SERBIA: 100 Days of Protests & more – 11th Feb 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 11th of February twenty twenty-five A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Sunday the 9th, students organized protests in all major cities to mark one hundred days since the canopy collapse tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad. In Belgrade, students organized a seven-hour-long blockade of a Gazelle bridge over the river Sava, while Novi Sad’s students blocked three major road intersections. In the southern city of Nis, students organized a twelve-hour-long blockade of a toll station under the slogan The toll has come. Aside from these actions, five students from the central city of Kragujevac embarked on a relay marathon from their city to Belgrade to invite everyone to the city’s upcoming big protest scheduled for the 15th of February.

Recall that three months ago, a concrete canopy at Novi Sad’s railway station collapsed and left fifteen people dead only five months after its renovation. Ever since, students started a nationwide uprising demanding accountability for the incident and justice for the victims.

Meanwhile, the government has been forcing banks to hand over accounts and transaction data of several activists who have participated in protests, including the student-led demonstrations. The state’s administration for the prevention of money laundering said on Thursday the 6th that they are collecting data at the request of another state authority due to suspicions that these activists were committing criminal offenses, although they did not specify which ones. The administration also did not specify which state authority requested the data collection.

The targeted activists are all part of different initiatives and NGOs focused on human rights and environmental protection, and have been targeted by the same administration in the past.

Sofija Todorovic, the director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, one of the targeted activists, said that the government was campaigning to deal with the country's unrest by dividing citizens and causing them not to trust one another.

Fueled by the lack of reaction from the international institutions to the protests, the National Convention on the EU sent an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission's president, on Tuesday the 4th, asking for the EU to speak up about the situation in Serbia. The Convention, which is an NGO group that monitors Serbia’s EU integration process, wrote in its letter that the student protests were a reaction to systemic problems in the country, such as corruption, rather than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, as numerous Serbian officials said. They warned that a continued lack of action from the EU could diminish their credibility and reputation among Serbian citizens.

Since we mentioned corruption, the watchdog organization Transparency International presented its annual global Corruption Perceptions Index on Tuesday the 4th, highlighting that the fight against corruption has dwindled in twenty twenty-four. Transparency International ranked 180 countries by giving them corruption scores from zero to 100, where zero meant the country was highly corrupted, and 100 meant that it was very clean.

Serbia ranked 105th, with a score of thirty-five. The report noted that the government’s denial of responsibility for the canopy collapse in Novi Sad significantly contributed to this score. The best-rated country was Denmark with a score of ninety, and the worst-rated country was South Sudan with eight points.

On Sunday the 9th, Kosovo’s parliamentary elections took place and the ruling Vetevendosje party emerged as the winner. However, Vetevendosje did not secure enough votes to govern alone, forcing the party to ask for support from sixty-one additional MPs out of 120 to have a governing majority. Albin Kurti, Vetevendosje’s head and the prime minister of Kosovo, said that he is certain his party will get the required support, downplaying the possibility of opposition parties coming together against the ruling coalition to form a new cabinet. Serbian List, the largest Serbian-led party in Kosovo, secured ten mandates. The Central Election Commission, or CEC, said that the election turnout was around forty percent.

However, the CEC noted that there had been irregularities in the elections, mainly because some individuals illegally photographed ballots. In response, the prosecution has launched an investigation into the matter.

In other news, last week the United States Agency for International Development or USAID, announced that they would stop funding their projects worldwide, including Serbia, following President Trump’s order to halt the aid for ninety days. The agency has been operating in Serbia for more than two decades and has invested around one billion dollars into the country.

In these three months, the US government will assess whether USAID aligns with the Trump administration’s policy objectives.

Since we mentioned the US, on Tuesday the 4th, the Serbian state-owned oil company NIS submitted a formal request to the US treasury department for a waiver of sanctions of ninety days. NIS is currently awaiting sanctions from the US due to its large Russian ownership, and was given until the 25th of February to find a sustainable solution to make the US reverse the sanctions. However, with the deadline approaching, NIS is now requesting ninety more days to deal with this issue.

The Serbian government supported NIS and said that foreign crude oil suppliers to Serbia would decide to part ways with NIS because of the US sanctions. This will lead to a fuel shortage since NIS controls more than 80% of the fuel market in Serbia. Additionally, president Vucic announced last week that he would discuss the NIS sanctions with his Russian counterpart Putin soon.

While on the topic of energy, on Friday the 7th, Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic, the energy minister, announced that the construction of the planned oil pipeline connection with Hungary will begin by the end of the year. The pipeline, which is part of Serbia’s efforts to diversify its energy supplies, would connect Novi Sad in Serbia’s north to Algyo in Hungary's south and will have an annual capacity of around five million tonnes of oil.

Now for some news on the economy. Following a major boycott of supermarket giants due to their high prices which we reported on last week, the Efektiva consumer protection association called for another boycott of supermarket chains from Monday the 10th to Friday the 14th. Efektiva said that the reason for the boycott is that these retailers have some of the highest food prices in Europe. They explained that they increase regular prices so that they can advertise their big discounts they offer. Usually, the discounted prices are what they should regularly be. Additionally, Efektiva said that large retailers coordinate prices among themselves, which normalizes the high prices.

The initial boycott on the 31st of January lowered the sales of the supermarket giants by nearly forty percent. Efektiva called on the citizens to boycott five major supermarket chains - Delhaize, Mercator, DIS, LIDL and UniverExport, and urged them to buy locally instead.

Speaking of high prices, last week the Serbian government increased the excise duty by around five percent, which applies to petroleum derivatives, coffee, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and nicotine products. The aim of this increase is to align the prices of these products with the twenty twenty-four consumer price index.

Ljubodrag Savic, a professor of economy from the university of Belgrade, said that the state usually introduces changes to excise duty amounts whenever there are large money outflows in the country. Such is the case with the upcoming EXPO twenty twenty-seven exhibition in Belgrade, with Savic noting that the government introduced new excise duty amounts in order to finance it.

Closing with cultural news, from Friday the 14th to Monday the 17th, Belgrade’s Sava Center will host a musical show titled Notre Dame de Paris - a French musical based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name. The show will feature some of the most famous French classics such as Belle and Danse mon Esmarelda. Ticket prices range from 3,500 to 14,000 dinars, which is from around thirty to 120 dollars.

For more information, check out the link in the show notes!

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!