SERBIA: Judicial Reforms & more – 3rd Feb 2026

Dobar dan from Oakley! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 3rd of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Wednesday the 28th, President Vucic signed decrees approving a set of judicial reforms which the ruling majority passed in the parliament. These amendments change the laws on prosecution and judges by shifting the ways they are appointed and supervised - from independent judicial councils to those in the government. MPs from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, said that the new laws will improve the efficiency and fairness of the judicial system, which they labeled as “anti-state”. Recall that many judges and prosecutors openly criticized the unlawful practices of SNS and President Vucic, on top of the fact that the authorities keep defying prosecutors’ and judges’ orders in favor of the government.

Opposition parties, as well as the EU, expressed concern that there was no prior public debate or consultation with judges, prosecutors, or the EU, before the laws were adopted. The opposition accused the ruling majority of aiming to undermine judicial independence, while the EU highlighted that this is a significant step backwards in Serbia’s EU path.

On Tuesday the 27th, on the academic holiday of Saint Sava Day, students in Belgrade held a protest titled Knowledge is Power. Students marched from the Rectorate of Belgrade’s University to the Temple of Saint Sava, where they held a vigil for the victims of the railway station tragedy that took place in November twenty twenty-four in the northern city of Novi Sad. Belgrade University’s rector Djokic gave a speech about the importance of education, noting that it should return as the foundation of Serbian society.

On a related note, last week students from the State University in the south-western town of Novi Pazar, also known as DUNP, officially ended their faculty blockade - exactly one year after it started. They said their decision came after they successfully negotiated the return of the expelled students and the implementation of a competition to hire professors who were fired due to protests.

Recall that the DUNP struggled with corruption in its rectorate, with university authorities firing anyone who criticized the ruling regime while also kicking out students who protested. Students had also complained about incompetent professors who likely got their positions for being loyal to the ruling party.

Priests and theologians are losing their jobs for criticizing the government as well. On Saturday the 31st, the Church Court announced its decision to expel a theologian and a priest from the Serbian Orthodox Church for criticizing Patriarch Porfirije and the church leadership. The two men said their excommunication ensued after they had openly questioned the Church’s morals and the Patriarch’s intentions because of their alignment with the ruling party. They had also supported student protests, which demanded accountability for the canopy collapse tragedy.

Going back to prosecution for a moment, the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime in Belgrade said that the authorities' repeated disregard for the Courts’ orders led to a significant delay in the canopy collapse case. Since there was no progress in the case, the court had to release former ministers Tomislav Momirović and Goran Vesić from house arrest after both of them served two three-month-long periods. The prosecutors accused the authorities and state bodies of not cooperating and not delivering evidence on request.

Recall that Vesic and Momirovic, alongside eleven others, are suspected of negligence and abuse of power in the canopy collapse case.

On Friday the 30th, the Balkan Insight Research Network, or BIRN, published an article on ruling-party-adjacent companies and organizations receiving nearly twenty-five million dinars, around 250,000 dollars, in public funds.

BIRN reported that the companies were linked to Ognjana Starović, the sister of the Minister for European Integration, Nemanja Starović. They said that her company Gradske Info received around two million dinars, around 20,000 dollars, in twenty twenty-five through two public procurements for media services for which her company was the only bidder. These tenders had highly specific technical requirements, which excluded other bidders, prompting transparency centers to believe that they were rigged in her favor. BIRN said that Starovic did the same with five other companies.

On Thursday the 29th, the interior ministry reported that they seized five tons of marijuana in a village close to the central city of Krusevac - a record for drug seizure in Serbia, with the estimated value sitting at up to a billion dinars, around eleven million dollars. Authorities arrested two suspects during the drug seizure, adding that they had found several firearms and explosives… But there is more to the story.

Opposition MPs said that one of the arrested men was a councilor of the ruling SNS party in Krusevac, adding that he was a close friend of the Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic. They added that this is likely the reason why the government is limiting the powers of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime with the newly adopted law amendments.

In other news, on Sunday the 1st, the Association of Independent Electronic Media, or ANEM, reported that January marked a record high number of recorded threats and attacks on journalists in Serbia. Through ANEM’s safe line, journalists reported forty-seven different attacks in January alone, eight times as many as in January last year. The president of the ANEM Board of Directors, said that these numbers point to a decline in journalists’ safety and media freedom.

In an update to last week’s story about truck drivers blocking border checkpoints, on Saturday the 31st they officially ended their protest after five days of blockades. The EU and the truckers agreed to issue their visas online instead of in person, making sure there are no additional administrative steps that would stall the process. The visas would ensure that the truckers would not be penalized for overstaying in the Schengen area, as they are highly mobile.

Recall that the road hauliers from Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to block borders with EU countries as a protest against EU laws limiting the stay of non-EU residents in the Schengen area to ninety days in a period of 180 days. Truckers demanded that the EU make an exemption for them, as their job is to transport goods to other countries, and not migrate there.

In more updates… In previous episodes, we mentioned concerns about the poor working conditions at the Chinese tire factory Linglong in the central town of Zrenjanin. Last week, on Friday the 30th, more accusations came out from NGO activists. The Zrenjanin Social Forum NGO reported to the authorities that it suspected that the factory was involved in human trafficking and exploited several dozen workers from Bangladesh. Since then, the police, the prosecutor's office, and the state Center for the Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking have joined the case.

Workers from Bangladesh told NGOs in Zrenjanin that they are living in unhygienic conditions and in overcrowded housing. On top of that, their passports have been confiscated, they are owed wages, and they have been threatened and intimidated by their employers.

When it comes to energy, Dubravka Djedovic-Handanovic, the minister of mining and energy, talked with the Agence Française de Développement on Monday the 2nd about the nuclear energy development in Serbia. Djedovic-Handanovic pointed out that Serbia is looking to diversify its energy sources amid decarbonization efforts and higher electricity consumption in the country. She requested support from France’s public development finance institution for staff training and for assessing the impacts of nuclear power plant construction. France has agreed to start a study into the development of nuclear energy in Serbia to help with a long-term energy transition.

Recall that in December of twenty twenty-four, the National Assembly abolished the longstanding law banning the construction of nuclear power plants in Serbia.

Closing with some cultural news, Belgrade is organizing several events to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Belgrade’s National Theater has also announced the performance of the Chinese National Beijing Opera on the 11th of February, while the Gallery shopping center will hold the Chinese Light Festival from the 16th February to the 1st of March.

For more information about the Chinese New Year celebration events, check out the link in the show notes!

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

And that's it for this week. But wait, we have an important thing to tell you. We've decided to bring the Rorshok Serbia Update to an end. We've loved doing it and it has been going since twenty twenty-two. Originally, we'd sort of hoped that the listeners could connect and a small community might form, but one way or another, we didn't know how to do that, and it hasn't really happened. And putting them out every week is lots of work and not cheap....so we're just going to stop and focus on the other community building things Rorshok is doing. You can check out our projects on our website. Thank you for listening all these years. We'd love to hear from you, so if you’ve got any questions or ideas, send us an email at info@rorshok.com.

Vidimo se!