Serbia's Student List Wins 140 Parliament Seats

BELGRADE: The Students' List is set to hold 140 of the 250 seats in Serbia's Parliament, according to preliminary figures released by the state election commission. Aleksandar Vucic's SNS party will hold 104. Vucic conceded defeat about an hour and a half after polls closed on Sunday.

Forming a government will take longer. Serbian election law allows for appeals and possible reruns at individual polling stations before the commission certifies final results and Parliament is inaugurated. A government could be sworn in by the end of the year. Vucic resigned as president last month to lead the SNS ticket, which also requires a separate presidential vote to pick his successor.

Celebrations in central Belgrade on Sunday turned tense. Some in the crowd threw stones at withdrawing police and tore down a camp that Vucic loyalists had occupied in a park for more than a year. On Monday evening, groups entered the private station Informer, which has called student protesters enemies of the state. Police cordons guarded the pro-Vucic broadcaster Pink TV. Vucic condemned the "violence" and warned that his supporters could "self-organize."

Journalists' associations filed a request with the state media regulator on Tuesday asking that Informer's broadcasting license be revoked. Dijana Hrka, whose son was among the 16 people killed in a 2024 train station tragedy in northern Serbia that set off the protests, entered the station and confronted editor-in-chief Dragan Vucicevic. Media expert Snezana Milivojevic told N1 television that the media situation is "before everyone's eyes." She said public "big expectations will be hard to satisfy."

The movement grew out of the collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad. Its 11-point program makes fighting graft a centerpiece. The Students' List has pledged to overhaul the police and judiciary, create a police unit answerable to independent prosecutors, ban corrupt officials from office and review major projects of the previous government. Those steps would take time.

During the protests, the candidates avoided topics that split Serbian opinion, including EU membership and ties with Russia. Vucic declined to join EU sanctions on Moscow over the war in Ukraine, and his EU bid stalled as a result. Some Students' List officials have said sanctions policy will not change. Serbia's 1999 experience with NATO's bombing campaign and the recognition by the United States and most EU members of Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence have also shaped its posture toward the West.

Marta Kos, the EU's enlargement commissioner, spoke by phone with Ilija Srdanovic, a physician who heads the Students' List ticket. She wrote on X that the EU is "ready to support the new Serbian government in progressing on its European path" and that planned reforms "can bring Serbia closer to the EU." The Students' List and the EU mission in Serbia have asked for calm.

Vucic has not said whether he will run in the presidential election, and no date has been set. The state election commission's current figures are preliminary and incomplete.