Aerial view of the Gazela Bridge, which connects old and new Belgrade, taken over by protesters (2025) | Photo courtesy of the author
In recent months, Serbia has witnessed one of the most significant social movements in its entire history—and one of the most important in contemporary Europe led mainly by students. What began as a response to a tragic accident in Novi Sad that left 16 people dead quickly grew into a national movement questioning not only the government’s negligence but also the systemic corruption that has defined the administration of President Aleksandar Vučić. Responding with contempt and repression, the regime has tried to delegitimize the protesters’ demands and minimize their impact.
On March 15, 2025, more than 100,000 Serbians attended a mass demonstration. Their peaceful protest was met with constant harassment by pro-government groups in the area around the parliament building and the alleged use of a “sonic weapon.“
At first glance, all this may appear to be a strictly local phenomenon. Media coverage has tended to reduce what is happening in Serbia as a series of isolated events. Many of the movement’s own participants have stressed its apolitical nature—a tactic that has been one key to its short-term success but now threatens to jeopardize its achievements and limit its long-term impact.
What is really at stake in Serbia today is not just a struggle against one corrupt government; it is part of a broader battle for democracy, social justice, and human rights in a world where authoritarianism has found new ways to legitimize itself, especially after the reelection of Donald Trump, the war in Ukraine, and the Israeli genocide in Palestine.
From its role in the outbreak of World War I to its prominence in the former Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement, Serbia has played a key role in global politics. Today, the country remains caught at a strategic crossroads between the ambitions of the European Union, the influence of Russia, the growing presence of China, and the once hegemonic role of the United States in the region.
Serbia’s current president, Aleksandar Vučić, has had to maneuver in these fraught conditions. He has strategically negotiated with each major global power to consolidate his position. To the European Union, he offered lithium mining, tapping into their desire to reduce dependence on China for this key resource. To the United States, he guaranteed investments such as constructing a hotel in the former Yugoslav People’s Army building in Belgrade, which was partially destroyed by NATO bombing in 1999, in a project promoted by Jared Kushner’s company. Meanwhile, China has strengthened its infrastructure cooperation with the modernization of the Belgrade–Budapest railroad and the signing of a free trade agreement. This balancing act has allowed Vučić to stay in power with necessary external backing while stifling domestic opposition and perpetuating his authoritarian model.
But going forward, student demonstrators will have to confront the fundamental political question: How do you reshape a country positioned at the heart of global geopolitical tensions?
Although the protests began as a response to corruption, their real significance lies in their rejection of authoritarianism. Vučić’s government displays all the characteristics of illiberal regimes of the twenty-first century: concentrated executive power, a weakened opposition, co-opted media, and a judicial system that functions in the service of the government rather than the citizenry.
The students’ requests for the most basic institutional functions may seem minimal, but in this context, even this straightforward demand becomes difficult to satisfy, for it reveals the country’s structural problem: the president’s capture of the state. The students’ insistence on what should be normal democratic processes exposes the regime’s greatest weakness, which has forced it to use violence to suppress peaceful demonstrations.
At the same time, the Serbian student protests illuminate broader patterns that are repeated in the region and the world. The rise of leaders such as Donald Trump in the United States or Javier Milei in Argentina—to name just two examples—suggests that democratic erosion is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a global trend toward extreme polarization and the instrumentalization of the state to consolidate personal power. In this sense, Serbia is not an anomaly but a symptom of a much larger problem, where the media are used to divert attention and dilute the political participation of citizens.
In her writing on Gaza, Joelle M. Abi-Rached uses the term “rivierization” to refer to the transformation of regions devastated by war, economic crises, or colonization into artificial paradises modeled after elite tourist zones such as the French Riviera. However, this process goes beyond mere cosmetic change. It also entails a deeper transformation of the subject and their ideology.
Serbia, unfortunately, is no stranger to this process. In addition to the aforementioned project by Jared Kushner, there is also Beograd na vodi (Belgrade Waterfront), an initiative by the UAE-based company Eagle Hills, valued at around US$3.5 billion. Its goal? To transform the east bank of the Sava River into a modern urban center. This project stands as a symbol of an extensive, unplanned development model that has faced countless criticisms across the country. Among them: the lack of public participation in decision-making, limited benefits for citizens, environmental impact, and possible cases of corruption and opaque deals between the government and the project’s investors.
The country’s current crisis is also a consequence of this trajectory. While one part of Serbia experiences disproportionate growth, the rest is left to contend with inflation, deepening social inequality, and increasing repression.
One salient aspect of the Serbian student protests has been the organizational structure based on horizontal and direct democracy. Far from following the logic of traditional political movements, students have adopted the dynamics of plenums and public assemblies where collective decisions are made without centralized leadership.
This model of democratic participation has historical precedents, from the workers’ councils of the early twentieth century to the assemblies of movements such as Occupy or the Indignados in Spain. These plenums have, so far, proven to be particularly effective in Serbia.
The government has been put in check precisely because it cannot identify a leadership to co-opt or repress. The absence of a central figure hinders the state’s attempts at negotiation and control. Moreover, the plenums have begun to expand beyond the student sphere to include citizens from different sectors of society, indicating a potential for political transformation on a larger scale.
Nevertheless, the challenge is to convert this organizational energy into a force capable of influencing power structures without losing its democratic essence. History has shown that movements without a clear structure risk fading over time. The challenge for Serbian protesters will be to consolidate autonomy without falling into fragmentation, and transmit that same energy to plenums in other social sectors, moving the demands of an apparently apolitical space toward spaces with an explicit political intentionality.
As of today, the protest movement in Serbia maintains the initiative and has managed to impose a hegemonic narrative. This has posed a significant challenge to the president, who is betting on buying time to survive politically.
However, the lack of a cogent student movement critique of the authoritarian system is becoming ever more evident. Many of those protesting today have, in the past, contributed to the very system they seek to challenge. A broad coalition has allowed the convergence of antagonistic sectors, from left-wing groups to right-wing conservative parties. Such a heterogeneous alliance seems unsustainable in the long term and, in the event of Vučić’s departure from power, could quickly fall apart. For the movement to have a lasting impact, action must transcend street protests. This does not necessarily mean adopting a political party’s traditional structure; rather, activists must find organizational mechanisms that channel discontent toward real structural change. Without a concrete vision of political transformation, the movement risks becoming just another moment in Serbia’s or Europe’s history.
