Serbia's student protest movement wins a parliamentary majority, and Vučić concedes
NPR's dispatch from Belgrade explains how a leaderless list born from the Novi Sad canopy collapse beat a party that has run Serbia since 2012.
Aleksandar Vučić conceded on the night of Serbia's October 25 snap parliamentary election, which he had called in September. "It is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105," he said, citing a sample count; a majority in the 250-seat parliament is 126. The Student List, picked by the youth-led protest movement and running with no leader or hierarchy, took more than half the vote after most opposition parties stood aside.
The protests began after a renovated railway-station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people, and grew into nearly two years of demonstrations against corruption. Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party has held power since 2012; he kept close ties to Russia while pursuing EU membership talks. A regional analyst told NPR the broad coalition's fissures could show soon after the victory.
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Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse
After exploring 'The smell of freedom': Serbia's student movement celebrates election triumph, the disaster that started it all is the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse.
On November 1, 2024, the concrete canopy of Novi Sad's main railway station, renovated from 2021 with support from China's Belt and Road Initiative, collapsed and killed 16 people, setting off protests that spread across Serbia.
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