“The European Union has not just calmly observed all this,” explains Branko Čečen, an experienced journalist and analyst of Serbian society. “Moreover, it strongly and very publicly supported Vučić and gave him funds, because it is easier for it to get lithium in the office of one man, for a certain sum of money, than to deal with parliament, courts and institutions of a functional system. Thus, the EU has also become very unpopular in Serbia.”

This approach by the EU has created a paradoxical situation. According to Čečen, “That contempt for the EU was also gently nurtured by Vučić in his media, so the opposition had to become publicly skeptical towards the Union, otherwise it would have been further marginalized. Consequently, now the Union does not want Vučić to fall. With him, they know how things will go, and from the opposition, they can only expect antagonism, or at least that’s how it looks from their perspective.”

When opposition parties organized demonstrations against Vučić’s government at the end of the pandemic, the response was brutal. “Vučić brought out all the police except, probably, divers – even horses, dogs and armored vehicles with heavy machine guns. They broke everything in their path, brutally dealing with citizens,” says Čečen. “You probably didn’t notice that the EU did something about it, but that’s just because – it did absolutely nothing. It was dealing with its own infected backside and that’s understandable.”

The current protest movement, led primarily by students, evolves in this complicated geopolitical context. While the protests have grown to unprecedented levels, with demonstrations in over 400 cities and towns across Serbia, the EU’s priorities lie elsewhere. “Even now, with Ukraine, Trump, Israel and other hotspots, Serbia is nowhere near the priorities of the EU, which is now so unpopular in Serbia that even pro-European parties have packed EU flags into storage rooms to maintain support.”

This unpopularity of the EU among ordinary Serbians represents a significant shift from earlier aspirations toward European integration. The current government maintains official dialogue with Brussels while simultaneously undermining EU values domestically. For their part, student protesters have largely avoided taking explicit positions on EU integration, instead focusing on fundamental demands for rule of law and functioning institutions – principles that the EU claims to stand for.

“The EU will cooperate with any government in Serbia,” Čečen notes. “If they were in such loving relations with a regime that is directly anti-European, they will easily do so with more decent people.” This pragmatism from Brussels, however, has cost the EU moral authority among many Serbians who might otherwise be natural supporters of European integration.

The collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 15 people – the incident that sparked the current protests – connects to EU interests as well. Čečen mentions that China, “involved in the construction of the object that killed 15 people, is keeping to the side and staying silent.” Major infrastructure projects in Serbia frequently involve foreign investors, including EU countries, Russia and China, often with limited oversight and accountability.

While the protesters themselves rarely mention the EU in their demands, the absence of European flags and rhetoric is notable. This movement, uniting disparate groups from across Serbia’s political and ethnic spectrum, has emerged without significant international support. “Students and citizens of Serbia, apart from some citizens of the neighboring countries, have absolutely not a single ally in this fight,” Čečen observes.

The complex relationship with the EU reveals a broader reality about Serbia’s position: caught between competing international interests while its citizens increasingly demand domestic accountability. “The absence of allies does not have to be so bad,” Čečen suggests. “If the government falls, for the first time Serbia would have done something by itself for its own benefit and thus perhaps matured a bit politically.”

As the movement progresses, the question remains whether a post-Vučić Serbia would reorient toward EU integration or continue the current pattern of formal cooperation without substantive alignment. What seems certain is that any future government will need to reckon with a citizenry that has become deeply skeptical of international actors, including the European Union, even as they demand the very democratic values the EU claims to champion.

Adam Novak