Serbia’s Student List, a student-led protest movement, won Sunday’s snap parliamentary election, ousting the ruling party of Aleksandar Vučić and ending his long grip on power, according to reports. The Serbia election Student List result was reported by several outlets, but the sources do not include final official results.
With 96.9% of polling stations processed, the Student List had 52.6% of the vote, against 39.22% for Vučić’s bloc, according to the Guardian. The same outlet reported a CeSID projection giving the students 140 seats and Vučić’s bloc 103, with 126 needed for a majority. The seat figures come from that projection, not a final count.
The Guardian also reported that no other party crossed the 3% threshold, and that national minority parties took the remaining seven seats.
Al Jazeera reported that in Belgrade late Sunday, drivers honked horns, fireworks lit the sky, and crowds filled central squares near parliament.
The protest movement was triggered by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station, which killed 16 people. Al Jazeera reported that the collapse was widely blamed on corruption and cronyism. The protests were among Serbia’s largest since the 2000 overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, according to Al Jazeera.
European Council President António Costa and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the result, according to Euronews. They said they stand ready to support reforms on the rule of law, media freedom and anti-corruption.
Euronews reported that Serbia’s EU accession bid stalled after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Belgrade kept friendly relations with Moscow. In July, eight EU member states blocked the Commission’s attempt to open a new accession cluster over Serbia’s failure to align with EU sanctions on Russia and its rule of law record, Euronews reported.
Radomir Saicic commented on the victory, and his remarks are a party claim that the sources do not independently confirm. He urged "serious, responsible hard work" from Monday.
The sources do not include a response from Vučić or his party, and do not explicitly confirm that Vučić personally conceded. Only one outlet, the Guardian, provided the seat projections, and no second source confirms the CeSID figures. International observers were due to present a preliminary report, but its findings are not in the sources.
Euronews said whether the change revives the stalled accession bid is hard to predict. The EU has said it is ready to support reforms, but the sources give no timetable for any such support.
Sources
This article was written with AI assistance from the published reporting listed above. It is part of the World Brief daily news podcast.