SERBIA: Irregularities in Local Elections & more – 2nd Dec 2025

Dobar dan from BA! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 2nd of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

Three municipalities - Mionica, Secanj and Negotin - held local elections on Sunday the 30th, which were marred with verbal and physical incidents, as well as irregularities. The vote counting is still ongoing, but so far, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, has secured the majority of seats in all three.

Despite their good results, the SNS got fewer votes than in those municipalities’ previous polls, indicating that the support for the SNS has decreased since. Opposition parties, on the other hand, received double the support that they had in previous polls.

The Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability reported photographing of ballots, joint voting by multiple people, as well as public voting without entering the booth. It also said that SNS supporters made the election environment hostile, attacking those who monitor the elections.

Speaking of altercations, on Wednesday the 26th, opposition MPs scuffled with pro-government activists while on their way to a parliamentary session. The MPs tried to cut fences and walk through the pro-government tent camp nicknamed Caciland, which has been blocking the main entrance of the parliament building for months. As soon as they entered the camp, the MPs said that they were attacked by the government supporters, both verbally and physically.

The parliament speaker, who is also a member of SNS, dismissed the MPs’ attack accusations and instead said that they went to the tent camp on purpose, looking for trouble. The opposition MPs, however, argued that the obstruction of the parliament’s main entrance is inexcusable, and called on officials to remove the illegal Caciland camp.

Despite local tensions, Italy and France addressed a letter to other EU member states asking them to vote for the opening of a new cluster in Serbia’s EU accession talks ahead of the official vote on the 17th of December.

Recall that the EU decided to block the opening of any new chapters for Serbia due to the country’s persisting issues, including the rule of law, media darkness, and human rights. The year-long protests and the challenging of the autocratic rule of President Vucic did not help either, exposing long-standing societal issues, which the ruling regime had been covering up.

Political analysts believe that even with Italy and France’s push, Serbia’s progress in the EU accession talks seems highly unlikely, since the country has still not aligned its foreign policy with that of the Union.

Speaking of media darkness, we have already mentioned that the ruling regime had taken our YouTube channel down. However, we have a new one now, and we are fighting against the ruling party’s army of trolls.

On a somewhat related note, social media profiles of some of the most followed faculty blockade accounts have been subject to bot attacks. Happening primarily on Instagram, student profiles highlighted that they have been getting suspiciously large numbers of new followers, with the most-followed profile, Students in Blockade, even getting banned for a couple of hours. The students accused the ruling SNS party of buying millions of fake followers for their accounts to prompt Instagram to delete them due to suspicious activity, as buying fake followers goes against the social media platform’s guidelines, leading to permanent account deletion.

Recall that the student protesters have been the major challenge to the current ruling party ever since the collapse of the railway station canopy, which killed sixteen people on the 1st of November, twenty twenty-four. The students are demanding accountability and justice for the victims, blaming corruption for the incident.

The NGO European Movement in Serbia published its research on the political orientation of young people in Serbia. The results showed that young people all over the country are highly dissatisfied with the current political environment, mostly due to the government’s control over public institutions and the media. They also cited economic insecurity and job instability as their biggest issue with staying in Serbia. Overall, the report concluded that young people in the country desperately want change, order and accountability.

On Tuesday the 25th, President Vucic announced that the government had set a deadline for Russia to find a buyer for their holdings in Serbia’s mainly Russian-owned energy company NIS. As we have been reporting in previous shows, NIS is currently under US sanctions due to its large Russian ownership, but the US is also warning the Serbian National Bank and private banks in Serbia that doing business with NIS could get them sanctioned too.

Serbian officials have decided to give Russia fifty days to find a buyer for their share in NIS. However, Vucic said that if Russia finds no buyers, Serbia would find other solutions than to nationalize NIS, since the nationalization would rid Russia of any profit from selling their shares.

On that note about energy, on Thursday the 27th, the state-owned power utility EPS announced that it has started trial operations for its first windfarm in the south-eastern town of Kostolac. The EPS said that the new wind farm is a great step toward increasing the share of renewable energy and toward sustainable energy development for Serbia. The wind farm is expected to generate enough power to supply up to 30,000 households.

On the economic front, on Tuesday the 25th, the Statistical Office published that September’s average net monthly salary amounted to around 110,000 dinars, which is around 1,100 dollars, while the median monthly wage totalled at around 83,000 dinars, around 830 dollars. Compared to August, salaries increased by around five percent, while they recorded a yearly increase of around ten percent.

Meanwhile, media outlet Nova reported that Serbia’s draft budget law for twenty twenty-six plans to allocate around ten billion dinars, which is around a hundred million dollars, for compulsory military service expenses over three years. The government said the funds would go to the construction of facilities and infrastructure.

State officials have been talking about the reintroduction of mandatory military service for a year now, but the government has yet to adopt the law enforcing it. The implementation of the law would legally require young men to serve in the military for around two months.

In some environmental news, the Bureau of the Bern Convention recently called on Serbia to halt construction works in the northern city of Novi Sad due to water contamination concerns. The Bureau said that the works carried out on bridges over the Danube river in the areas of Petrovaradin Ada and War Island could threaten drinking water sources and habitats of protected species.

Citing the Bureau, the representatives of several local environmental organizations filed a lawsuit against the Provincial Secretariat for Health in Novi Sad for failing to act within the sanitary protection zones of drinking water sources.

On that note about preservation, several citizens’ cultural heritage associations in Serbia have filed an official initiative to the UNESCO World Heritage Center, warning of the potential destruction of the Studenica River basin and the cultural landscape surrounding the Studenica Monastery. In their message to UNESCO, the associations pointed out that the Studenica river basin is threatened by a hydro plant project that plans to build reservoirs at the very source of the river.

Finishing off with some cultural updates, the southern city of Nis is hosting its 60th annual Book Fair, which opened on Saturday the 29th and will run until the 7th of December. The fair features books from more than eighty publishers from all over Serbia and the Balkan region, offering them at reduced prices. Tickets retail for 200 dinars, (around two dollars), and are available for purchase at the ticket office in front of the Cair stadium, where the fair takes place.

For more information about the Nis Book Fair, check out the link in the show notes!

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

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