In today’s newsletter: Born from the fury surrounding the deadly Novi Sad station collapse, Serbia’s Student List has taken its protests all the way to the elections in an unprecedented grassroots campaign.

Good morning. As waves of youth-led protests swell across Europe, prompted by the cost of living, unaffordable housing, and education standards, in Serbia the younger generation is taking on the apparatus of the state itself. In tight-run parliamentary elections this Sunday, the country’s most consequential political movement in decades, Student List, is challenging former Slobodan Milošević henchman Aleksandar Vučić and his 12-year domination of Serbian politics.

Two years on from a singular national tragedy that galvanized public anger at state cover-ups and corruption, Gen Z have channeled their energy and fury into a bold experiment in direct democracy, creating a genuinely leaderless, grassroots movement that is firing up disaffected voters across the country.

I spoke to Julian Borger, our senior international correspondent, who has just returned from Belgrade, about their hopes of emulating the defeat of Vučić’s ally, Viktor Orbán, in neighboring Hungary and the potential for a democratic domino through central Europe.

Headlines

  • UK news: Every Briton is being urged to stock up to nine liters of bottled water and three days’ worth of food in new government guidance designed to ensure that households can survive a weather, cyber, or other serious emergency.
  • Ukraine: Russia has carried out a massive “demonstrative” attack on Ukraine, bombarding Kyiv with ballistic missiles just hours after Vladimir Putin said he had agreed to resume trilateral negotiations.
  • UK politics: Nigel Farage’s newest billionaire donor was in business with a powerful Iranian religious foundation under the authority of the country’s supreme leader.
  • Europe news: Emmanuel Macron has said “illegitimate” demonstrations will be banned over the coming days as France seeks to get a grip on civil unrest after some of its worst street violence in years.
  • Energy: Great Britain is expected to pay some of the highest energy costs in Europe this winter as its reliance on imports to ensure a steady supply is forecast to deepen.

The Catalyst for Change

It was, one Serbian student told me, “the drop that overflowed the glass.” On 1 November 2024, the collapse of a concrete canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, killed 16 people. The youngest was a six-year-old girl, Sara Firic, who was sitting on a bench with her grandfather and older sister. The Serbian Times reported they were still holding hands when their bodies were dug out of the rubble.

In the aftermath of the disaster, student-led protests developed organically, with demonstrators blocking a nearby crossroads for the same number of minutes as lives lost. As details emerged of botched refurbishment work carried out in what critics described as a corrupt deal with a Chinese consortium, the anger mounted. Ongoing protests were brutally suppressed, and Vučić himself branded demonstrators western-backed “terrorists.”

Two years later, that single tragedy has sparked a mass movement for accountability and inclusive democracy to counter the creeping authoritarianism of Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Julian notes, “There was a deep well of public discontent, and the students were inspirational in keeping the protest movement going.”

The Political Landscape

Vučić expected the protesters to dissipate – instead, the mounting pressure forced the president to resign and call a snap parliamentary election, as he endeavors to consolidate his 12 years in power in a Putin-inspired switch to become prime minister. In response, the student movement is fielding a list of 250 candidates of its own, mainly locally respected academics but also actors, musicians, and farmers, with each candidate approved by a citizens’ assembly.