Situation in Serbia following the 2023 elections

Written by Branislav Staníček.

On 17 December 2023, Serbia held snap parliamentary elections, just 20 months after the last ones. President Aleksandar Vučić had called early elections after what had been an adverse year for his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), marked by two mass shootings in May 2023 and a clash between Serb paramilitaries and the Kosovo police near the Banjska Monastery in northern Kosovo on 24 September 2023. The elections brought the SNS a larger-than-expected victory. While alleged electoral irregularities sparked a protest movement led by a coalition of opposition parties, Serbia against Violence, the SNS’s strong performance will boost its chances of staying ahead of the opposition in the spring round of local elections as well.

Background

On 1 November 2023, the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, dissolved the parliament and scheduled early parliamentary elections for 17 December, citing demands from the opposition for snap elections. These were the third parliamentary elections in less than 4 years. Preliminary results confirmed the strong popularity of both the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and of Vučić, who is at its helm, with the SNS having won some 46.72 % of the vote compared with 44.3 % in April 2022. The ruling party also came first in the Belgrade local elections, although with a more modest 39.3 %. On 3 January 2024, Serbia’s Election Commission published the official results after it became clear that the repeated vote in eight polling stations had not changed the outcome. The ruling SNS won 46.75 % of the votes, while the largest opposition coalition, Serbia against Violence (SPN), won 23.66 %. The SNS’s junior partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), won 6.55 %. Two right-wing opposition lists also passed the threshold: the coalition NADA (Hope), led by the New Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), with 5 %, and the populist list We – Voice of the People, headed by a well-known pulmonologist and COVID-vaccination sceptic Branimir Nestorović, with 4.69 %. Freedom House rates Serbia as ‘partly free’, ranking it 60th out of 100 countries in 2023.

Concerns following the elections

The elections raised some concerns, both among international observers and opposition parties. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), which led an inter-institutional electoral observation mission, published its preliminary findings and conclusions on 18 December. It stated that ‘though technically well-administered and offering voters a choice of political alternatives, [early parliamentary elections] were dominated by the decisive involvement of the President which[,] together with the ruling party’s systemic advantages[,] created unjust conditions’. The same day, one of the SPN coalition leaders, Marinika Tepić, started a hunger strike in support of the protest movement requesting the annulment of the vote. The SPN emerged as a result of the protests following the May 2023 mass shootings in a Belgrade elementary school and in the villages of Mladenovac and Smederevo. As recalled in the European Commission’s 2023 annual report on Serbia, the parliament constituted in August 2022 included the opposition parties that boycotted the 2020 elections. ‘Political polarisation remained in evidence during 2023 and has further deepened following the tragic mass shootings in early May 2023’, the report stresses.

Analysts believe that the democratic credentials of the electoral process were marred by the SNS’s advantage in resources and media dominance, and by their vote-buying, intimidation and pre-election budgetary handouts. According to Radio Free Europe, the SNS appears to have brought busloads of people – who had only recently been registered on Belgrade’s electoral roll – into the city. Irregularities have often been reported in Serbian elections. Furthermore, Serbian politics remains marked by a strong political divide and by the opposition parties boycotting the parliamentary debate and work. At the same time, experts from Oxford Analytica see no evidence that machinations were more excessive than usual or that they alone accounted for the SNS’s strong performance. Instead, the machinations employed appear to have improved the SNS’s overall results largely at the expense of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

International reactions

In a 19 December joint statement on the parliamentary elections, the EU’s High Representative, Josep Borrell, and the Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, took note of the preliminary findings and conclusions of the ODIHR observers. They highlighted that ‘credible reports of irregularities [should be] followed up in a transparent manner by the competent national authorities. This includes also allegations related to the local elections in Belgrade and other municipalities’.

Stewart Dickson, the spokesperson on observation of local and regional elections of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, expressed grave concern over the serious irregularities reported by the Congress’s partners in their joint International Election Observation Mission during Serbia’s early parliamentary elections. ‘The reported instances of intimidation and pressure on voters, including vote-buying … are very worrying allegations that could seriously infringe citizens’ right to vote and undermine their trust in the democratic electoral process at all levels of government’, he remarked.

The US State Department said it was reviewing the findings of the OSCE observer mission. The State Department urged Serbia to work with the OSCE to address ‘unjust conditions’ surrounding the electoral process.

EU-Serbia relations

After Serbia applied for EU membership on 22 December 2009, its accession negotiations began in 2014. Some 18 out of the 35 acquis chapters have been opened, including all those in cluster 1 on the fundamentals. Two chapters have been provisionally closed. Pre‑accession support for Serbia and other candidate countries amounts to €12.9 billion for the 2021‑2027 period (Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance, IPA III).

Serbia and Kosovo have been engaged in EU-mediated dialogue since 2011, following the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolution 64/298 in 2010. Serbia would need to implement the agreement made in Ohrid in March 2023 as part of the requirements under Chapter 35 (‘Other Issues’) of the country’s EU accession negotiations, which include, among other things, normalisation of relations with Kosovo. The geopolitical dimension of the EU’s enlargement policy gained in significance in 2022, following Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The European Council in December 2023 decided to endorse the EU’s enlargement policy reforms and reiterated its support for the integration of the Western Balkans into the EU.

The war in Ukraine also exposed the considerable extent of Russian political and economic interference in the Balkans. Russia remains Serbia’s biggest arms supplier, although it is facing increasing competition from China. Responding to this challenge, the EU decided to step up its enlargement policy efforts, and investment in the accession countries through the growth plan for the Western Balkans, which has a budget of €6 billion in grants and loans to be spent on accelerating economic convergence with the EU.

European Parliament’s position

Five Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) observed the December 2023 elections as part of the OSCE/ODIHR-led International Election Observation Mission. The MEPs noted, in line with the preliminary OSCE/ODIHR report, that overall, the elections had been conducted and managed well from a technical standpoint, but that unjust conditions had persisted and irregularities had been reported.

On 23 January 2024, the Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) discussed the Serbian elections with two European Commission and European External Action Service (EEAS) representatives, both of whom said that Serbian authorities had expressed readiness to address the OSCE/ODIHR’s recommendations once the final report was published (so far, only the preliminary findings have been published). Many MEPs reiterated their calls for the holding of an investigation into the alleged electoral irregularities. The OSCE/ODIHR final report will serve as a valuable tool for improving electoral conditions in Serbia. Most recently, the European Parliament discussed Serbia’s December 2023 elections during its January plenary session. A resolution is expected to be voted during the February I plenary session.

The European Parliament adopted its resolution on the 2022 Commission report on Serbia in May 2023, underlining that progress on the rule of law and fundamental rights and the functioning of democratic institutions is fundamental in determining the dynamics of the country’s accession process.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Situation in Serbia following the 2023 elections‘ on the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.