SERBIA: Silent Protests & more – 5th Aug 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 5th of August twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Friday the 1st, students in several Serbian cities organized silent protests commemorating the victims of the canopy collapse tragedy which took place in the northern city of Novi Sad exactly nine months ago. In Belgrade, students marched from the capital’s old railway station through the main streets, and held sixteen minutes of silence, one for each victim. Students in Novi Sad laid flowers and lit candles at the railway station in the city, while the students in Nis planted sixteen trees at the city center in memory of the victims. Protests also took place in the central cities of Kragujevac, Cacak and Zrenjanin.

Recall that in July of twenty twenty-four, the Novi Sad went through an expensive renovation, which barely lasted four months before failing. Ever since it collapsed, students have been protesting for justice and accountability from the government.

However, on the same day, some justice might have been served, as the police arrested eleven people on suspicion of corruption in connection with the railway station renovation. Among the arrested was Tomislav Momirovic, the former Trade Minister at the time of the tragedy (and the renovation, and Anita Dimoski, the assistant of then-construction minister Goran Vesic, who was in charge of railway transport. The prosecutors argued that the arrested people enabled the contractor to invoice the state for a larger amount of money than previously agreed, causing damage to the state budget of more than 115 million dollars.

In response to the arrests, President Vucic said that the arrest warrants were issued “for no reason” and called the arrests scandalous. He called out the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office and told them that they were working against the rule of law.

Meanwhile, Civicus, a global alliance of civil society organizations, published a report on Wednesday the 30th accusing the Serbian authorities of legitimizing violence against protesters. The report goes over the declining trend of civic freedoms in the country, following the numerous violent arrests of peaceful protesters against the regime.

Civicus noted that, apart from violence, the police also deploy surveillance and politically motivated prosecutions to silence dissent. It also underlined that the government-organized counter-protests contributed to the violent practices of the police. They said that the gatherings were always backed by municipal authorities and protected by law enforcement, while the attendees enjoyed no repercussions for engaging in violent behavior, mostly towards journalists.

Since we mentioned surveillance, media outlet Radio Free Europe, or RFE, published a leaked government document marked as strictly confidential on Tuesday the 29th, containing an offer to renew licences for a surveillance tool developed by the Israeli company Cellebrite. The RFE noted that they had discovered the documents on the dark web - a part of the internet which is inaccessible by regular browsing.

The confidential document is addressed to Serbia’s intelligence service BIA and it dates back to twenty fifteen, which suggests that the service had been using Cellebrite’s spyware for years. According to the report, BIA used forensic tools to extract data from mobile phones by infecting them with spyware.

This is, however, not the first time BIA has found itself under fire for using spyware. In twenty twenty-four, the international NGO Amnesty International published research unveiling BIA’s attempts to install Cellebrite’s spyware on the phones of activists and journalists by arresting them and confiscating their electronics.

In some news about bilateral relations, Serbian officials have denounced the recent court ruling in Bosnia and Herzegovina sentencing Milorad Dodik, the President of Bosnia's Serbian entity, to one year in prison, while also banning him from holding political office for six years. President Vucic said that the verdict was not made based on justice, but on politics and Dodik’s unpopular status in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina recently ruled that Dodik was guilty of refusing to implement decisions made by Bosnia's top international envoy, the High Representative. Recall that in February, Dodik signed a decree that contradicted a decision by the High Representative.

For the past few months, we have spoken about the government’s request to the US to postpone the implementation of sanctions on the state-owned gas company NIS. Days after the request, on Tuesday the 29th, the US gave the company another thirty days - making this the fifth sanctions delay. Even though the government asked for a 180-day extension, they said that even a thirty-day one would come as a relief to Serbia.

The US Department of Treasury announced in January that it would sanction NIS due to its largely Russian ownership of more than fifty percent. However, Serbia has managed to postpone them while trying to shift the share from Russia to Serbia.

While on the topic of the US, Serbia has failed to reach an agreement with the country regarding the new tariff rates, which are expected to come into force by the 7th of August. U.S. President Trump announced that the tariff rate for Serbia will be as high as thirty-five percent on Serbian exports to the US, making it the highest on the list of affected countries. The Serbian Chamber of Commerce expressed disappointment in the US administration, noting that Serbia runs a trade deficit with the US, not a surplus as the US authorities say.

Speaking of trade, the State Statistical Office reported that Serbia’s total external trade in goods for the first half of the year amounted to around four trillion dinars, which is around forty billion dollars - marking a ten-percent jump compared to the same period last year.

Exports amounted to around two trillion dinars (about sixteen billion dollars), while imports reached around three billion dinars (about twenty billion dollars). Both of them increased by around ten percent year-on-year.

However, the trade deficit has surged by around twelve percent year-on-year, standing at 500 billion dinars (about five billion dollars). EU countries accounted for almost sixty percent of total trade.

Still on the economy, media outlet Danas reported that prices in Serbia have reached around ninety-five percent of the EU average. On the other hand, Serbia’s economic output is around seventy percent of the EU average, which means that citizens earn way less than their EU counterparts.

The trend of price hikes has put a serious strain on the citizens, especially in the south of the country where the average monthly salaries amount to around 40,000 dinars, which is around 400 dollars. Some citizens also resort to working several jobs in order to afford rent, food, electricity and water bills.

Speaking of jobs, the State Statistical Office reported last week that employment in Serbia increased by 0.1 percent year-on-year. They said that there has been a rise in entrepreneurs, amounting to around 400,000 in twenty twenty-five, which is an increase of around two percent year-on-year. However, they said that the largest downward trend was seen in agriculture, with the number of workers dropping by eight percent in a year.

of the headliners include the: 999999

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

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