SERBIA: Students Run to Brussels & more – 13th May 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 13th of May twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Monday the 12th, a group of twenty-one student runners arrived in Brussels after an ultramarathon from Novi Sad, which was around 2,000 km (1,250 miles) long. The students started their journey to Brussels on the 25th of April, right after their peers cycled to Strasbourg to meet with the Council of Europe members. Similarly, the runners set foot in Brussels to meet the members of the European Parliament and to alert them about the political state in Serbia.

Alongside meeting the MEPs, the students will also talk to Martha Kos, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, and Glenn Micallef, the EU Commissioner for Youth. The students want to alert the EU about the lack of free institutions and media, the protests, the faculty blockades, and the pressures from the government on the students and academia.

Recall that the students have been blocking their faculties since late November, after the railway station tragedy in Novi Sad killed sixteen people, demanding accountability from the state.

On that note about the European Parliament, or EP, they adopted a resolution on Wednesday the 7th related to Serbia’s path to the EU. Tonino Picula, the EP rapporteur for Serbia, presented the resolution, which underlined that Serbia has to overcome significant obstacles in order to join the EU. Picula went over the ongoing political affairs in the country, mainly the student protests and faculty blockades, and the EP agreed that the students' demands are in line with the reforms the EU expects from Serbia for its accession.

Picula’s resolution pointed out reforms in ​​the rule of law and the fight against corruption as the most important areas that Serbia has to work on. At the end of the session, the EP adopted Picula’s resolution with 419 votes in favor, 113 against and eighty-eight abstentions.

Speaking of areas Serbia needs to work on, the EU has made it clear in the past that they are against Serbia’s close ties with Russia. However, on Friday the 9th, president Vucic flew to Russia to attend the country’s Victory Day parade in Moscow.

Vucic himself acknowledged that his visit to Russia will trigger the EU officials, noting that he expects the EU to have “initiatives” against him but that he will make sure he pays the price for the visit, and not Serbia. Even though there is no clear indicator of what that price could be, British newspaper The Telegraph reported that the consequences could be the breakup of Serbia’s path to the EU.

On the same day, a large student protest took place in the western town of Loznica. Titled March on the Drina, the protest lasted for twelve hours and gathered thousands of people, including students, war veterans, biker organizations, and professors. Using March on the Drina, the name of a Serbian musical composition from the period of World War One, as the title of protest, students from Loznica wanted the demonstration to symbolize resistance and courage. One student’s speech noted that they marched on behalf of all those who have lost their lives in the railway station tragedy, and have not received justice.

A student-protesting measure that ended successfully was the blockade of the state-owned Radio Television of Serbia, or the RTS, with their only demand being that the RTS publish a public call for new members of the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, or REM. The government agreed, and the Serbian Parliament Committee published an official call on Thursday the 8th with a fifteen-day-long deadline for nominating candidates.

Doxxing, false reporting and smear campaigns against the students and the opposition party members have been taking place on certain pro-regime channels with national coverage, and the REM wasn’t doing anything about it, when it should have been regulating TV programs, penalizing those violating media laws, and awarding channels with national coverage. So the students blocked the two RTS headquarters due to the inactivity of the REM, and called for a new board.

Talking about the media, a report published on Monday the 12th by the Balkan Insight Research Network, or BIRN, investigated the use of AI in journalism.

Based on a survey of more than a hundred journalists and editors, BIRN’s report stated that only thirty-one of the participants said they do not use AI in their writing process, while ninety-four of the rest use it to some degree. BIRN’s report added that writers use AI tools for various purposes, from promo texts to reading voluminous court rulings, but the opinion on the use of such tools in journalism is divided. Half of the respondents were neutral about the use of AI in journalism, thirty-eight supported it, and twenty-five were against it.

Since we mentioned the fall of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station earlier, the investigation regarding the tragedy is still ongoing. In January, Serbian Railways Infrastructure signed an agreement with FTN experts and gave them five months to assess the building’s structural condition, with the deadline being late June. However, during a new hearing before the Higher Public Prosecutor in Novi Sad on Friday the 9th, the FTN experts said that they had not started the process yet because they had not received permission to enter the premises of the railway station.

The same experts, however, are also expert witnesses in the investigation. The defence attorneys of the thirteen accused individuals in the investigation argued that there is a possible conflict of interest due to the contract the two groups have signed, which is worth around thirty-five million dinars, around 330,000 dollars. This might influence the experts to protect the company, which could be to blame for the canopy’s failure. So the attorneys said that the experts’ opinion about the canopy’s stability needs to be objective.

In some news about the economy, the Serbian Statistics Office said on Monday the 12th that the inflation dropped to four percent in April, compared to the nearly five percent in March. They noted that the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, which have the biggest weight in the consumer basket, increased by around five percent year-on-year in April, while the prices of transport decreased by around two percent annually.

Still in the economy, the auditing and consulting firm Ernst & Young reported last week that Serbia might not reach its planned GDP this year due to the political unrest in the country. They noted that their twenty twenty-five GDP projection was four percent, but they added that with the slower increase in the per capita money supply, the GDP would barely be over three percent. Ernst & Young noted that this slowdown has affected some of the country’s key trade and investment partners, primarily those in the EU.

On the other hand, a study by the Serbian Games Association on the gaming industry revenue revealed that it has generated nearly twenty-five billion dinars, around 240 million dollars, in twenty twenty-four. Compared to twenty twenty-three, the revenue increased by more than twenty percent. Managers at the Serbian Games Association noted that the gaming industry saw more than a hundred development teams and gaming companies in twenty twenty-four, with the number of employees reaching 4,500.

And to wrap up this edition, from Wednesday the 14th to Sunday the 18th, Belgrade will host the Guitar Art Festival at the Pobednik plateau in Kalemegdan square. The festival will feature concerts focused on guitars, with performances from the Parniczky Jazz Quartet from Hungary and the Serbian Classical Guitar Orchestra. The festival will also feature some of the most famous guitarists from the region, such as Vlatko Stefanovski, Dejan Cukic, and Bojana Stamenov. The organizers called on all guitar players to participate in the festival by bringing their guitars to jam along.

For more information about the festival, check out the link in the show notes!

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

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!