Version imprimableIn front of Belgrade’s Faculty of Philosophy, a table and camping chairs were set up. A dozen or so students wrapped up in duvets were watching the entrance. On the table were sudokus and packets of cigarettes to pass the time. The students take 8am shifts to secure the faculty, which has become both a dormitory and a People’s Assembly. Several times a week, classes are organized and open to all. There are also decision-making assemblies where the future of the movement is shaped. The students greet us with a smile, taking turns to speak, then all at once. They say they’ve been there since day 0, six months already.
As a reminder, on 29 November last year, the canopy of Novi Sad station collapsed, killing 15 people. [1] The students quickly mobilized against the authoritarian regime of Aleksandar Vučić, who was accused of awarding the work to corrupt and incompetent companies. [2] .]] In a country where it is difficult to criticize the government in power, the students have succeeded in a tour de force: they have “depoliticized” the movement and refused to turn it into a partisan struggle in a country riven by deep divisions. This strategy enabled them to bring people together across ideological lines. They are framing the movement around four simple demands:
1. Publication of all documents relating to the reconstruction of Novi Sad station, which are currently inaccessible to the public.
2. Confirmation by the competent authorities of the identity of all those reasonably suspected of having physically assaulted students and teachers, and the initiation of criminal proceedings against them.
3. The charges against the students arrested during the demonstrations be dropped, and all criminal proceedings suspended.
4. A 20% increase in the budget allocated to higher education.
The response to these demands was massive. The students succeeded in rallying a large part of the country, using various mobilisation techniques such as nationwide marches to thwart state propaganda. The mobilisation reached its peak on 15 March 2025, when 400,000 people poured into the capital. [3]
But what has happened since then? Why have the media stopped reporting on the Balkans?
The government plays the attrition card in the face of exhausted young people
Faced with this persistent protest, the government was quick to react by playing for time and using the university calendar to its advantage. It is the end of May and the exams are approaching. The government is using the calendar to its advantage to put pressure on the students. Their decision was made: they would sit the exams, knowing that they were going to fail. They decided to sacrifice a year of learning for the future of their country.
In response to a potential widespread failure at the end-of-year exams, the Serbian government is threatening to privatize the universities on the pretext that the public sector is insufficient to guarantee the success of these students. Faced with this game of failure, the dwindling numbers of students testify to their general exhaustion: “at the beginning people came, now we are burnt out”. Although still supported by a majority of the population, the number of active activists is dwindling: “we are not enough people, now our shifts are from 8 to 11”. Fewer and fewer of them are coming to staff the university barricades: “we are the bravest soldiers” say the last remnants.
In addition to the pressure from the government, they have to deal with the government’s shenanigans, which use propaganda and discrediting techniques that are hardly fair play. The students denounce the “Studenti koji žele da studiraju”, literally students who want to study, which refers to a government-orchestrated group camped out in front of parliament to thwart the protesters. [4]
Despite the fatigue and the vicious political strategies, the movement resisted, thanks in particular to a well-honed horizontal structure.
The movement claims to be non-hierarchical, apolitical and non-partisan
Students take it in turn to speak outside the university, none of them really standing out from the others. At the beginning of the movement, some students tried to impose themselves but were quickly pushed aside. The movement claims no leader. In the media, it is never the same faces: “we want to promote the demands, not people”. The movement claims to be totally horizontal: “we are against hierarchy”. They also claim to be apolitical and non-partisan in order to bring together as many people as possible and prevent attempts by the political opposition or even by certain professors who want to take advantage of the movement to obtain posts in a possible government of experts.
In reality, the movement is riven by deep political divisions
Behind this apolitical façade, however, a more assertive ideological line was emerging. Students from the philosophy faculty explain: “this is a communist movement by essence”. They defend the idea of a Social Front that would give power to the people: “let the people decide”. The Social Front does not yet exist as a formal entity in Serbia, but it is a political proposal emanating from the student movement. The idea is to create a broad, horizontal network of students, workers, farmers and other social groups, united by a common opposition to the corruption and authoritarianism of the Vučić government. The project aims to transcend traditional divisions, rejecting partisan manipulation and promoting direct, participatory democracy. [5]
The philosophy faculty to which the students interviewed belong, which is anchored on the left, openly criticises other establishments for being too accommodating to liberal institutions. They defend an anti-European and sovereignist line, convinced that the EU holds Serbian youth in contempt. On several occasions, they hold the EU responsible for the 1999 bombings, ‘we are not fond of the EU’. [6] Conversely, other universities remain Brussels-oriented and seem to be waiting for a response from the European Union, wishing to reproduce liberal societies modelled on other European countries. In mid-May, around twenty students ran 2000 km from Novi Sad to Brussels in the hope of a response from the European institutions, which are discreetly supporting the Vučić government. [7]
How do Europe and France negotiate human rights and democracy?
France, or the “great European democracy” selling rafales to an autocrat
On 9 April, Emmanuel Macron received President Vučić, without a word about the student movement or the country’s autocratic drift. [8] How can it be that, faced with such an obvious denial of democracy, European countries look the other way?
France’s silent complicity could be explained in terms of economic and geopolitical interests. Since 2019 and its reintegration into the Balkans, France’s strategy has been to prioritise cooperation on security and the economy, to the detriment of democratic requirements. Paris prefers to open up a new market for its investors, rather than fight corruption. In July 2023, Vučić signed a historic contract with Macron: the purchase of twelve Rafale fighter jets worth €3 billion. At the time, the French president hailed it as a “demonstration of the European spirit”.
A colossal sum for a country where the minimum wage is no more than 400 euros a month, but one that strengthens the military-industrial links between Paris and Belgrade. And France is not stopping there. It is involved in a number of strategic projects in Serbia: Vinci operates Belgrade airport, Michelin has a tyre factory in Pirot, and discussions are under way for the construction of nuclear power stations in partnership with EDF and Framatome.
This policy is part of a wider framework known as “stabilocracy” [9], i.e. tacit support for authoritarian regimes as long as this guarantees political security and access to markets. By preferring its contracts to its principles, French diplomacy is fuelling a geopolitical status quo that entrenches an authoritarian regime at the expense of a civil society calling for democracy.
Europe of the market, not of the people
French silence is echoed only by European silence. The Serbian president was even publicly congratulated by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, praising his “sense of responsibility” and the country’s “economic potential’” without a word for the regime’s democratic violations and corruption. In 2023, under the guise of ”ecological transition”, the European Union relaunched Rio Tinto’s highly controversial mining project, which had been suspended in 2022 thanks to environmental and public protests. A lithium extraction project to supply European industry, with no regard for local ecosystems or the people directly affected. Serbia’s young people are being sacrificed on the altar of Europe’s ‘green’ transition. [10] In the same year, Serbia received the biggest European subsidy in its history, more than half a billion euros for the renovation of the Belgrade-Niš rail corridor.
Serbia is also a strategic point for Brussels. It lies on the Balkan route and enables migration control to be outsourced. Serbia acts as a buffer and allows itself illegal refoulement, police violence and the denial of human rights. [11] In this way, Europe does not get its hands dirty and Vučić, by playing the guardian of the “fortress”, buys himself political indulgence from Brussels. The EU also fears a shift towards Russia, an economic partner and potential market. Despite its status as a candidate country, Serbia refuses to align its sanctions with those of the European Union against Moscow. By maintaining economic ties with Russia, Vučić is skilfully playing on this “non-aligned” position, oscillating between promises of European integration and an assumed closeness to the Kremlin. This double game worries Brussels, which fears that Belgrade is becoming a Russian Trojan horse in the heart of the continent. All these economic and geostrategic interests justify European leaders turning a blind eye to an illiberal government and authoritarian practices. One might well ask what purpose the EU serves if it sacrifices its young people in the name of free trade, security and geopolitical relations? [12]
What next? Is “history over”?
The mobilization is running out of steam. [13] Vučić tells his supporters that “the story is over”. Lucid about the situation, the students at the Faculty of Philosophy could only envisage two options: “either we stop or there will be civil war”. They insist once again that their main objective is to mobilize the Serbs first and foremost: “we want to mobilize our people”. They do not just want to change the government, they want to change the whole system. At a time when Serbian students are reminding us that emancipation will come neither from governments nor from institutions, but from peoples in struggle, we can ask ourselves what our role is in this internationalist solidarity that has yet to be built.
5 June 2025
Translated by International Viewpoint.
