Serbia comes back into the fold

Decisive vote against autocratic leader Aleksandar Vučić will enable restoration of democratic checks and balances

Welcome back. Serbs delivered an awe-inspiring demonstration of the value of democracy this week when they turfed out their strongman leader Aleksandar Vučić after 14 years in power. They gave a landslide victory to the opposition Student List, itself an extraordinary experiment in grassroots direct democracy born out of a protest movement.

The Serb vote followed the defeat in April of Hungary's Viktor Orbán, who had been an ally of Vučić. The two elections pave the way for a momentous democratic reset in central and south-eastern Europe that should help strengthen the EU.

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Patronage

I wrote earlier in the week about the parallels between the two elections. Two veteran incumbents were swept aside by a wave of public anger over corruption despite their systematic attempts over many years to stifle their opponents and tilt elections in their favour.

Another similarity is clientelism and use of patronage networks. This was probably more extreme in Serbia's case where ruling party membership was often a condition for career advancement. One statistic jumped out at me this week. Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has between 700,000 and 800,000 members, according to the Centre for Eastern Studies, a strikingly large number for a population of 6.5mn.

There are also some possible differences.

Deep state

Orbán's grip on power loosened faster than many of his critics could have imagined because his vanquishers, the Tisza Party led by Péter Magyar, won a supermajority in parliament. Magyar is benefiting from the winner-takes-all system that his predecessor put in place.

The pro-Vučić deep state could prove harder to dislodge. The acting president, Vučić protégée Ana Brnabić, can still constrain a new government, temporarily vetoing laws and appointments, even with her lesser, interim powers. The SNS might retain the presidency in the next election, due within three months, especially if the new government struggles to overhaul the pro-Vučić state media and restore other checks and balances.

The new government should prioritise overhauling the security services and military intelligence, Nikola Lunić, an analyst and former military officer, says in this piece for the Centre for European Policy Analysis.

"Serbia has too often experienced politicised and violent behaviour by elements of its security apparatus, not least the 2003 assassination of the modernising prime minister, Zoran Đinđić, carried out by plotters from the state security's Special Operations Unit and organised crime, and the use of spyware against journalists and activists in recent years," he writes.

No flags

Another obvious difference is that Hungary is more constrained within the EU than Serbia is outside it.

For years, Orbán defied Brussels and excoriated its top officials. More recently, he blocked EU decisions on supporting Ukraine. Indulgent EU leaders took too long to wise up to what he was doing at home and abroad. But eventually they withheld EU funds, putting a cost on his democratic backsliding that Hungarians refused to pay.

With Serbia not being a member of the EU, Vučić faced fewer constraints. Although he professed to be pro-European, he paid lip service at most to reforms needed for Serbia's EU membership to progress. So it stalled. But wanting to keep him onside, given Belgrade's central role in the Western Balkans and lest he court Moscow or Beijing instead, western leaders seldom called out his autocratic methods.

Brussels became more critical of Serbia's erosion of democratic standards and the rule of law last year following the appointment of Marta Kos, a Slovenian, as EU enlargement commissioner. It paused aid payments to Belgrade only six months ago.

"Why were there no European flags at the rallies?" Ivan Vejvoda asks in this commentary for Carnegie Europe. "Very simply, protesters witnessed European leaders coming to Serbia to support the government, never publicly raising questions about the visible democratic backsliding."

The Student List has made no commitment to kick-start Serbia's EU accession bid or address other EU demands such as adopting sanctions against Russia or to accept Kosovo's sovereignty if not its formal independence.

But Vučić's defeat is a real opportunity to bring Serbia closer to the EU.

Polling by CRTA, a Serbian NGO earlier this year, found that only 42 per cent of Serbs overall wanted closer ties with the EU, but among Student List supporters that climbed to a decisive 75 per cent.

The EU can advise a new government on restoring judicial independence and democratic standards, having drawn up its own detailed recommendations. It can dangle the carrot of aid payments in return for reforms. But it should also avoid being too heavy-handed and of making early demands on Serbia's foreign policy orientation, notes Engjellushe Morina of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Democratic repair would in itself bring Serbia back into the European fold.

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