Brussels – Serbian citizens will head to the polls on 25 October. President Aleksandar Vučić confirmed the date of the long-awaited snap parliamentary elections on 9 September, officially dissolving the Parliament and opening an electoral campaign that, in fact, has been ongoing for the last couple of years and has already drawn the European Union into its complex relationship with Belgrade.
“In Serbia’s highly polarised political and media environment, there is a real risk that an official visit by the President of the European Commission could be instrumentalised as a message of European support for the incumbent authorities,” reads a letter sent by the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, asking her to postpone the planned visit to Belgrade in October, during her annual tour of the Western Balkans.
In a country that has been in the midst of a societal crisis for almost two years – after the collapse of Novi Sad’s railway station canopy on 1 November 2024 claimed the lives of 16 people and sparked relentless protests led by the student movement – “the political significance of a visit at this level cannot be assessed separately from the circumstances in which it takes place,” as it would coincide with the final and “most sensitive phase” of the electoral campaign.
After nine years as head of state, Vučić is now looking to tighten his decade-long grip on Serbian politics by running as the Serbian Progressive Party’s (SNS) candidate for Prime Minister, seeking a second mandate after his first term from 2014 to 2017. As anticipated at the end of June, early presidential elections are also expected, and identifying a credible successor to the presidency will be one of the greatest challenges facing Vučić’s strategy. Dubravka Đedović Handanović, the current Minister of Mining and Energy, is the main figure to watch.
On the other hand, the student movement has had to prepare in advance, as it lacks the organisational and logistical infrastructure available to the ruling party. In setting up the Students’ List – whose members will be announced soon – the main objective was to maintain “an ideological minimum that would be inclusive of all citizens who can agree that they want to see change,” Aleksa Popović, a representative of the students at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences at the University of Belgrade, told The New Union Post.
Postponing the visit of the European Commission President until after the elections would send “a clear and unambiguous signal” that the EU will not allow its highest-level political engagement to be used, “intentionally or otherwise, to confer legitimacy or electoral advantage on any side in a democratic contest,” the BiePAG letters stresses. This is particularly true considering the concerns in Brussels about democratic standards in Serbia, including the functioning of democratic institutions, media freedom and the rule of law.
Waiting for 25 October
Analysing the upcoming election campaign in a recent interview with The New Union Post, Giorgio Fruscione, Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and a current BiEPAG member, highlighted that opinion polls in Serbia are “primarily instruments of political power rather than neutral forecasting tools” and remain heavily influenced by the regime.
As seen in several recent local elections, the Students’ List could attract more than 30% of the vote, which would represent “the strongest performance by an opposition force in the past 15 years.” In other words, this would suggest that a political alternative to Vučić’s rule has begun to emerge.
The election will be most likely decided by the proportion of citizens who have abstained from voting over the past decade who ultimately turn out, “because low turnout overwhelmingly benefits the ruling party,” Fruscione predicted. Comparing SNS membership with voter turnout over the past 15 years, on average, one in four voters is an SNS member. “If each of those members succeeds in bringing just one relative to the polls, support already reaches 48–50%.” This is why much will depend on the students’ ability to mobilise citizens who have traditionally abstained from voting.
Although the presence of the European Commission President during the election campaign may represent a factor of influence in the hands of the regime, it must be recognised that it is politically unattractive for either the government or the opposition to invest heavily in an EU accession process for which even Brussels currently sees limited prospects, and which has been stuck for years on the opening of Cluster 3 – ‘Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth’.
The funeral of Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladić on 7 September further heightened tensions between Brussels and Belgrade. “The elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable,” said von der Leyen, commenting on the “shocking” celebration of the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. “They demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe’s recent history and contradict the values underpinning Serbia’s path towards the European Union,” von der Leyen added.
The state of EU–Serbia relations
Serbia submitted its application for EU membership in 2009. Candidate status was granted in March 2012, and accession negotiations began in 2014.
To date, 21 chapters – plus an additional one on the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo – are open, but only two are provisionally closed: Chapter 25 (Science and Research) in December 2016 and Chapter 26 (Education and Culture) in February 2017.
Relations between Brussels and Belgrade have cooled over the past year, especially following the violent crackdown on the protests by the national authorities and President Vučić’s decision not to attend the 2025 EU–Western Balkans Summit. Currently, around €1.5 billion allocated under the Growth Plan could be frozen over controversial judicial reforms and attacks on media independence.
The mass protests that have been taking place since November 2024 “reflect citizens’ disappointment, inter alia, over corruption and the perceived lack of accountability and transparency,” the European Commission’s 2025 report on Serbia recognised, identifying the slowdown in reforms and the lack of alignment with the EU – particularly in foreign policy – as the most worrying issues.
