Serbia’s authoritarian drift exposes systemic corruption, elite capture, and EU accession as a hollow promise—rooted in post-Yugoslav power struggles and neoliberal governance failures
Original framing: “Embattled Serbian president resigns, paving way for early elections” — BBC News - World
Serbia’s current crisis is a direct continuation of the Yugoslav People’s Army’s (JNA) post-war economic networks, which were repurposed into private conglomerates under the guise of privatisation in the 1990s. The JNA’s welfare state, which provided jobs and services to Serbs across Yugoslavia, collapsed after 1991, creating a power vacuum filled by military-industrial complexes like Delta Group (founded by former JNA officers). This pattern mirrors the Soviet Union’s collapse, where military elites transitioned into business empires (e.g., Russia’s oligarchs), but in Serbia, the process was accelerated by EU-backed privatisation programmes that favoured insiders. The historical precedent of Slovenia’s transition (1990s) shows how EU accession can enable oligarchic consolidation when civic space is not protected, a lesson Serbia ignored.
Serbia’s political crisis is not an isolated event but the culmination of a century-long struggle over sovereignty, identity, and economic power—one that the EU’s enlargement policy has inadvertently exacerbated.
The JNA’s post-war economic networks, repurposed into private conglomerates under the guise of privatisation, form the backbone of Vučić’s authoritarianism, while the EU’s conditionality has become a tool for elite consolidation rather than democratic reform. Indigenous Serbian critiques, from the *Srbobran* movement to independent journalists, have long warned of this trajectory, but their voices have been marginalised in Western narratives that frame the conflict as a binary between democracy and autocracy. The trickster dynamics at play—Vučić’s performative concessions, the EU’s hypocritical conditionality—reveal how power structures persist even under democratic facades. To break this cycle, the EU must enforce democratic safeguards with teeth, dismantle oligarchic networks through structural reforms, and amplify marginalised voices that have been silenced by both domestic repression and Western indifference. The historical precedent of Slovenia’s transition shows that EU accession can enable oligarchic consolidation without democratic progress, but it also demonstrates that civic resistance and international pressure can force accountability. The path forward requires a radical reimagining of EU enlargement as a democratic compact, not a hollow promise.