, but attacks on journalists have increased from 166 in all of 2024 to 128 in the first five months of this year alone.
Many of the attackers, often pro-government activists, rarely face legal consequences, raising concerns that Vučić’s media crackdown will only accelerate.
In relation to the ongoing legal proceedings to uncover the alleged corruption behind the collapse, no one has yet been sentenced despite over a dozen indictments. Some are beginning to doubt that the proceedings will yield any meaningful accountability, despite the protests leading to the resignation of then-prime minister Milos Vucevic in January.
That being said, Vučić went on to appoint Djuro Macut, a medical professor without political experience, as prime minister in April, which has not led to any significant change. Additionally, the promised cabinet reshuffle has turned out to be largely superficial: only a third of the ministers in Macut’s new government are new faces, several of whom are affiliated with Vučić and his movement, while the key ministries of finance, defense, and the interior remain under the control of the SNS.
Yet the government has also been increasingly hostile towards the protestors themselves, with claims from protestors that the government used an illegal sonic weapon against them on March 15. The government has claimed this to be untrue, and an extension of an ongoing push by the West to overthrow the Serbian government.
Students, who have led the protests since they began, haven’t been spared from the government’s crackdown. Classes have been suspended since the protests began, and the government has cut salaries for the protesting professors, threatened budget cuts for state-run faculties, and is supposedly working on a new law which would allow the government to appoint faculty deans, effectively ending university autonomy.
Most importantly, however, is the gradually declining support for the movement from Serbia’s rural communities. Much of Vučić’s SNS party support has come from rural voters, with many having undiminished support for the government.
From the chaos that the protests have caused to an apathy towards politics in general, many are refusing to turn on Vučić. His government’s investment in small towns, wage increases, and infrastructure has had far more tangible effects than its media crackdowns.
It is important to note that people still largely support the protests, with a February poll from the non-partisan CRTA finding that 64% of Serbians still support the protests, and a separate CISI poll finding 83% of respondents in support of the students.
Local assembly elections in early June were also far closer than expected, with the SNS winning in one municipality by just 51 votes.
Without successful government reforms and ongoing disruption to everyday life, any movement is bound to lose support as time marches on and the government clamps down on protestors.
For many, it seems that the government, which has weathered multiple previous protest movements in 2021 and 2023, is simply battening down the hatches and entrenching itself in the hope that it can outlast the protests once again. Without a credible leader or a coherent political platform, government opposition is fairly fragmented, allowing the regime more space to wait out the movement.
The Wider Impact: EU Membership and Chinese Investment
The government’s crackdown on the protests has raised concerns not just in Belgrade, but also in Brussels. Serbia has been a candidate for EU membership since 2012, and while the Vice President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, recently said that Serbia’s membership "remains a strategic goal", she also noted the lack of action by the government in enacting the necessary reforms as a hurdle.
Vučić’s disdain for the EU and the West in general has been far from quiet. He has repeatedly cited foreign agitators and spy agencies as the foundation for this protest movement, including in an interview with Donald Trump Jr. on March 13. This, paired with his authoritarian tendencies and support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, will likely sideline his stated goal of speeding up EU accession.
Serbians themselves are also on the fence about EU membership. The EU’s support for a controversial lithium mine in Serbia for the EU’s electric vehicle production plans was very unpopular, sparking protests last August.
This, alongside tentative silence on the government’s actions, has fostered disillusionment with the EU. A survey in May 2024 also found that, in contrast to high EU membership support in other Western Balkan nations, Serbia’s support is as low as 34%. While EU flags were once waved at the protests, they have since fallen by the wayside, further hindering any efforts by Serbia to join the EU.
There are also implications for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Novi Sad station was updated in 2021 as part of the initiative and was also a flagship infrastructure project of the Serbian government, with Vučić praising the initiative’s impact on speeding up travel times.
While the Chinese companies involved in the Novi Sad station’s construction have distanced themselves from the collapse, it will still likely be a stain on the Belt and Road’s track record moving forward and make future potential partners hesitate just a bit more, especially as one infrastructure collapse sparked huge anti-government protests and massive upheaval in Serbia.
The protests are still set to continue for the foreseeable future, but their impact on Serbia’s politics, both domestically and abroad, will likely be felt for years to come.
