Dear friends and colleagues,

At the end of an eventful year, the HBS Belgrade team would like to look back at what we have accomplished with our partners in 2023. Therefore, we have wrapped up this small package for you to unwrap and read through.

Below we would like to present a selection of our activities and publications, and thank our partners in Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia for their trusting cooperation. We feel privileged and look forward to working together with you, the brave realists who resist the injustice, the backsliding of democracy, the destruction of the environment and the brutal political culture in the region, in the New Year!

Our field of work has remained volatile this year, because the political context in the region could barely take a breath: the effects of the ongoing political crisis in Montenegro resulted in presidential elections finally being held in April, and parliamentary elections in June. However, the elections do not seem to have led to an internal political stabilisation of the country, as evidenced by the arduous coalition-building process between the pro-European and pro-Serbian parties, as well as the process of putting together the cabinet under the leadership of the Europe Now movement.

Serbia and Kosovo were shaken by violence: 19 people, mostly children and young people lost their lives in two shootings in Belgrade and a village near Mladenovac and Smederevo. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for weeks in a row. These protests, which took place under the motto “Serbia without violence”, erupted out of grief and anger, and spread across 40 cities and communities in Serbia, were the largest seen in the last 20 years.

Even though the US/EU policy with regard to the (stagnating) normalization process between Serbia and Kosovo is still based on pacification, parallel to the negotiation process, there were recurring tensions and local and isolated violence in the North of Kosovo. Escalations in the North of Kosovo and on the border with Serbia were only diffused by the direct intervention of international actors and KFOR on two occasions.

The latest elections in Serbia well demonstrate the increasingly oppressive course of the SNS-led government. The campaign period was marked by an unfair and unbalanced environment, while election day was marked by questionable situations. Nevertheless, the pro-European opposition achieved significant results in Serbia and especially in Belgrade, where the final results are still disputed.

You may find an overview of the analyses here:

• Snap parliamentary election in Montenegro - again with no clear majority
• The Long Summer of 2023: Why do we need to talk about the protests in Serbia?
• Serbia after the Elections: Disappointment, Protests, and the Pursuit of Justice
• Enlargement Uncertainty: Reframing EU-Western Balkans Relations

There were also positive developments in the political landscape of Serbia: our long-term partner Ne davimo Beograd, a civic movement that emerged out of urban protests, has successfully transformed into a party, Zeleno-levi front (the Green-Left Front), and chosen two co-presidents: Biljana Đorđević and Radomir Lazović. Congratulations on the gender-equal vote! ZLF has been inspired to take on a leading role in the electoral coalition Srbija protiv nasilja. In spite of the extremely difficult conditions during the election campaign and the numerous electoral irregularities, the pro-European opposition in Serbia is on course towards considerable accomplishments.

We are accompanying Zeleno-levi front in these extremely challenging political circumstances in Serbia by mediating contacts within the European green family and political stakeholders. Through our support for the party-affiliated think tank Centar za zelene politike, we want to contribute to establishing sustainable city development policies in Belgrade.

There have also been changes to our team: our long-serving colleague Miloš Ćirić left the office in May, and in July, we welcomed Olivera Šurdić as our new Office and Event Manager. 

It is with both joy and sadness that we say goodbye to one of the most important people in our office since 2006 - Paola Petrić. The good news, however, is that Paola will remain a colleague of ours. From February 2024, she will take over as Office Director of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Office in Sarajevo from Judith Brand. We thank her for her many years of engagement and look forward to working regionally with her!

And now we are looking for a new colleague!