Within hours of the Serbian vote, Brussels sent congratulations. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated the Student List on its victory, and Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said the door to the EU is open. Such sentences cost nothing. Serbia has been a candidate since 2012 and in accession talks since 2014, and the process has largely stalled. I want Brussels to say something that costs more.
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The Student List’s first demand is resignations
A few days after the 25 October election, the students demanded the resignation of police commanders, officials in the state security and military intelligence agencies, and state prosecutors. The Student List is on course for 140 of 250 seats against 104 for Vučić’s party, according to the electoral commission’s latest update. The result is not final, so parliament cannot yet convene, and a rerun is due at some 50 polling stations within days.
I understand the anger. Sixteen people died when the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed in 2024, and the students want cases tied to the government reopened or sped up, along with an immediate audit of ministries, public enterprises and state funds. Much of that is overdue.
But a prosecutor who goes because the winning list asked has been removed by politics, and the next winning list can ask again. The students who demand that police chiefs and prosecutors go today will one day govern those same institutions, and the precedent will be theirs to live with.
The movement’s words are better than its demand
Some of what the students say is what Brussels should want to hear. Jovan Vujičić, a law professor at the University of Kragujevac who enters parliament for the list, urged the Supreme Public Prosecutor to make sure prosecutors act lawfully, impartially and swiftly. Student activist Filip Ubović said: “Institutions belong to the citizens and the law applies to everyone.” I would sign both.
Read also: Serbia’s Election Puts Brussels on the Spot
The institutions are already moving under the old government. Supreme Public Prosecutor Zagorka Dolovac has told chief prosecutors to ask the police to prevent documents from being destroyed in state institutions. Manja Grčić, the director of the state broadcaster RTS, resigned after talks with union representatives, saying she knew she was “temporarily perceived as an obstacle to change”. Vučić called it a “forced removal”.
Vučić has promised to refresh his party’s board, with new people in two-thirds of positions. He held his own news conference accusing the winners of “revolutionary terror” after people stormed the Informer TV station. Every resignation extracted by pressure hands him a script.
Brussels is the audience that matters
The EU’s offer is support for reforms on rule of law, media freedom, anti-corruption and democratic institutions, according to von der Leyen. The Student List avoided taking a stance on EU accession, and Kos backs the students anyway, saying the door is open to those who fight corruption, even if they do not call themselves pro-European. Nikola Burazer of the Centre for Contemporary Politics in Belgrade says the EU turned a blind eye to very worrying developments.
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The accession track is stuck. Several member states opposed the Commission’s July proposal to open the third negotiating cluster, and integration has stalled over democracy and rule of law, Serbia’s refusal to sanction Russia and Kosovo.
So here is my demand. Kos should say in Belgrade, before the new government is formed, that removals in the security services and the prosecution must follow the law and individual evidence, and that the EU will judge the new government by that standard. The outgoing authorities still control those institutions while the transition takes several weeks, and the same standard applies to them.
If Brussels applauds the result and says nothing about the method, it will have looked away again, as Burazer accuses it of doing before, and this time by choice. Congratulations were cheap on election night. Terms are what Serbia’s winners need now, and the Commission is the one actor placed to name them.
SOURCES & METHOD
How this article was made. This is an opinion piece resting on five press reports. The electoral commission’s final result was not yet available, and no text of the students’ demands could be read.
Sources
- AP: Serbia’s students demand resignations in police, judiciary as they prepare to take power (29 October 2026) – The demands, the rerun, the Informer incident and the length of the transition.
- Reuters: Serbia’s victorious students call for key state officials to resign, graft probes (29 October 2026) – The seat count, the resignation demands, the audit, the RTS resignation and the prosecutor’s instruction.
- European Western Balkans: Kos: The door to the EU is open for Serbia (26 October 2026) – The congratulations and the reform offer from the EU institutions.
- dpa via Qatar Tribune: EU offers closer ties with Serbia after Student List poll win (27 October 2026) – Serbia’s candidate and accession-talk dates and the stalled process.
- Il Foglio: The students’ victory in Serbia presents both a dilemma and an opportunity for the EU (26 October 2026) – The students’ missing EU stance, Kos’s position and Burazer’s criticism.
