Serbia’s students defeated Vučić's authoritarian rule. What do they actually want to change?
The economy was not the problem, but Vučić’s authoritarian rule and corruption, which lead to a massive student mobilization.
With 100% of ballot samples counted, projected results from the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy in Belgrade showed the Student List on 53% of the vote, giving it 141 MPs in the 250-seat parliament, while Vučić’s nationalist, authoritarian and pro-Russia party called Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won 39%, giving it 103. The remaining seats went to national minority party lists.
Vučić, who had ruled the slavic country for 14 years, accepted his defeat but blamed his party’s defeat on “the direct support of various European countries and the US deep state, the one that is also against President Trump”.
Serbia’s student movement has achieved what the traditional opposition struggled to do for years: defeat the political camp of Aleksandar Vučić, which has dominated the country since 2012. Its breakthrough began with a tragedy. On 1 November 2024, a concrete canopy collapsed at the recently renovated railway station in Novi Sad, killing 16 people. What might have remained a local disaster became a national reckoning with corruption, political patronage and a system many Serbians believed shielded those in power from accountability.
The protests soon outgrew the universities. Students occupied faculties, organised demonstrations and travelled across the country to meet citizens, sometimes walking for days to reach major rallies. Teachers, farmers, doctors, academics, artists and environmental activists joined them. Instead of rallying around a charismatic leader, students organised through university assemblies, known as *plenums*, where participants debated and voted collectively. Their message was that the problem was not simply one politician, but institutions in which political loyalty could matter more than competence, transparency or the law.
Rather than establish another conventional party, the movement assembled an electoral list of 250 candidates under the banner “Sudent List”. One important rule is that students themselves could not stand for parliament. Candidates were selected through assemblies and included doctors, professors, lawyers, artists, economists and activists, with an emphasis on avoiding figures who had previously held senior political positions. The strategy allowed the movement to appeal to people who disagreed about nationalism, Europe or Russia but shared a frustration with corruption and the lack of accountability.
The election victory has now brought that experiment into government. Preliminary results gave the Student List 52.7% of the vote, against 39.2% for the alliance led by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, placing the students on course for 139 seats in the 250-member National Assembly. Vučić conceded defeat. Yet the movement’s decentralised structure, which helped it mobilise people without relying on a single leader, now raises a difficult question: who makes decisions when the movement itself must govern? It entered the election without naming a prime ministerial candidate or presenting a complete cabinet.
The movement’s 11-point programme, organised around the themes *Serbia or the Mafia*, *Knowledge Is Power* and *Serbia Grows With Us*, offers a more concrete picture of its ambitions. Its central proposal is to attack the relationship between political power, public money and personal enrichment.
One measure would establish a special police unit working independently of political interference to investigate corruption under the authority of prosecutors. The movement also proposes reviewing the conduct of public officials, investigating unexplained wealth and confiscating illegally acquired assets. A related proposal would examine whether officials had abused their positions or violated the law and constitutional rights. In practical terms, this means scrutinising how politicians accumulated property, whether public contracts benefited their associates and whether officials responsible for misconduct faced consequences. Such investigations would, however, require credible legal safeguards and independent institutions to prevent anti-corruption powers from becoming another instrument of political retaliation.
Public procurement is another major target. The movement wants government contracts and tenders made accessible to the public, alongside audits of major infrastructure projects, particularly those awarded through opaque agreements or special legislation. This proposal speaks directly to the circumstances surrounding the Novi Sad disaster. When public authorities spend taxpayers’ money on railways, roads or public buildings, citizens should be able to examine who received the contract, how much was paid, whether deadlines were respected and whether the finished work met required standards. The programme also envisages strengthening Serbia’s State Audit Institution so that scrutiny of public spending is not merely a political promise.
The movement also wants to dismantle party patronage in the public sector. Recruitment and appointments in state institutions and state-owned companies would be based on professional qualifications and open competitions rather than political connections. It has called for a review of the police and the dismissal of officers found to have violated service rules during crackdowns on demonstrators. These proposals would affect a large part of the state, from ministries and public companies to the police and other institutions. They also expose one of the movement’s biggest challenges: replacing political appointments with merit-based recruitment without turning the reform process into a sweeping purge of civil servants.
Media reform forms another pillar of the programme. The Student List wants Serbia’s public broadcaster, RTS, freed from political control and calls for greater accountability among broadcasters and media regulators. It also proposes stronger oversight of media conduct and changes to the allocation of national broadcasting licences. The objective is to make it harder for the government to dominate public debate through television networks and to improve the conditions for political competition. Implementing these measures would require transparent procedures that protect editorial independence rather than simply transferring influence from one political camp to another.
In Public Policy, the Student List has these proposals:
Employment security: Serbia currently permits fixed-term employment contracts for up to 24 months in many circumstances. The Student List proposes reducing that maximum to 12 months, after which permanent employment would generally be required, subject to the law’s applicable exceptions. The measure is intended to limit the ability of employers to keep workers in prolonged uncertainty. Its effects would depend on how the legislation is drafted and enforced, particularly for workers in sectors where temporary employment is common.
For young people and families, the movement proposes affordable rental housing and rent-to-own arrangements, alongside tax incentives for families and professionals working in education and healthcare. The stated aim is to make it easier to establish a household and remain in Serbia rather than seek better opportunities abroad. Such a programme would need decisions about eligibility, financing, housing supply and the allocation of public land, none of which can be resolved by a slogan alone.
Healthcare proposals are similarly specific. The Student List wants to reduce medicine prices through state price controls, restore rural clinics and community health centres, and recruit younger doctors and medical technicians. Its promise of “a doctor in every village” captures the problem it wants to address: access to basic medical care should not depend on living in a major city. Delivering this would require funding, adequate staffing and incentives to persuade medical professionals to work in underserved areas.
Education is another priority. The programme promises free school textbooks, reducing a recurring expense for families. It also presents knowledge and professional competence as alternatives to political connections, linking education policy with its wider proposal to depoliticise public institutions.
Agriculture and food prices feature in the programme as well. The movement argues that powerful import interests and monopolistic practices distort the relationship between production costs and retail prices. It proposes addressing these market distortions while protecting agricultural land and water resources as strategic national assets. For farmers, the stated goal is a fairer market; for consumers, it is greater food security and a better relationship between what producers receive and what households pay. The precise effect would depend on the competition measures and agricultural policies eventually adopted.
Taken together, these policies are intended to connect institutional reform with tangible improvements in everyday life. The movement is not simply promising to prosecute corrupt officials. It is also arguing that cleaner procurement can improve infrastructure, merit-based recruitment can improve public services, and stronger employment protections and cheaper medicines can make daily life less precarious.
On Foreign policy:
The Student List is not a straightforward pro-European liberal movement, nor does its victory necessarily mean Serbia will abandon its ties with Moscow and Beijing.
The movement emphasizes completing domestic reforms and closing European Union negotiating clusters before holding a public referendum on full EU membership. It sees the European Union as Serbia’s most important economic partner and supports closer cooperation with European states, but its programme does not amount to an unconditional commitment to EU membership or alignment with every EU foreign-policy decision.
The movement supports military neutrality and opposes sanctions against Russia, reflecting Serbia’s longstanding ties with Moscow and Russia’s support for Belgrade’s position on Kosovo. It also seeks to preserve cooperation with China, while arguing that investment projects should respect domestic law, environmental standards and workers’ rights. Its approach to the United States includes the possibility of stronger cooperation in areas such as trade, technology and energy.
On Kosovo, the movement maintains Serbia’s constitutional position that the territory belongs to the country and rejects recognising its independence. It also wants to preserve Serbian communities and institutions in Kosovo and review previous agreements for constitutional compliance. On Gaza, it has criticised Israel’s actions and called for greater humanitarian assistance to Palestinians.
These positions suggest that domestic political reform and geopolitical realignment are separate questions. European governments may welcome stronger democratic institutions in Serbia, but disagreements over Russia, Kosovo and foreign-policy alignment will remain. The Student List’s victory does not, by itself, settle those issues.
Student List’s candidates included academics, actors and farmers as well as students, but it is deliberately leaderless with no hierarchy, so it is unclear who it will appoint as the prime minister and cabinet.
Prominent Student List figures are: Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist who headed the candidate list; Dejan Šoškić, a former central bank governor; and Radomir Saičić, a chemistry professor at Belgrade University who spoke on behalf of the List after its victory.
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