SNS Wins Parliamentary Elections & more – 19th Dec 2023

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 19th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

After the parliamentary snap elections that took place on Sunday the 17th, president Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, announced their victory with forty-six percent of the votes and ensured 129 of the 250 seats in the parliament. Pollsters Ipsos and CESID announced that the opposition coalition Serbia against Violence secured around twenty-three percent of the votes or thirty-six seats. In third place is the Socialist Party of Serbia, or SPS, which got around seven percent of the votes, securing nineteen seats.

Dissatisfied with the results, the Serbia against Violence coalition accused SNS and Vucic of election fraud, as well as bribing voters, promoting violence against the opposition, and participating in organized crime. Furthermore, two Serbian election observers, CESID and CRTA, reported irregularities on the election day, such as people photographing their ballots, recording themselves voting, as well as SNS supporters being violent toward the election observers.

On Tuesday the 12th, the Serbia Against Violence opposition coalition held its final campaign rally at the Republic Square in Belgrade ahead of the parliamentary elections. The pro-Europe alliance urged citizens to unite against the ruling regime, adding that President Vucic and the members of the ruling SNS are extremely corrupt and dangerous for Serbia’s future. Those gathered in the rally walked to the Republic Election Commission or RIK, and demanded that the elections be monitored in order to prevent election fraud.

However, six days later, on Monday the 18th, after the preliminary results showed Vucic’s win, the coalition alleged election fraud and staged a protest. After gathering in front of the Belgrade City Assembly building, the protesters marched to RIK once again, and presented proof of electoral fraud.

The news about vote rigging reached some EU countries, such as Germany, who on Monday the 18th condemned the reported irregularities and deemed them as unacceptable for an EU candidate country. The International Election Observation Mission published a statement in which they noted how they witnessed serious irregularities, including vote-buying and ballot box stuffing. Andreas Schieder, an Austrian MEP who was a member of the observation mission, criticized the ruling SNS party and called for an investigation into all reported irregularities. The Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament have also called for an investigation into the irregularities and expressed their support to Serbian citizens who are protesting for justice and democracy.

In other political news…

On Thursday the 14th, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic announced in a letter addressed to the European External Action Service that Serbia refuses to comply with the verbal agreements it made with Kosovo to normalize relations. These agreements include the Brussels agreement and its annex, which Vucic and Kosovo’s PM Kurti verbally agreed to but never signed. The letter stated that Serbia cannot accept any agreement that involves Serbia’s de facto or de jure recognition of Kosovo. It also noted that Serbia would not recognize Kosovo’s membership in international organizations, such as the UN and NATO. The letter then stated that Serbia is committed to the EU integration process and negotiations. However, the EU’s General Affairs Council is urging the European Council to include Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s membership in international organizations as one of the conditions for Serbia’s accession to the EU.

The Brussels agreement and its Ohrid annex consist of several points that both Kosovo and Serbia need to implement in order to normalize the relations between each other. These include the formation of the Community of Serbian Municipalities and an agreement that neither side will block the other’s progress on its path to the EU.

Speaking of bilateral relations…

Last week, Bulgarian MEPs sent a letter to EU institutions informing them of various forms of hate that Serbian institutions are instigating toward Bulgaria and its minority in Serbia. The MEPs added that this “hate campaign” is dangerous for the Bulgarians who live in Serbia, since the media constantly portrays them as menacing enemies. In the letter, the MEPs accused Serbia of preventing the preservation of Bulgarian cultural heritage, limiting the teaching of the Bulgarian language in schools, as well as disallowing religious services in Bulgarian.

During World War II, Bulgaria occupied a part of Yugoslavia, switching sides from being neutral to becoming allies with the Axis Powers, a coalition consisting of Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan. After World War II and during the Cold War, Serbia and Bulgaria have been hostile towards each other.

However, the Serbia-Bulgaria relations are somewhat improving, as the Bulgarian government agreed to abolish the transit tax on Russian gas that passes through Bulgaria to Serbia, Hungary, and North Macedonia. Boyko Borisov, the former Bulgarian PM, said that the government decided to abolish the tax in the hopes of helping Bulgaria with its Schengen Area bid. This is because in October, Bulgaria introduced an eleven-dollar excise tax per megawatt-hour of transiting Russian gas, aiming to remove Russia from the European energy market by making their gas too expensive for its users. The tax would have made Russian gas around twenty percent more expensive for Serbia, Hungary, and North Macedonia. Dissatisfied with the tax introduction, Hungary threatened to block Bulgaria’s bid to join the EU’s border-free Schengen area, disrupting Bulgaria’s efforts to gain a unanimous EU approval to enter the area.

The Schengen Area is meaningful to EU countries since it allows their citizens to enjoy free movement within the EU, which includes traveling, working and living in other EU countries. Currently, the only two EU countries that are not in the Schengen Area are Bulgaria and Romania.

On that note about energy…

The Energy Community Secretariat published its annual report on Thursday, the 14th, which tracks the countries' performance of implementing the Energy Community acquis in twenty twenty-three. The results of the report showed that Serbia is one of the top performers, followed by Montenegro and Ukraine. Serbia has recently revised the Energy Law, and made efforts to unbundle the electricity and gas transmission system operators. The Secretariat added that Serbia was the top performer in the area of decarbonization so far in twenty twenty-three. They also acknowledged that Serbia adopted long-term strategies for low-carbon development, and commended the country for revising its Law on the Use of Renewable Energy Sources and conducting an inaugural auction for renewable energy.

Still, Serbia is looking to improve in the environmental sector. The National Assembly announced that starting in twenty twenty-four, any contracting authority in Serbia will have to consider environmental matters when purchasing goods and services. The changes that the National Assembly is bringing in is the reshaping of the criteria while selecting certain services and goods, introducing quality as the key criterion, rather than the price. Milos Knezevic, the director of the Institute for Economics and Law, said that the goods affected by the changes are items such as computers, appliances, and paper products. This means that the purchasers of these items will have to go through a thorough preparation of the procurement process, which includes a detailed understanding of the sustainability and environmental impact of the goods they are buying.

In some economic news…

On Tuesday the 12th, the National Bank of Serbia, or NBS, announced that the year-on-year inflation in November stood at eight percent, which they deemed lower than expected. They noted that the rise of food prices has slowed down but that the prices of electricity and natural gas went up, which is the reason for the monthly inflation of 0.5 percent. In a press release, the NBS stated that they expect the year-on-year inflation for December to drop below eight percent, and added that it will continue to drop in twenty twenty-four. They also stated that the growth of energy prices in November was lower than November’s year-on-year inflation, amounting to around seven percent.

Now onto some health updates.

Last week, the Institute for Public Health confirmed around 4,700 COVID-19 cases, with zero deaths. Compared to the previous week, the number of confirmed cases has decreased by around a hundred.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!