SERBIA: New Student Initiative & more – 16th Dec 2025

Dobar dan from Oakley! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 16th of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Saturday the 13th, students in the northern city of Novi Sad organized a protest against police brutality and violence against protesters and activists in the past year. The crowd gathered in front of Novi Sad University’s campus and passed by the Novi Sad police stations and the Prosecutor's Office. One student said to the local media that the gathering aimed to remind the citizens of the horrific police brutality many activists faced, adding that the police were punishing students just for protesting and being on the streets.

On a more positive note, the students have embarked on a new campaign to battle media corruption. On Monday the 15th they launched an initiative titled We are coming to your door. For ten days, students will go door to door, explaining the student movement, the protests and their reasoning behind them, offering citizens a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

Speaking of the state’s crackdown on the protesting students, Ahmed Konicanin, a student from the State University of Novi Pazar, or DUNP, in Serbia’s south, wrote an essay about the uncertainty of the university’s survival. In recent months, a large number of professors and staff have left the university: some were forced due to threats and some were simply dismissed. Konicanin detailed that such a trend began once the professors started openly expressing support for the protesting students, with the university’s administration discrediting the protesters by calling them anti-state elements and extremists.

Konicanin highlighted that aside from the overall fight for justice and accountability that students across the country share, DUNP is also facing its own local issues - the loss of accreditations for its study programs and the lack of qualified teaching staff. He noted that the university might not survive much longer under an administration that prioritizes the ruling party’s orders over education.

Check out Komicanin’s piece written in Serbian with the link in the show notes!

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the 9th the international NGO CIVICUS placed Serbia into the repressed country category due to its current political climate. CIVICUS tracks the state of civil liberties in almost 200 countries, placing them into one of the five categories: open, restricted, obstructed, repressed, and closed.

CIVICUS said that the concerns in the past year have gone from the authorities suppressing criticism of the government to completely shutting down the right to freedom of expression. The NGO brought up coordinated arrests of students with no clear reason, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, and illegal surveillance, as some of the issues Serbia is currently facing.

Speaking of freedom of expression, even though we were victims of the government’s persecution, as they took our YouTube channel down, our new channel is up and running. We want to continue telling the truth — we are not afraid of the ruling regime.

In other news, President Vucic recently proposed that the EU should fully accept Western Balkan countries that want membership and not allow partial accession. He said that a staggered, partial accession of countries could destabilize the area, creating an environment for new tensions.

Recall that Serbia has been an EU candidate for thirteen years and is still facing a bunch of obstacles to actually join the bloc. Some of the fields in which the country needs to implement major changes include human rights, the judiciary, and media freedom. The current state of Serbia’s EU progress is flimsy, as the union opposes the country’s oppression of protesters who are fighting against corruption.

Another major issue that has been discussed in Serbia recently is illegal construction. Media outlet Radio Free Europe, or the RFE, recently reported on a construction project of a new bridge over the River Sava in Belgrade which lacks documents supporting its legality. The RFE noted that key information about the contracts, the procedure for selecting contractors, and the project conditions is not publicly available. One lawyer said he had submitted several requests to see this information, but was rejected because it was classified.

The Sava bridge project and its lack of transparency is not one of its kind, as Serbia has seen many such projects in the past year alone, including the Novi Sad’s railway station renovation.

On Monday the 15th Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, withdrew from the planned construction project of a Trump hotel at the old Army General building’s premises. Kushner backed out of the project “out of respect for the people of Serbia”, after it caused backlash that led to weekly protests by activists and students against it.

One of the reasons why the citizens are against the replacement of the General Army building with a Trump hotel is the building’s cultural heritage status, which the Culture Minister illegally removed so that the hotel project would go through. Last week, we spoke about the charge against the minister for this crime, and on Monday the 15th, the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime indicted him.

The NGO Doctors Against Corruption put out a statement for International Anti-Corruption Day on Tuesday the 9th about the growing rate of citizens considering the healthcare industry as the most corrupt in Serbia. The NGO spoke about the well-known issue in Serbia of patients usually resorting to private clinics after being unable to efficiently get treatment at public ones. They said that many doctors working in state-owned clinics usually also practice medicine in private clinics, which gives them a reason to drive patients away from public and toward private hospitals in order to make more money.

Doctors Against Corruption also highlighted the decline in ethical standards in healthcare, with issues such as bribery and connections being used to bypass waiting lists and get better treatment.

In some news about the economy, the statistics office said on Friday the 12th that November’s year-on-year inflation stood at around three percent — an annual decrease of around two percent. On a monthly basis, inflation rose by less than one percent. The largest increase in prices was seen in housing, water, electricity, and gas, with the cost rising by around eight percent annually.

Speaking of prices, the Ministry of Trade recently published the results of an analysis of purchasing power trends in Serbia for the month of August. The numbers showed that the average consumer basket for August stood at around 110,000 dinars, which is around 1,100 dollars. In the same month, the average salary amounted to around 105,000 dinars, a thousand dollars, which means it could not cover the average needs of citizens.

Another thing that the Ministry of Trade brought up is the new National Price Platform, which they say will help citizens compare prices and ultimately save money by finding sales and promotions. The platform will feature twenty-seven retail chains and will list weekly prices in their stores. Citizens will be able to search through categories, retail chains, brands, and prices to compare costs across stores.

Check out the National Price Platform with the link in the show notes!

Meanwhile, the Energy Ministry announced a project to build a new natural gas link with North Macedonia. The energy minister said that the state will invest around eighteen billion dinars, which is around 180 million dollars, in the construction. They added that the project will help the state’s efforts to diversify its energy sources, as Serbia gets most of its gas from Russia’s Gazprom, which is currently under US-based sanctions.

Finishing off on a cultural note, renowned musician Rambo Amadeus is set to perform in Belgrade’s MTS Hall on the 20th of December. Rambo will not only perform musically, but will also engage in performance art, which will include the audience and fellow performers as subjects of what he calls a “group psychotherapy session”, analyzing the cult of personality phenomenon. Tickets for the concert are available online!

For more information, click on the link in the show notes!

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

Don’t forget to check out our new t-shirts with the link in the show notes!

Vidimo se!