The 250-member Student List is ready for Serbia's elections

Brussels Serbian Students Protests EU Serbia Student List

(credits: Federico Baccini/The New Union Post)

Brussels – And finally, the names have been revealed. After more than a year of tireless work behind the scenes, kept as secret as possible to protect the safety of those selected, the Serbian students movement has made public the names of the 250 candidates on the Student List, who will represent it in the snap parliamentary elections on 25 October and in the National Assembly.

Brussels Serbian Students Protests EU Serbia — Serbian students’ protest in Brussels, 12 May 2025 (credits: Federico Baccini/The New Union Post)

“We were not looking for people who would look best on a billboard, nor for those who have known for years how to negotiate a place on an electoral list,” reads the statement from the student movement. The Student List includes people of different ages, professions and backgrounds, from large cities and smaller communities, all of whom are aware of “how this country functions when institutions do their job, but also what happens when they stop doing it.”

The students made it clear that they are not looking for a new leader “around whom another cult of personality will be built” and that all 250 candidates are people “entrusted with transferring part of the struggle we have been waging on the streets” for almost two years – following the collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad railway station on 1 November 2024, which claimed the lives of 16 people.

Yet some well-known personalities cannot go unnoticed when reading through the names on the list, including former basketball star Dejan Bodiroga, who is currently President of Euroleague Basketball. Others include Dejan Šoškić, an economist and former Governor of the National Bank of Serbia; Mirjana Nikolić, Rector of the University of Arts in Belgrade; and Estela Radonjić Živkov, Deputy Director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia.

None of the candidates were chosen by party leaders. Instead, they were selected by students through a complex decision-making process developed over more than a year of blockades, plenums and joint work, as Aleksa Popović, a representative of students at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences at the University of Belgrade, explained in an interview with The New Union Post.

“Each faculty was allocated a number of slots proportional to its size, which ultimately adds up to 250,” the total number of seats in the National Assembly. The list also complies with gender equality standards, ensuring a “balanced composition” of male and female candidates. Their selection was based on “a list of requirements” that had to be met for them even to be considered. “We wanted people who had supported us from the very beginning, who have an impeccable political record, and who would represent us in the best possible way,” Popović highlighted.

After the elections, the students do not expect their representatives “to be infallible, nor to have the answer to every question,” the statement reads. More importantly, they expect them “to be responsible for what they do, to listen to the people they represent, to explain their decisions, and to understand that a seat in parliament is not a reward, a privilege, or the start of a political career,” the students warn. “The mandate belongs to the citizens, and whoever receives it must know to whom they are accountable.”

Student List vs Vučić

On 9 September, President Aleksandar Vučić officially dissolved Parliament and set the date for the long-awaited snap parliamentary elections. The vote will be held on 25 October.

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. However, as analyses in a recent interview with The New Union Post by Giorgio Fruscione, Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and a current member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG), 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.”

With a political alternative to Vučić’s rule that 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.

The election campaign will remain overwhelmingly focused on domestic politics, with little attention given to the European Union. 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’. “At present, neither side appears willing to take that political gamble,” Fruscione warned.

Here are the names of all the candidates on the Student List: