SERBIA: Elections & more – 4th Jun 2024

Dobar dan from BA! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 4th of June twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Sunday the 2nd, more than eighty cities and municipalities, including Belgrade, held elections. Sunday’s voting came after international election observers criticized the previous vote in December, citing numerous accounts of election fraud by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS. The opposition was worried about the SNS bussing people who had already voted in their local municipalities to Belgrade — so they could vote illegally again.

Since then, the government has introduced an amendment to Serbia's local election laws, allowing the voting in Belgrade to coincide with elections in other cities. This schedule aimed to make potential bussing more difficult due to time restrictions. However, some opposition parties boycotted the elections, because of inadequate election conditions, including unclear voter registries and intimidation.

The results will be released during the week.

Ahead of the elections, Ipsos, a market research and consulting firm, conducted a survey about voter preferences among the citizens in Belgrade. With a sample size of around 3,000, Ipsos questioned respondents about what party they were most likely to vote for. The results showed that nearly fifty percent of the respondents said that they would support SNS in the elections. Following the SNS was a tie between the opposition electoral list Move-Change and another opposition list We Choose Belgrade, both with the support of around seventeen percent from the participants.

Ipsos estimated the local Belgrade election turnout to be around fifty percent.

In other political news, last week, NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly granted Kosovo an associate membership, which is a promotion from its previous role of an observer. As an associate member, Kosovo gained several rights, including attending plenary sessions of the Assembly, and proposing amendments to resolutions. During the voting, the majority of NATO member countries voted in favor of Kosovo becoming an associate member.

However, many countries abstained. For instance, France and Italy, who do not recognize Kosovo’s independence, maintained their stance that Kosovo should not see any status upgrades in any of the international organizations until they establish the Community of Serbian Municipalities, or CSM, which is long overdue. The Serbian parliamentary delegation said in a statement that it couldn’t speak immediately before the vote or after Kosovo received the membership due to Serbia’s rank in the Parliamentary Assembly.

Speaking of NATO, on Wednesday the 29th of May, their peacekeeping Kosovo mission KFOR, marked the first anniversary of violent protests in the majorly-Serbian Kosovo north by calling for the perpetrators to face justice. The protests, which left almost 100 of KFOR’s troops injured, sparked when the Kosovar government appointed ethnic Albanian mayors in Serbian-majority northern Kosovo municipalities. In a statement, KFOR said that the attacks were unprovoked and unacceptable, adding that some of the wounded personnel faced life-threatening injuries.

As a response to KFOR’s remarks, on Wednesday, Kosovo’s ruling Vetevendosje party said that Serbia planned for these protests to turn violent to prevent the four mayors from carrying out their official duties.

While on the topic of Serbian-Kosovo feuds, on Tuesday the 28th of May, Kosovo’s Special Prosecution announced an indictment against two Albanian Orthodox priests who, in November of twenty twenty-three, broke into a disused Serbian Orthodox church. The two later took it to Facebook to announce that the church was under the jurisdiction of the Albanian National Orthodox Church. The prosecution said that by breaking in, the two priests incited national, religious, and ethnic hatred. The prosecution also alleged that the priests held a liturgy in the church and threatened the Serbian Church not to intervene. However, both men denied their charges.

On that note about crime, on Wednesday the 29th of May, the Ministry of Education proposed a draft law to change the Criminal Code. While the ministry did not publish details of the bill's amendments, the suspected changes refer to stricter penalties for those who inflict violence on the teaching staff. Teachers have requested such changes in the past, adding that the violence rates are increasing in schools. Currently, the only punishment for violent behavior in students is a fine between 300 and a thousand dollars, which their parents or caretakers must pay.

In other news, the Statistics Office reported on Thursday the 30th that in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four, the number of employed people in Serbia amounted to around 2,8 million, and that there were around 300,000 unemployed citizens. Compared to the same period in twenty twenty-three, the number of employed people increased by around 60,000, while the number of those without jobs dropped by around 15,000. The biggest increase in the workforce was in the sectors of health and social care, the sectors regarding professional, scientific, and technical activities.

However, research by the employment center Infostud showed that companies in Serbia struggle with attracting potential candidates and retaining employees because of organizational issues and employee motivation challenges. Infostud also pointed out that even though companies of all sizes are facing this problem, the trend is more pronounced in companies with more than 300 employees. As for the sectors, companies in logistics and transportation of goods and passengers have the most trouble with retaining employees, while companies in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods struggle the most with attracting new workers.

Since we mentioned the Statistics office, they also reported an increase in the import and export of goods and services. In the first quarter of twenty twenty-four, they said that the exports increased by around two percent and imports by around one percent, compared to the same period last year. The overall external trade amounted to around twenty-four billion dollars, which is an increase of around one percent. The export-import ratio stood at around eighty percent, roughly the same as in March twenty twenty-three. The statistics office pointed out that the biggest share in exports was in the Vojvodina region, while the Belgrade region had nearly fifty percent of the import share.

Still on economic news, the Finance Ministry announced on Monday the 4th that Serbia’s public debt amounted to nearly forty billion dollars at the end of March, which is around one percent lower than it was at the end of February. They also said that the current debt accounted for around fifty percent of the GDP. The National Bank of Serbia said that GDP increased by around five percent in the first quarter of twenty twenty-four, compared to the same period last year.

On Thursday the 30th, the EU Council and Serbia signed an agreement on activities with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency or Frontex, which will allow the EU and Serbia to organize joint operations involving the agency and the border guards. The EU envisioned Frontex to assist Serbia in managing migratory flows, countering illegal immigration and tackling cross-border crime. Aside from Serbia, the agency also manages borders for Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania.

And to close this edition, more about the EU: its delegation to Serbia announced a call for bid submission for the Regional Waste Management Center construction in the northern city of Novi Sad. The project, which is worth around a hundred million dollars, aims to provide a sanitary landfill and two waste transfer stations. Aside from Novi Sad, the center will also encompass municipalities around the city, such as Backa Palanka, Beocin, and Temerin. Novi Sad’s city assembly said that the waste management system will have to extend to households, and added that the government will provide containers for different waste types. According to their plans, the facility will open in twenty twenty-six.

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

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!