Yesterday’s parliamentary election in Serbia delivered a decisive victory to the opposition Student List (SL) over the 14-year rule of Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). This offers a real opportunity for change in Serbia and the region – but it will be a long and uncertain road.
Turnout reached nearly 70%, an extraordinary level not seen since Vučić’s role model Slobodan Milošević was ousted more than 25 years ago. The victory was so decisive that a visibly downcast Vučić was forced to concede just 90 minutes after polls closed and before any media projections.
In his concession statement, Vučić acknowledged the scale of the loss and noted that the Student List had won an estimated 139 seats to the SNS’ 105. His early concession shocked many who felt this was out of character.
However, Vučić quickly reverted to form by blaming “lies” as well as unnamed European forces and a US anti-Trumpdeep state for his loss.
Serbia erupted in celebrations at Vučić’s concession. But one quote from the mother of one of the 16 victims of the Novi Sad railway station disaster, which touched off the student movement two years ago, captured the gravity of the moment:
“I have been waiting for this moment for two years. Now I expect that they will all be held accountable,” Dijana Hrka said. Accountability and an end to impunity were the binding agent of a student-launched popular movement which spanned the entirety of Serbia.
In the end, the vote reached 52% for the SL and 39% for the SNS, with only minority parties (which are exempt from the 3% electoral threshold) able to enter the 250-seat parliament in addition to the SL and SNS.
The scale and import of the SL’s victory – and the organization and energy it demanded – cannot be downplayed. Soon, congratulatory messages started coming in, for example from the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.
They face a deeply entrenched security apparatus and a state which had been captured top-to-bottom by the SNS. The security state’s provenance goes back even further; much of it remained unreconstructed after the wars of the 1990s.
Now, the SNS is the only recognizable and organized party system in Serbia. The previous (and largely discredited) opposition parties were completely eliminated by the SL’s mass appeal and momentum.
The Serbian constitution adopted in 2006 was drafted to deny legitimacy to Kosovo’s efforts towards independence. It was not designed with the primary goal of ensuring democratic accountability – the Student List’s main priority.
European Union membership was not an SL talking point. The EU itself spurned direct contact with the movement during high-visibility marathons to Strasbourg and Brussels in 2025. But the next government’s policy decisions will shape Serbia’s geopolitical orientation and its prospects for EU membership.
Finally, Vučić built a de-facto presidential system (with some help from predecessor Boris Tadić). Presidential elections to be held by the end of the year to fill the vacancy left by Vučić will be an immediate challenge for the SL.
While the SL has eschewed personality politics, it will need to find a champion to compete in order to consolidate its victory and be able to fulfil its mission to establish political and legal accountability in Serbia.
Not only the rest of the region (especially Albania and next-door Bosnia and Herzegovina), but all of Europe and the rest of the democratic world, can take inspiration from the determination, solidarity, and steadfastness of the student-led movement which built such an electoral victory.
The bottom-up nature of this movement shows the dissatisfaction with the political options on offer and the desire for a fresh, more organic political process to replace the political party and elite machines that have dominated for so long.
It will be interesting to see if protesters in Albania look to this model for inspiration and adaptation. And at a time of several electoral victories by right/far-right parties around the world, it shows the possibility for another way of democratic renewal.
The EU and the wider community of democracies in Europe+ have a responsibility to help the movement succeed in achieving a democratic and accountable Serbia. Not only for the sake of their own declared values – but also in the interest of a more cohesive democratic Europe.
