Vucic's 12-Year Rule Toppled by Student Movement in Serbia... Will Protests Spread Across Europe?

Political Force With No Central Party, Representative or Leadership
Reflects Public Disillusionment With Corruption and Wrongdoing

Reuters-Yonhap News

Aleksandar Vučić, who had ruled Serbia for 12 years since 2014, serving successively as prime minister and president, is set to leave office after suffering a crushing defeat in the snap general election. The Student List, an organization hastily formed out of the student movement, brought down the Vučić government at the ballot box, sending shockwaves through Europe’s political landscape. Analysts say the result could mark a turning point for student movements and protests taking place across Europe, including in France.

According to CNN on Oct. 26 (local time), the Student List camp won a landslide victory in the snap general election held in Serbia the previous day, taking 139 of the 250 seats in parliament—enough for a majority—and becoming the largest parliamentary group. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won only 97 seats. A student-citizen alliance with no political experience, party organization or even a leader brought down the stronghold of a government that had been in power for 12 years.

The Student List is a student-citizen alliance formed in 2024. It was organized after a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in Novi Sad, northern Serbia, in November 2024, killing 16 people. As investigations into the disaster successively uncovered corruption and misconduct within the Serbian government, large-scale anti-government protests led by university students broke out, eventually giving rise to the Student List.

The Student List is a horizontally structured alliance with no central party organization, representative or single leadership. For the general election, it selected 250 experts from various fields to run as candidates through an internal council called the “Student Assembly.” The candidates included professors, doctors and farmers, most of whom had little political experience. This was possible because Serbian election law allows groups of citizens to participate in elections by submitting proportional-representation candidate lists as “Citizens’ Groups,” without forming a political party.

Constitutionally barred from serving three consecutive terms, Vučić resigned as president and ran in the general election, but has now been completely ousted by the student movement. His downfall means another major pro-Russian government in Europe has fallen, following the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

Meanwhile, the student movement’s success in taking power in Serbia is expected to energize student movements and protests now spreading across Europe, including in France, Italy, Spain and Hungary. AFP reported that “the students’ victory has brought major political change to Serbia, a country of about 6 million people,” adding that it “recalls the defeat of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary last April.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.