Serbia's Student List wins parliamentary majority, resetting Belgrade's ties with Brussels

Serbia's Student List secured an outright parliamentary majority at the weekend, ending Aleksandar Vučić's 12-year run as the EU's key interlocutor in the candidate country's accession process and trade negotiations.

The result is a direct challenge to Brussels' long-standing practice of routing all engagement with Belgrade through Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party. Critics had argued for years that this approach hollowed out democratic accountability.

Srdjan Majstorović, chairman of the European Policy Center's governing board, argued that "the EU can very easily lose credibility and integrity" if it ignores the causes of democratic backsliding in a country. He cautioned that such an approach undermines the very foundation of EU engagement. Data from the think tank published earlier this year found that 41.6 percent of Serbian citizens believe the EU pursues its own interests in the region rather than improving democracy and the rule of law.

Jugoslav Gašić, an assistant professor in medicine and incoming Student List MP, said Vučić had acted as go-to person for everything while ignoring the country's laws, including its constitution. "Ultimately, [Vučić] always represented his own interests and not the interests of Serbia," Gašić said.

The Student List's election programme names the EU as Serbia's most important economic partner and pledges to deepen ties with EU member states, including Greece, Italy, Hungary and France. It does not, however, explicitly name EU membership as an immediate goal, and Gašić declined to specify concrete aims for the accession process.

The party's stated priority is reversing years of rule-of-law rollbacks left by Vučić's administration. Representatives for the Serbian Progressive Party did not respond to requests for comment.