Where are the young Serbs who are challenging Vucic on Sunday looking?

“When I walked across Serbia during the student movement’s great march, I saw dozens of ghost villages. Places everyone wants to flee from. I met elderly people living on next to nothing, in tiny, ancient houses. Yet many of them came out of their homes to bring us water, apples from their gardens or a sweet treat. They knew what we were doing.” This is the account of Tatjana Gogic, an ecology student at the University of Belgrade and an activist in the student movement. This year, the great march began in Novi Sad, where, almost two years ago, on 1 November 2024, the collapse of a bus shelter at the railway station – which had only just been refurbished – killed sixteen people. The students arrived in Belgrade just a few days before the parliamentary elections, which could challenge the power held for fourteen years by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its leader Aleksandar Vučić – who served as Prime Minister and then as President of Serbia – and who now, following his resignation and the calling of early elections long demanded by the student movement, is once again aspiring to become Prime Minister.

Tatjana explains how and why she got involved, despite having no political experience before joining the protests: “I’ve always voted; I’ve never missed an election, but before, ‘politics’ was a dirty word to me. It was something only selfish, greedy, corrupt people with strong personal ambitions could be interested in. That’s what my peers and I had always been used to. Now I think politics is a mechanism for bringing about positive change in society.” The movement has offered a different vision of the future to a generation of young people for whom the most likely prospect was to leave the country and who, on Sunday, “will in all likelihood vote overwhelmingly for the student list”, explains Nikola Burazer to Il Foglio, a political scientist and programme director at the Centre for Contemporary Politics in Belgrade, “the higher the turnout among young people, the worse it will be for the government”. According to a survey published in August by Koms, the umbrella organisation for young Serbs, a high – and unprecedented – turnout is expected among the under-30s – around 89 per cent – and 85 per cent of them support the student movement.

Tatjana recounts everything from the start: the incident in Novi Sad, the attacks by groups close to the regime against the young people who had gathered to observe fifteen minutes’ silence in memory of the victims, the violence, the arrests. The resignation that turned to anger, the occupations, the blocked university faculties. At the start, the students had no political ambitions in the institutional sense: “We didn’t want anything to do with even the main opposition parties”, but after a year and a half of unheeded demands, the movement transformed into something different. “We wanted our demands to be met, and we needed a ‘day after’, a plan for the future.” That plan for the future now takes the form of an electoral list, “Studentska lista” – comprising 250 candidates, including lawyers, professors, doctors and scientists, almost all of whom have no political experience – and a manifesto, both of which were discussed and voted on by the students organised in plenary sessions and faculty assemblies – Tatjana calls it “a long and almost tedious process”, but also a successful experiment in democracy in a country where the scope for freedom is shrinking ever further. The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s 2026 Transformation Index ranks Serbia as the worst country in the Western Balkans in terms of the quality of democracy, highlights how the rule of law and press freedom have deteriorated further, and describes the country as a “moderate autocracy”.

At the heart of the Studentska Lista’s programme are the fight against corruption, reform of the judicial system, legislation to ensure transparency in the use of public funds, as well as increased funding for schools, universities and the public health service. People who would otherwise be very far apart in terms of their political positions and ideas have come together around the ambition to build a freer, fairer and less corrupt country: “Among us there are people on the left, on the right, liberals, conservatives, and everything in between. But the reason why most young people, including myself, are here is a matter that is more existential than ideological. We do not want to leave Serbia to go elsewhere. Ideology is irrelevant when survival is at stake.”

Less space is devoted to the most controversial issues, and indeed there is very little coverage of foreign policy in the programme. One unresolved issue concerns the European Union: Serbia was once the ‘front-runner’ amongst the Western Balkan countries seeking membership, but progress has now effectively stalled and relations between Belgrade and Brussels are strained. In September, in response to the glorification of the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, Ratko Mladic – who was buried with full military honours in the presence of members of the government – the Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, took a firm stance and cancelled her official visit. However, the notion that students who oppose an autocrat close to the Kremlin—and who has effectively put the European integration process on hold—are, in themselves, staunchly pro-European is a misguided oversimplification. Tatjana prefers not to discuss Serbia’s accession to the EU: “The Serbs will decide in a referendum.” “There is significant Euroscepticism in the country,” explains Burazer, “and there is a widespread sense of frustration even amongst those who look to Europe but are dissatisfied with the relations the EU has maintained with the government.” The EU is perceived more as an ally of Vučić, on whom it has often chosen not to exert pressure in order to preserve an apparent ‘stability’. In this sense, the decision to declare themselves openly pro-European could damage the students’ reputation. At the same time, fighting for democracy and against corruption means fighting for European values.” Another controversial issue is Serbia’s claims over Kosovo, which the students have declared their support for in a Memorandum published last May. This states that the region is “an inalienable part of Serbia”, whilst at the same time calling for a solution within the framework of the Serbian Constitution and the international order. “I believe the Memorandum has received far more attention outside Serbia than within it,” comments Burazer. “The language used is problematic,” he clarifies, “but the content perfectly reflects what is considered mainstream in Serbia. In fact, it does not indicate any change in approach.” Now, however, the priority is to focus on the struggles that unite people, that draw young people into the streets and squares – where politics has long been banned, but has now “become cool”.