Serbia votes as strongman Vučić faces grassroots challenge to 12-year rule – Europe live

The vote is a culmination of two years of student-led protests triggered by the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy in November 2024, which killed 16 people and uncovered massive government and institutional corruption.

The bottom-up, leaderless movement, with 250 candidates democratically elected from people with limited political experience but distinguished professional careers, seeks to end Vučić’s rule and rewire the state, with a focus on fighting alleged corruption, clientelism and power abuses of the past.

Polls opened at 7am local time and close at 8pm, with the Student List, a leaderless movement of 250 candidates, challenging Vučić’s 12-year rule.

Vučić’s political background

Aleksandar Vučić rose to prominence in the 1990s as a radical nationalist, supporting the policies of Serbian expansion and ethnic cleansing led by Slobodan Milošević, who died of a heart attack in detention in The Hague during his trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

He served as Milošević’s information minister throughout the Kosovo conflict. His Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, has been in government since 2012.

He first spent three years as the prime minister from 2014, before switching to the role of the president in 2017. Unable to run for a third term, he resigned from the post in September and now wants to lead the government again.

As president, Vučić has not emulated his predecessor’s militarism, but he has maintained his nationalist playbook in domestic politics, dismissing the opposition as stooges of unspecified foreign powers.

International ties and challenges

He maintains close ties with Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China, which regularly gets him criticism from the EU and complicates Serbia’s path to the bloc.

Serbia has regressed in international rankings for press freedom and corruption in recent years, and its process of joining the EU is effectively stalled.

Vučić is also fairly close with Donald Trump and his associates. He hosted Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner in Belgrade, and, as we revealed, personally intervened to advance an allegedly illegal – and definitely very controversial – scheme to hand over a protected site in Belgrade for a Trump tower.