The 2024–2025 Anti-government Protests in Serbia: Crisis of Democracy, Civic Awakening and
- Minority Issues Research Institute (MIRI)
- Dec 17, 2025
- 9 min read
Author: Dr Mirsad Kriještorac (Minority Issues Research Institute- MIRI)
Suggested Citation: Mirsad Kriještorac, "The 2024–2025 Anti-government Protests in Serbia: Crisis of Democracy, Civic Awakening and Minority Participation," Minority Issues Research Institute, December 17, 2025, https://www.miri.international/post/the-2024-202-anti-government-protests-in-serbia
This article is based on the Minority Issues Research Institute (MIRI) Seminar on Current Affairs, from September 5, 2025, titled “Anti-government protests in Serbia: their impact, challenges and minority perspective.” The participants were Dr Sabina Pačariz (Northeastern University London) and Dr Aleksandar Pavlović (University of Belgrade), both political scientists with a regional focus on Southeastern Europe. In the article, Dr Mirsad Kriještorac (Minority Issues Research Institute Seminar- MIRI) observes protests from a minority perspective, while seeing them as a result of the crisis of democracy and civic awakening. The core of the references in the text is based on the comments by the MIRI seminar’s participants.
The 2024–2025 Anti-government Protests in Serbia
Introduction
In late 2024, mass protests in Serbia began, along with a movement that grew rapidly from local mourning gatherings into a nationwide demand for accountability and democratic renewal within the country. The protests started after the collapse of the newly renovated Novi Sad train station canopy, which resulted in sixteen deaths, exposing official shady construction oversight and corruption. As Dr Aleksandar Pavlović from the University of Belgrade noted, the collapse represented “not only physical destruction but moral and institutional decay,” encapsulating a widespread frustration that the Serbian people have with corruption and state dysfunction.[1]
The tragedy sparked widespread protests and mass civic movement in the months that followed, demanding accountability, media freedom and new elections, reshaping Serbia's political climate. Despite mass protests, regional and international media, as well as European Union (EU) officials, were surprisingly mostly absent and quiet about the protests, inviting observers to speculate about their relations with the Serbian political leaders, as well as to evaluate the demands of the protestors.
Origins and Expansion of the Protest Movement
The initial gatherings in November 2024, following the tragedy, were solemn and mostly apolitical expressions of mourning. People across the country, in various cities, stood in silence for sixteen minutes, one minute for each life lost. These silent vigils, however, eventually spread and grew, and by December of 2024, protests had been recorded in more than five hundred separate locations throughout the country. In a country of approximately seven million people, such a high level of mobilization is significant, indicating a wider political movement. According to Dr Pavlović, Serbia had not witnessed protests of this scale even during the major anti-government activities of the 1990s.
University students soon became central to the movement’s organization and direction. Their four core demands were as stated: the immediate removal of responsible officials, the prosecution of those involved in corruption, public release of all construction and procurement documents, and a 20% increase in higher education funding. Every demand reflected a structural critique of the state’s dysfunction. In an unprecedented move, the University of Belgrade’s Senate formally supported these demands. University faculty across the country participated in strikes and class suspensions, successfully creating a cross-institutional solidarity that has not frequently been seen in Serbia’s history. The protests reached a defining moment when more than 300,000 people gathered in Belgrade in March 2025 to call for these demands, marking the largest demonstration that the country had seen in tremulous post-Yugoslav wars.
The movement's general, decentralized organizational style has been one of its defining characteristics. All decisions regarding the protests were coordinated through assemblies, where both students and faculty collectively debated and voted on actions of the participants. Dr Pavlović emphasized that, “unlike previous protests, these are not personified in a couple of leaders,” which has tremendously helped protect the movement from co-optation and targeted suppression. The movement's firm commitment to democratic participation and collective decision-making is made clear by the absence of a hierarchical leadership structure.
Authoritarian Governance and the Crisis of Accountability
Beyond the tragedy of Novi Sad, the protests have deeper roots. For years, Serbia has seen a decline in democratic institutions and a shift toward authoritarian rule. Dr Sabina Pačariz from Northeastern University London characterized the current Serbian political system as a hybrid regime, where democratic structures exist within the country, but have in essence become meaningless. “The currency is loyalty, not merit,” she argues, noting that allegiance to the governing party is a major factor in appointments to the high positions of public institutions.[2] Both competence and accountability across all levels of government are seriously compromised by such a system.
An important feature of this authoritarian environment led by the President of the country, Aleksandar Vučić, which has been growing in Serbia, is the selective enforcement of the law. Dr Pačariz highlights that protesters “are not demanding new laws, they are calling upon the enforcement of the existing laws and constitution,” emphasizing the fact that the existing legal framework for accountability is frequently disregarded or manipulated by the Serbian government officials.[3] Thus, the protesters' demands demonstrate a strong call for real structural reforms of the current political regime, not just the investigations of the train station collapse. Their demands for the rule of law, judicial independence, and transparency are all representative of a larger struggle to restore the European principles of democracy.
Moreover, media control and the consolidation of executive power add to the issue of corruption. Public broadcasters and many private media outlets have been systematically taken over by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) ruling party, effectively limiting citizens’ access to transparency and objective information and reporting. In the meantime, crucial social and economic institutions continue to support state leadership via networks of political patronage. The protests have faced heavy-handed responses and intimidation by the police and party loyalists in places like Kraljevo, Novi Pazar, Bački Petrovac, Novi Sad, and others, which can be explained by the corrupt structural conditions that caused the protests.
Minority Participation and Emerging Cross-Ethnic Solidarity
A remarkable aspect of these protests is the solidarity across ethnic and social lines. Minority communities in Serbia, those being Bosniaks, Slovaks, Roma, and Albanians, have each played visible roles in the protests, despite the pressures they face as minorities in areas where local institutions are closely linked to the central government in Belgrade. Dr Pačariz explained that rather than representing the community, local minority institutions often serve as tools of political control by Vučić’s ruling party. Citing examples from Novi Pazar, she notes that ethnic identity of local government leaders alone does not guarantee genuine advocacy for minority interests: “Just having the ‘right ethnicity’ in leadership does not mean that a community's interests are served.”[4] Such a situation demonstrates the extent of the central government’s dominance over minority occupied places and the corruption it causes on the local level as well.
Minority participation in the protests has been active and exceptionally courageous despite these circumstances and the general insecurity that minorities are facing in Serbia since the collapse of Yugoslavia. Protesters in Novi Pazar, a city with a predominantly Bosniak population, were brutally suppressed by out-of-town private security and gendarmery. However, instead of scaring people into stopping their participation, these aggressions strengthened relationships and solidarity among the various ethnic groups. Dr Pavlović recounts a striking moment when Bosniak students from Novi Pazar arrived in Belgrade and were protected by a Serb war veteran who spoke to the media and addressed their parents, saying, “There are no more your kids and our kids. Your children are safe here.” Such expressions of solidarity, especially given Serbia’s recent history, mark a profound cultural shift among the population. Because of this, Dr Pačariz noted, for many participants, this was the first time they had felt a shared civic identity that transcended ethnic boundaries.
However, reflecting on the mention of the war veterans, Dr Svetluša Surová from the Minority Issues Research Institute (MIRI) commented in the following conversation that it is not enough for those veterans to promise not to harm the Bosniak youth again.[5] Rather, they should also have to apologize for the crimes committed during the 1990s wars, including the Srebrenica Genocide, signaling in that way the desire for serious changes in Serbia. Yet, the lack of such apologies from the veterans who participate in the protests, to Dr Surová, suggests that protestors are avoiding acknowledging those painful questions from the past, which makes many wonder if progress in Serbia is possible without addressing the horrible crimes and unresolved problems that minorities in Serbia experienced since the 1990s. The necessary reconciliation among all citizens in Serbia is to be based on the admissions about those crimes and mistreatments, and apologies by the Serbs to the minorities and their own citizens and victims. For many, that is the root cause of the ongoing corruption and other problems with the democracy of the political regime in Serbia.
International Ambiguity and European Stabilitocracy
The EU's limited and conflicted response to the protests in Serbia is a surprising and worrisome factor among the demonstrations. The EU officials have not yet seriously notified and faulted President Aleksandar Vučić or his government despite widespread police and mob violence against peaceful protestors and minorities, as well as blatant signs of democratic regression. Dr Pavlović reasoned that expressions of support for the protesters, “would send a powerful message of where the EU really stands in terms of its values which are clearly expressed and desired by the protestors.”[6] Instead, the silence has been interpreted by many local people as betrayal and complicity with the Serbian government's avoidance of accountability, while the protestors are clearly fighting for the EU values as they demand the rule of law, noted Dr Pavlović.
Dr Pačariz attributes this dynamic to a broader phenomenon known as stabilitocracy, a policy in which the EU tolerates semi-authoritarian regimes in the Western Balkans so long as they maintain geopolitical stability in the region and provide EU states with predictability. Serbia’s role in regional dynamics and the possibility for strategic natural resource extraction, such as lithium, often outweigh internal democratic concerns. This discrepancy has led protesters to express disillusionment with EU integrations, while continuing to uphold European democratic values and staying focused on their initial demands.
Structural Obstacles and the Risks of Repression
The protests have exposed deeper issues within the Serbian state structure and political regime, including its connections to organized crime and paramilitary networks. Participants on the ground have described a symbiotic relationship between criminal actors, the police and political elites. They cooperate and coordinate even in the suppression of protests through physical attacks and intimidation of the protestors and anyone who dares to speak publicly about the protestors demands. Images of those criminal gangs attacking protestors in front of the police are widely circulated and shared via social media and a few independent media channels, without any recourse.
Although not mentioned in the MIRI Seminar, the same was reported in June 2023 by the New York Times in a stunning article describing alleged ties of President Vučić with soccer hooligans’ criminal activities and horrific crimes.[7] These types of relationships between the government and criminals raise the risks protesters face and complicate efforts to achieve justice through the regular institutional channels. Dr Pačariz cautions that “authoritarian regimes are most dangerous when they seem most stable,” suggesting that Serbia’s current political stability is a fragile cover masking significant internal tension.[8] Despite these obstacles, the scale and persistence of the protests indicate a strong collective resolve to continue until necessary changes are made. Both Dr Pavlović and Dr Pačariz pointed out that the movement’s moral clarity and interethnic solidarity reflect a political awakening that is not easily suppressed and provide a hope that the Serbian civic society is going to continue to play an important role in reforming the country’s political regime and supporting the rule of law.
Drawing on insights from these political scientists, it is evident that the protests are rooted in long-standing grievances of the citizens, including selective law enforcement and authoritarian governance without accountability. Although the ultimate political outcomes remain uncertain, the protests have already reshaped Serbia’s civic landscape by demonstrating that public and interethnic solidarity, especially when grounded in shared democratic values, can significantly challenge entrenched systems of power. More importantly, they have revived the possibility of a future Serbia defined not by fear or division, but by a renewed sense of collective belonging and civic citizenship.
References
[1] Pačariz, Sabina; Pavlović, Aleksandar. 2025. “Anti-government protests in Serbia: their impact, challenges and minority perspective.” Online Seminar from Minority Issues Research Institute, Bratislava, Slovakia, moderated by Mirsad Kriještorac; introduction by Svetluša Surová; September 5. https://youtu.be/xzLwGGiPdVg?si=eCO_6XqjQzthbhbY
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[8] Pačariz, Sabina; Pavlović, Aleksandar. 2025. “Anti-government protests in Serbia: their impact, challenges and minority perspective.” Online Seminar from Minority Issues Research Institute, Bratislava, Slovakia, moderated by Mirsad Kriještorac; introduction by Svetluša Surová; September 5. https://youtu.be/xzLwGGiPdVg?si=eCO_6XqjQzthbhbY
Suggested citation of the article:
Mirsad Kriještorac, "The 2024–2025 Anti-government Protests in Serbia: Crisis of Democracy, Civic Awakening and Minority Participation," Minority Issues Research Institute, December 17, 2025, https://www.miri.international/post/the-2024-202-anti-government-protests-in-serbia
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