SERBIA: Ursula von der Leyen’s Visit & more – 21st Oct 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 21st of October twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Wednesday the 15th, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, visited Belgrade as part of a tour of the EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans. Von der Leyen met with President Vucic and discussed the rule of law, the country’s close ties to Russia and Serbia’s fading democracy amid the protests, telling Vucic that the country must show real progress in these areas.

Vucic mostly shrugged off Von der Leyen’s critiques and suggestions, saying that Serbia had a great democracy and dismissing the idea of police repression against protesting students.

Oppression clearly did not make them back down, as ahead of the planned commemorative gathering set to take place in the northern city of Novi Sad on the 1st of November, the students from the Novi Pazar University embarked on a sixteen-day-long march to get there. The gathering will commemorate the sixteen victims of the canopy collapse tragedy which took place on that day last year and sparked the largest series of protests Serbia has ever witnessed.

While some are marching, others keep protesting in their cities. During a recent protest in Belgrade on Saturday the 18th, students called for the cancellation of the pro-regime tabloid Informer which, at one point, showed images of a minor naked live on national television. They accused Informer of committing criminal activity, hate speech, spreading misinformation and doxxing.

On that note about the media, our YouTube channel was removed because the government is trying to silence us but we launched a new one because, just like the students, we won’t quit. Bring it on.

Informer TV is not the only aggressor, however, as the news about the recent brutal police assault of a female student from the faculty of Agriculture in Belgrade came out. The students from that faculty published a statement on Monday the 20th, saying that police officers took her to the police station while she was at work, led her to the basement and forced her to give information about the student protests. They forbid her from contacting her family and lawyers, and after she refused to give over any information, they assaulted her, leaving her with injuries all over her body.

The student later said that the two men who took her repeatedly demanded she give out information about her peers and student protests. She added that they tore her clothes, all the while they kept a bag on her head. Her peers suspect that the kidnappers were linked to the state.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs denied the interrogation story, despite the reports from the doctor's office detailing her injuries right after the assault. In fact, the ministry doxxed the student in their public statement while putting out contradicting information about the case.

A recent research showed that students are more popular among the citizens than the ruling Serbian Progressive Party or SNS. The Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, or CRTA, published a report last week about the citizens’ opinions about the student protests and potential elections. They said that forty-four percent of the respondents would vote for the Student list, thirty-two percent favor Vucic’s SNS, while the rest are indifferent. When it comes to the student protests, the CRTA underlined that almost sixty percent of the respondents support them.

Recall that the students announced the formation of a Student list which will run for the elections once the president calls them. It will exclude politicians, students or anyone related to the ruling SNS party.

The Members of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Development Committees announced on Thursday the 16th that Serbian students have been shortlisted for the twenty twenty-five Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Alongside the students, the two other finalists are imprisoned journalists from Belarus and Georgia, and journalists and humanitarian aid workers in Palestine.

Established in nineteen eighty-eight, the Sakharov Prize is the European Parliament’s highest distinction in the field of human rights, and the previous winners include Nelson Mandela, the Democratic Opposition in Venezuela, and Ukraine.

Going back to the canopy collapse, last week the Informal Inquiry Commission called on the prosecutor's office to expand the investigation into the tragedy to include the president’s close associates. They said that they suspect that Vucic was in on the shady practices behind the railway station’s renovation, which led to the canopy failing fatally.

After the tragedy, a group of professors, lawyers and architects got together and formed The Commission to keep an eye on its investigation. So far, the Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad has filed an indictment against thirteen people in connection to the case, including the former Minister of Construction.

In some energy news, on Wednesday the 15th the EU invited Serbia to join its communal gas-buying initiative. Launched in twenty twenty-three, the EU’s gas-buying platform aims to provide leverage for the participants to get better energy deals. The EU’s goal is to deprive Russia from profiting off of providing gas to Serbia, thus depleting their money supply for funding the war in Ukraine. The EU is promising Serbia low prices in other European markets, which would also count as progress in energy policy alignment and in the path to the EU.

The EU has also adopted a plan for the gradual phase-out of Russian gas imports, and added that the ban on its import will take effect on the 1st of January, twenty twenty-six, but that they will tolerate already existing contracts. However, they expect a full ban to come into effect on the 1st of January twenty twenty-eight. The Serbian Energy minister said that such a reform puts Serbia in a hopeless situation, since it is being forced to cut off Russian gas which is the most affordable.

Still in energy, president Vucic proposed to the Russian partial owners of the Serbian gas company NIS that Serbia acquire a part of their share. Local pro-government media reported that Vucic told certain Russian officials that the buyout would lift the sanctions on NIS, and that Serbia would return the acquired NIS stake after the sanctions are removed. However, the Russian side was not in favor of such a deal, adding that they would rather sell a portion of their holding in NIS to a third party, potentially even to the US.

If the Russians sell a part of their stake at NIS to Serbia, Serbia would be the company’s majority owner, taking control away from Russia.

When it comes to the economy, the Central Bank announced on Thursday the 16th that annual inflation in September stood at five percent - the same as in August. The consumer price inflation slowed down to around three percent in September, compared to five percent in August, which the Bank attributed to the recently capped profit margins of large retailers.

In some environmental updates, The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is creeping up on Serbia, set to take effect next year. The mechanism will affect Serbian products that it exports to the EU countries by making them more expensive, due to their high carbon footprint.

The Fiscal Council of Serbia warned Serbian exporters to expect additional costs for exports of at least around four billion dinars, which is around forty-five million dollars, starting from twenty twenty-six. They explained that the government must work on lowering Serbia’s dependence on coal-fired electricity and outdated industrial technologies in order to prevent such high expenses.

In some cultural news, the western town of Bajina Basta will host its annual Basta Fest - the international short fiction film festival - from the 24th to the 26th of October. The festival will feature films from both domestic and foreign producers from all over the world. The admission to the screenings will be free of charge.

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

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

This past Saturday, we held a trial of a new kind of gathering. Highly structured but radically equal, very wild. No keynote speakers, no talking heads. Those who join decide who they talk to, but without knowing the identity of who they will meet, they propose and decide what they will discuss. Like we said. Wild, interested in what it was, check the show notes and if you’re interested, we can help you hold one in Serbia.

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!