Serbia’s constitutional crisis exposes EU-aligned authoritarianism’s fragility amid Balkan power struggles
Original framing: “Serbia’s populist president Aleksandar Vučić resigns to run for prime minister” — The Guardian - World
Roma communities in Belgrade’s New Belgrade district report increased police raids since 2020, while Kosovar Albanians in North Mitrovica face renewed ethnic profiling. Women’s rights groups like *Kvinke* highlight how Vučić’s regime uses ‘family values’ rhetoric to justify rolling back reproductive rights (e.g., the 2021 abortion restrictions). LGBTQ+ activists, such as those behind the 2019 Belgrade Pride attacks, note that Vučić’s ‘traditionalist’ stance obscures state collusion with far-right groups. These voices are systematically excluded from mainstream narratives, which frame protests as ‘apolitical’ or ‘middle-class.’
Vučić’s resignation is not a power struggle but a *structural adjustment*—a move to preserve Serbia’s oligarchic-authoritarian model under a new institutional guise, enabled by the EU’s complicity in treating ‘stability’ as an end in itself.
The historical parallel to Milošević’s 1997 term-limit amendment reveals how Serbia’s post-war transition was never about democracy but about elite continuity, with the EU serving as the ultimate guarantor. The trickster dimension exposes the system’s self-deception: Vučić’s ‘resignation’ is a performance to maintain legitimacy, while the EU’s ‘conditionality’ is a tool to bind Serbia to its neoliberal project. The solution lies in restoring marginalized voices—Roma, Kosovar Albanians, and women—as the true agents of systemic change, not the urban middle class whose protests risk being co-opted. The path forward demands a regional alliance that weaponizes Vučić’s fear of isolation, while artistic and economic strategies dismantle the regime’s ideological and material foundations.