SERBIA: A resolution on the 2023 elections & more – 13th Feb 2024

an Parliament adopted a Resolution on Serbia calling for an investigation into December twenty twenty-three elections. In the Resolution, the members of the European Parliament said that they support a deployment of an ad hoc fact-finding mission to Serbia, which will help with the investigation. This was prompted by an alleged electoral fraud during the parliamentary elections, which included voter buying, ballot box stuffing and bussing of foreign citizens to vote.

The European Parliament then urged the European Commission to consider suspending EU’s funding of Serbia if the investigation proves that the Serbian authorities were directly involved in the voter fraud, as it would be a severe breach of the rule of law. The suspension of EU’s funding would be a problem for Serbia, as it provides financial support in the fields of environmental protection, infrastructure, education, culture and more.

Ahead of the European Parliament’s Resolution, the government assembled a new Parliament on Tuesday the 6th. At a constitutive session, the government approved the mandates of all 250 MPs. The newly chosen MPs of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, then took the oath, while other MPs, who are members of several opposition parties, left the chamber of the Parliament protesting the alleged election fraud. The members of the Serbia Against Violence opposition coalition as well as the Hope party took their oaths in the Parliament’s lobby.

Before leaving the chamber, the members of the numerous opposition parties stood in front of the podium with banners and whistles in protest. Some Serbia Against Violence members said that the parliament was built on electoral fraud, and not on the will of the citizens.

Speaking of the ruling party, on Thursday the 8th, president Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Kurti met at the UN Security Council, to discuss the ban of the Serbian currency, dinar, in Kosovo. At the meeting, which Serbia requested, Vucic told the council that Kosovo’s decision to ban the Serbian dinar had the intention of making the living conditions unbearable for the Serbian minority and driving them away from Kosovo entirely.

Vucic stated that the decision was unilateral. As a response, Kurti offered Vucic a chance to make a bilateral decision, which implies signing the Brussels agreement. Recall that Vucic previously refused to sign the EU-mediated Brussels agreement which aims to de-escalate the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, despite verbally agreeing to it. Both the EU and Kosovo expect him to sign, as they view his verbal agreement legally binding. Vucic did not take Kurti up on his offer at the Council either.

Additionally, both the EU and the US expressed concern that Kosovo’s ban of the dinar could worsen Kosovo-Serbia relations.

On that note about Kosovo, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s mission for Kosovo published a report on Friday the 9th on the justice system. In their report they concluded that the justice system in Kosovo's Mitrovica region saw a big setback with the mass resignation of Kosovo Serbian judges, prosecutors, and administrative staff in twenty twenty-two. They said that there was a noticeable decline in court proceedings at the Mitrovica Basic Court and the Basic Prosecution Office, as well as a drop in the numbers of caseload clearance rates by nearly twenty percent. They reported that in the period between January twenty twenty-two to June twenty twenty-three, twenty judges, ten prosecutors and 132 administrative staff resigned. The report advised Kosovo Judicial Council and Prosecutorial Council to urgently address the understaffing issue, adding that they also need to focus on promoting a multi-ethnic justice system.

Speaking of the multi-ethnic environment, the National Council of Albanians called out the Serbian ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue for decreasing the Council’s twenty twenty-four budget, denouncing their decision as discriminatory. The Council explained that this year’s budget saw a decrease of nearly 13,000 dollars compared to the twenty twenty-three budget. Kosovo’s PM commented on the situation and said that Serbia was conducting ethnic cleansing through administrative means.

However, the Serbian Ministry has denied the accusations and explained that their budgeting is based on a government regulation on money allocation for minorities. They added that Albanians were not the only ones affected by the decision and that Slovaks and Bosniaks were facing the same change.

In other news, the National Alliance for Local Economic Development, or NALED, conducted a survey of individuals, suppliers and procuring companies on the public procurement system in Serbia. More than half of the surveyed citizens think that the public procurement system is good, however the suppliers disagreed, with around forty percent of them not taking part in public procurement. The survey also showed that the most cited source of information about public procurement is TV, while the other two are social media and internet in general.

Violeta Jovanovic, the Director of NALED, explained that the way for the system to improve and be more trustworthy to its users is to implement a law that would provide training on how the system functions.

Now for some news in education, the government shared its plans to invest around eighty million dollars on master’s degree programmes focused on the application of artificial intelligence in the fields of biomedicine, bioinformatics, biotechnology and biodiversity. These disciplines are the key areas of the BIO4 multidisciplinary project, which envisions a campus that will house scientific institutions and faculties. With the investment in the master’s degree programmes the government explained that they are looking to encourage the growth of the startup system, which is composed of organizations and entrepreneurs that develop startups. The government also said that they plan to allocate around nine million dollars in order to introduce entrepreneurship and related skills into existing educational curricula.

While on the topic of science, in an opening address as part of the 78th UN General Assembly, Jelena Begovic, the minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation spoke about the leading role of women in science. In a panel discussion with the name Women in Science Rising: Leadership in Business and Economics, Begovic focused on women in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. She noted that almost fifty percent of women in Serbia decide to study in those fields, adding that she aims to raise this number by inspiring girls to consider STEM from an early age.

In some news on culture in Serbia, ahead of their concert, the musicians of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra musicians read out a statement on Friday the 9th to their audience in which they brought up organizational and material problems they are facing. While they did not specify the numbers, they said that the state keeps decreasing their budget, and added that their salaries are the lowest of any orchestra musicians in the region. They noted that the Belgrade Philharmonic without a director and advertising, mentioning that the concert hall in which they work is old and in need of renovation. They requested that the government tackles these issues, in order for the Philharmonic to continue working.

On a more positive note, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development published a report on Tuesday the 6th, about the life satisfaction of the Serbian citizens. The results showed that the life satisfaction rate has doubled since the last decade. Around forty percent of the respondents think that children that were born this decade will have a better life than older generations. Thirty percent of the respondents think that the corruption levels in Serbia have decreased over the recent years, and more than thirty percent of the respondents are satisfied with their financial situation. Despite the increase in the overall life satisfaction in Serbia, the optimism figure is still below the transition region average of fifty percent.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Last week we asked you to fill in a survey to get to know you and we got quite a few replies, thank you so so much ! We are very excited, tons of great ideas! We’ll be sharing the link to the survey one more time this week in the shownotes in case you didn’t see it. All respondents will be entered in a lottery to win a cruise in the Mediterranean… just kidding, it's in the South Pacific, but we would love to hear from you! Don’t be shy!

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!