Since the protests in Serbia began following the tragic collapse of the Novi Sad railway station in November, very few reactions have been heard from the EU. The protests, meanwhile, have evolved into a large student-led movement which ultimately caused the fall of the government, following yesterday’s resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević.
Protesters demand the release of full documentation on the reconstruction of the railway station, whose collapse killed 15 people. Numerous shortcomings in the work of the institutions have already come to light regarding the project, and suspicions of potential corruption persist in the public. Another demand is the prosecution of persons who physically assaulted the students during the protests, some of whom were identified as members of the ruling party.
For weeks, tens of thousands of citizens have been protesting across the country in support of the students. The protests further escalated in the second half of January after several incidents in which protesting students were injured. Commentators are describing the protests as a decisive moment for the future of the rule of law and democracy in Serbia.
So far, however, there have been very few reactions from the EU institutions or member governments. They mostly came from several groups in the European Parliament – Socialists and Democrats, Greens and “Renew Europe”, which supported the students. European Commission Spokesman for Enlargement has also criticized the attacks on the students.
No reactions came from the higher levels of the Commission or the Council of the European Union. In his last week’s visit to Serbia, Gert Jan Koopman, head of the Directorate-General for Neighourhood and Enlargement in the European Commission, made no public reference to the protests.
Pro-government daily Politika subsequently published what it reported to be a leaked message of Koopman from the meeting with opposition and civil society, in which he allegedly said that the EU “will not accept or support a violent change of power in Serbia.” Upon subsequent request, the EU institutions did not provide a detailed clarification of the statement for our portal.
Meanwhile, officials of the United States, Russia and China have recently made statements critical of the protests and supportive of the government. Richard Grenell, well-known in the Balkans from his previous stint in the Trump administration, criticized the supposed violence of the protests during the weekend, even though the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
Calls for the EU to get more involved
On 28 January, a group of Serbian public figures, including writers, actors and activists, sent a letter to the EU officials, including Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos, urging them to take a more active role in support of the “free, democratic and European Serbia”.
“The rule of this regime all these years would not have been possible without, unfortunately, a very ambivalent and inconsistent policy of the European Union towards Serbia, which in recent years often reduced to the open support of the government of Aleksandar Vučić”, the letter states.
In a text published last week on the BiEPAG blog, titled “Student protests in Serbia: The eleventh hour for EU fundamentals”, author Marko Kmezić wrote that the EU continues to fail “to recognize the country’s regime for what it actually is – an autocratic and corrupt political system unfit to meet EU conditions with regard to respect and promotion of democracy, rule of law and human rights”.
“It is the eleventh hour for the EU to step up and fulfil its self-proclaimed task of democracy and rule of law promoter. It must clearly and univocally support the student protests in Serbia and stop having stabilitocratic consideration for the country’s authoritarian regime”, Kmezić, s a Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, wrote.
Issues with Novi Sad railway reconstruction recognized in the EU’s own reports
Novi Sad tragedy has renewed interest in the longstanding issues with construction projects in the country. In its annual Report on Serbia, published on 30 October 2024, just two days before the collapse of the station, the European Commission stated that the country “has a tendency to circumvent its legislation” in the area of public procurement “through intergovernmental agreements and special laws”.
This was exactly how the Novi Sad railway station was reconstructed. There was no open competition – the project was awarded to a consortium of Chinese companies, which hired local subcontractors, based on the Serbia-China international agreement. The price of the reconstruction of the station has been described as potentially inflated by several experts.
The protesters have been demanding the release of all documentation related to the Novi Sad railway reconstruction so that all technical shortcomings as well as potential corruptive practices can be brought to light. So far, the authorities have released several batches of documentation, each time claiming that all documents are now available. It remains unclear whether this is currently the case.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen was criticized by Serbian opposition and civil society last year for contradicting the findings of the Commission’s reports on Serbia during her last visit to the country. According to the critics, von der Leyen was too positive in her assessments of the government’s progress, especially on fundamental European values.