SERBIA: Culture Minister’s Trial & more – 10th Feb 2026

Dobar dan from Oakley! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 10th of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

The trial of Culture Minister Selakovic started on Wednesday the 4th in Belgrade, over the removal of cultural heritage status from the NATO-bombed Yugoslav Army General building. Three more defendants are involved in the case alongside Selakovic, including his secretary and two officials from the Belgrade City Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. All four have pleaded not guilty.

Selakovic is facing accusations of illegally forging documents, which allowed the government to strip the General Army building of its status as cultural heritage. This preceded the construction plans of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who aimed to replace the dilapidated building with a Trump hotel. However, students and citizens protested this plan, ultimately shooing Kushner away from Serbia and the project altogether.

In an update to a story from our previous show… Last week, we spoke about the new amendments to judicial laws passed in Parliament. In response to their adoption, a group of judges and prosecutors from across Serbia staged a protest on Monday the 2nd, calling on all judges, prosecutors, lawyers, students, and citizens to oppose the amendments. Political analysts and EU officials warned that the new amendments, adopted swiftly and without public consultations, will negatively impact the independence of courts because they shift the power from independent judicial bodies to judicial officials who are in political positions.

A day after the protest, the ruling party member of the National Assembly who initially proposed the amendments to the judicial laws admitted that he had done so because prosecutors were planning to arrest several ministers from the ruling party, and even President Vucic.

In other news, on Thursday the 4th, the Belgrade-based research agency Ninamedia published the results of their annual public opinion poll on EU membership. The trend of support towards joining the EU has increased by two percent since last year, with as many as forty-five percent of respondents in favor. This group believed that joining the EU would bring Serbia higher living standards, freedom of movement, the rule of law, and greater efforts to fight corruption.

On the other hand, around thirty percent of respondents were against Serbia joining the EU - a number that has remained the same since last year’s poll. They believe that the EU does not have good intentions toward Serbia.

The majority of pro-EU respondents were of younger generations, aged between eighteen and thirty, while those who opposed the EU were usually over sixty.

Since we mentioned corruption, the global association against corruption, Transparency International published its latest Corruption Perceptions Index for twenty twenty-five on Tuesday the 10th, detailing the levels of corruption citizens perceive in their countries. The organization ranked 182 countries on a scale from zero (which means highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Among the Western Balkan countries, Serbia ranked the worst, with a score of thirty-three, which is two points less than in twenty twenty-four. Its global placement was 116th. Transparency International said that some of the reasons for this low result were the illegally cancelled protection for the General Army building and the ongoing government-led smear campaigns against organized crime prosecutors.

Globally, the best performing country was Denmark with a score of eighty-one, while the worst performing country was South Sudan with a score of just nine.

Shifting gears, the Netherlands-based retailer Ahold Delhaize filed an arbitration claim against Serbia with the World Bank's International Centre on Friday the 6th over Serbian profit margins. The claim follows months of failed attempts by Delhaize to engage in dialogue with the government to find a middle ground that would benefit consumers, the economy, and Delhaize’s profits.

Recall that last year in September, the government introduced a temporary profit margin cap that would limit the profit of large retailers to twenty percent. Some retailers, including Delhaize, did not comply with the law, resulting in a fine of around twenty-five billion dinars, around 250 million dollars.

Meanwhile, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, or ADNOC, is set to acquire a significant minority stake in the Serbian state-owned energy company NIS as Russia slowly exits the ownership. The energy ministry said on Thursday the 5th that Russia’s Gazprom will sell its fifty-six percent stake in NIS mainly to Hungarian energy company MOL and ADNOC together, so that the US would lift sanctions on NIS.

The US sanctioned NIS in January of last year because Russia had the majority of its stakes. While the US had provided waivers throughout the year, its one demand to lift the sanctions was that NIS remove Russia from its stakes entirely.

Last week, we spoke about a report detailing how companies close to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, acquired state funding through tenders with highly specific requirements. More companies are involved in a similar scheme, as news portal New Economy reported that the government is preparing to allocate roughly nine billion dinars, ninety million dollars, to companies linked to the SNS. The aim of the funding is to buy security cameras to improve the safety in schools and kindergartens. However, all of the documents related to the funding plan are top secret.

New Economy wrote that the companies on the receiving end housed SNS call centers during the twenty twenty-four election campaign. They added that some of the companies significantly increased their revenues after the SNS came to power.

While on the topic of funds, the research and publishing center Demostat reported on the average spending habits of households in the Balkans, comparing the wages and consumer basket costs. When it comes to Serbia, Demostat said that the average wage is barely able to cover the average monthly costs. To put things in perspective, the average monthly salary in Serbia is around 100,000 dinars (about a thousand dollars), while the average basket is 110,000 dinars (1,100 dollars).

Other countries, like Slovenia and Croatia, enjoy larger wages and lower costs, with their average salaries amounting to over 1,500 dollars. The region’s most struggling country is Montenegro, right behind Serbia, where households spend around fifty percent of their wages on food alone.

In some economic news, on Wednesday the 4th the finance ministry reviewed Serbia’s twenty twenty-five GDP and reported that the budget deficit amounted to around 270 billion dinars, around 2.7 billion dollars, which is three percent of the country’s GDP. The ministry said these numbers are better than its expectations, given that it had predicted a deficit of more than 300 billion dinars, around three billion dollars. Revenues in twenty twenty-five reached two trillion dinars, around 200 billion dollars, while the expenditures amounted to 2.5 trillion dinars (250 billion dollars).

On another note, the Serbian population is decreasing as the years go on, with the Statistical Office reporting that the number could fall to 5.2 million by the twenty fifties from the current 6.6 million.

Demographer and lawyer Miodrag Pantović said that Serbia’s natural increase has been negative for a while, with twenty twenty-five recording around 60,000 yearly births and around 100,000 deaths. He said that Serbia is among the ten oldest countries in the world in terms of the share of the population over sixty-five.

Pantovic said that, aside from low birth rates, youth migration is also a factor in the natural decrease, driven by better living standards in foreign countries.

Closing this episode with some cultural news, on Saturday the 14th, Belgrade’s KC Grad will host several DJs and producers in the party RADAR 13 - Love letters from Tisno. The event will feature both international and regional electronic music artists, including Logan Olm, Dwarde, and AGAP.

For more information about the RADAR 13 electronic music party, check out the link in the show notes!

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

A few of you have asked for an easy way to connect and get updates on Rorshok and what we may do in Serbia, because we might do some stuff, and who knows, it's not impossible that we even get the Serbia update going again. We will set up a way for you to let us know you are interested, and share it with you this coming week.

Vidimo se!