In November 2024, the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad killed 16 people and sparked the largest student-led protests in Serbia's modern history. Initial grief gave way to a decentralised movement that is demanding accountability, far-reaching reforms and new elections, despite brutal repression by the regime. The protests have exposed the failure of 'stabilitocracy' and brought Serbia's democratic future — and the EU's role in it — to the forefront of political debate.
As Aleksandar Vučić enters his thirteenth year in power, Serbia has slid from fragile democracy into a textbook case of state capture. Through total control over the media, subjugated institutions and networks of organized crime and corruption, he has built a personalized autocracy. The result is political apathy among Serbian citizens and a collapse of public trust in state institutions.
It took a tragedy to break the spell. On 1 November 2024, a recently reconstructed railway canopy collapsed at Novi Sad’s central station, killing 16 people. It was the catalyst for the largest student-led protests in Serbia’s modern history. At the start, citizens and students gathered in the streets in large numbers to mourn and protest, demanding accountability. However, the state’s indifference, compounded by the early deployment of violent para-militaries against protesters, convinced a whole generation that silence was no longer an option.
What began as mourning soon became institutionalized resistance, built through student plenaries (Plenum in Serbian) and later citizens assemblies ( Zbor in Serbian) that were organized independently by local residents across Serbia. For months, the university blockades held firm, becoming both a symbol and a training ground for civic resistance. Inside occupied buildings, students organized lectures, debates and cultural programs, keeping the spaces alive and meaningful.
In this initial phase, the movement focused on demanding accountability for the corruption that led to the tragedy, but it quickly evolved into a broader uprising calling for systemic reforms and the restoration of the rule of law. It became increasingly clear that any serious investigation into the web of corruption and organized crime would inevitably lead to the regime’s inner circle and ultimately to President Vučić himself.
In response, the authorities resorted to brutal violence, orchestrated and sponsored by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in an attempt to suppress the movement. The regime threw everything against them: beatings, arrests, smear campaigns, media blackouts, even sonic weapon and unleashing police brutality unprecedented in this century. Yet repression backfired, deepening solidarity and convincing many Serbians that the government could no longer govern. The country had become ungovernable.
Protests Shift to Political Demands, Student-Led Opposition Emerges
Following this turning point, the protests entered their second phase, now defined by a clear political agenda: the demand for early parliamentary elections and the emergence of a single, student-led list to lead the opposition front against the regime.
The regime hoped that, as many times before, come summer the popular unrest will dissipate. But the eventual return to lectures and exams at the Universities that took place was less a surrender than a tactical retreat, a deliberate choice by students to preserve the very existence of universities while keeping the protest alive in other forms. What looked like exhaustion was in fact adaptation: the movement simply transformed into decentralized civic disobedience carried on by students and vast segments of population who support them, spreading beyond campuses into many cities and neighborhoods. Needless to say, the student movement won hearts and minds not only of ordinary citizens but also of prominent figures in culture, sports, and the arts, and even progressive circles within the Orthodox clergy."
Stabilitocracy Exposed
For over a decade, Vučić has skillfully exploited the concept of “stabilitocracy,” a formula once endorsed by European leaders, particularly in Berlin under the former Chancellor Merkel, who prioritized short-term stability over democratic values. Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), under Merkel’s leadership, leveraged its influence within the European People’s Party (EPP), of which Vučić’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is a member, to enable Vučić’s unchecked violations of European values, justifying this tolerance under the pretext of ensuring “stability” in the Western Balkans.
Under this bargain, Serbia’s systemic corruption, media capture and authoritarian drift were tolerated as long as Vučić promised to deliver regional calm. But the student protests, the largest in Serbia’s modern history, have shattered this illusion: stabilitocracy has delivered neither stability nor democracy, but has instead resulted in the absolute concentration of power in the hands of a single man.
In fact, it is stabilitocracy that has destabilized the Western Balkans region through the malign influence of his nationalist regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo. This explains why the regime frames the protests as destabilizing both at home and abroad. Milorad Dodik openly sent supporters from Republika Srpska to bolster counter-rallies, while Belgrade authorities went so far as to expel EU and regional citizens for merely posting words of encouragement online. The protests are not simply about Serbia’s future, but about whether the region can resist illiberal entrenchment.
Since the beginning of the protests, the tightly controlled Serbian diplomatic network has been spreading several parallel narratives. To the EU, Vučić insists that Serbia remains firmly on the European path, despite the absence of any factual basis for such a claim, while simultaneously warning Brussels that his potential removal from power would lead to instability. At the same time, he cautions European governments about alleged “violent activities” within the student-led protests supposedly orchestrated by Moscow, while telling the Kremlin that Serbia is facing a “color revolution” allegedly sponsored by the collective West, thereby seeking even closer security and strategic cooperation with Russia.
A Battle for Hearts and Minds
The regime invested significant efforts into steering the public attention towards the alleged far-right character of the student movement. This information manipulation campaign took root surprisingly well in the segments of European public. Government officials and pro-regime media have worked hard to brand the protests as nationalist, extremist or clerical, especially after the Vidovdan rally on 28 June, where the imagery and some fiery speeches echoed uncomfortable tropes from the conflicts in the past.
Believing that the student movement in today’s Serbia is right-wing extremism is nothing short of buying into the regime’s most convenient disinformation.
Yet this narrative is misleading. While some rhetorical excesses did happen, the movement has in practice contributed to reconciliation in ways no previous initiative has managed. At the Easter blockade of Serbian public broadcaster RTS, Muslim students from Novi Pazar kept guard on the blockades while their Orthodox colleagues went home to spend the holiday with their families. During Ramadan, special meals were prepared by local citizens for the Muslim students who were fasting in many cities in Serbia and shared across confessional lines. War veterans, long portrayed as carriers of division, delivered speeches that sounded truly transformative and underscored solidarity rather than separation. Far from proving extremist capture, these episodes reveal a civic space where young Serbians are forging new, inclusive society.
Europeanization Without Flags
This collapse of the stabilitocracy model has left Brussels in an uneasy position, being both implicated in Vučić’s political longevity and also confronted by the very generation demanding Europe’s core values.
This is why the relationship between the student protest and the European Union evolved significantly. The first phase focused on fulfilling specific student demands related to the functioning of key state institutions, when students carried out a series of symbolic actions. These included a bicycle tour to Strasbourg, a marathon to Brussels and direct appeals to European institutions positioning Brussels as the primary address for resolving the ongoing crisis. The European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, stated that the students “are demanding what represents the very essence of European values,” establishing a clear line of understanding between the protest movement and European institutions.
The second phase of the protest began when the movement made the strategic decision to enter the political arena by calling for early parliamentary elections and forming a student electoral list. Onwards, the protest adopted a more critical stance toward Brussels, partly due to unmet expectations regarding the EU’s response to Serbia’s systemic violations of the rule of law, and partly as a result of political populism and the adaptation of messaging to align with dominant sentiments among the electorate.
Critics in the EU often ask why there are no EU flags at the student marches, reading this absence as a sign of ideological ambiguity. This should not be mistaken for Euroscepticism but rather understood as a reflection of Serbia’s own reality. One could just as easily pose the same question to Serbian government officials: where are the EU flags on any of Serbia’s state buildings? For a country once branded a frontrunner in the accession process, their absence is striking. Even during official visits by EU representatives, Belgrade’s streets remain bare of EU banners, while for other foreign dignitaries the capital is draped in exotic flags citizens can barely recognize.
Elections or Entrenchment
Looking forward, only one scenario seems realistic with two paths towards it: elections, whether snap, as demanded by the students, or regular, at the end of 2027, as preferred by the government. Elections remain the only legitimate outlet for resolving the crisis and the clearest expression of the students’ demands, which have always been based on the principles of non-violence and the rule of law. Recent polling underscores why elections are such a threat to the regime. Research by Sprint Insight, published in July, found that if elections were held tomorrow, the students’ list would convincingly defeat Vučić’s ruling bloc by a margin of more than ten percentage points!
Here the role of the EU becomes decisive. Europe could remain a cautious investor (the Jadar project comes to mind), content with promoting the elusive concept of “stability” or it could become an active democratic partner. To do so, it should condition Serbia to fulfilling a clear benchmark of creating an enabling environment for as free and fair elections as they could possibly be, coupled with judicial independence and media freedoms.
Hot Autumn Ahead
What has been unfolding over the previous months in Serbia is nothing less than a democratization from below. Serbia’s civic awakening has already reshaped the domestic political balance, but its impact reaches further. A more democratic Serbia is better for the entire Western Balkans, as there cannot be peace and prosperity without a democratic Serbia, if for nothing else then for its trouble-making potential. This is precisely why the regime seeks to frame protests as dangerous and destabilizing, not only at home, but abroad.
Come fall, a new generation of students will arrive, while the veteran students have never actually left the streets. Among them will be senior high school students who spent much of the previous year protesting side by side with university colleagues, radicalized not in classrooms but on the asphalt of blockades. For them, politics is not an abstract lecture but a lived experience.
The label of being ćaci, a misspelling-turned-slur for the die-hard and violent supporters of the SNS regime, is no longer in vogue; civic resistance is! This shift in social values may prove to be the protests’ most lasting legacy: a generation already immune to fear and propaganda, while practiced in solidarity in the streets. Far from fading, the movement is poised to pick up steam and its victory feels inevitable, although not yet imminent.
The calendar itself has become political terrain, and dates and places once monopolized by the regime are now being reclaimed as arenas of civic defiance. On 1 September, the traditional start of the school in Serbia - tens of thousands took to the streets , providing that the summer heat had done little to melt public discontent. On 5 October, the 25 anniversary of Serbia’s last democratic revolution, students will once again claim the day as their own, linking their struggle to an unfinished democratic journey. And on 1 November, the first anniversary of the Novi Sad tragedy, they will march in remembrance of the sixteen lives lost – still with no one held yet accountable.