BELGRADE, Serbia — For over a year, residents of Serbia’s capital were blocked from entering one of the city’s most prominent parks, nestled between Parliament and the offices of the powerful right-wing leader, Aleksandar Vucic.
The reason: the park in Belgrade had been cordoned off and occupied by throngs of Vucic’s most ardent — and violent — supporters, an effective enforcer squad for the authoritarian leader tasked with intimidating and sometimes assaulting members of a growing anti-government student movement.
But after Vucic stunned the Balkan country Sunday evening by conceding defeat in an election against student-backed candidates, ecstatic young revelers filled the streets of Belgrade and ripped down the cordons around the encampment known as Caciland. Before long, the barricades lay tossed aside and the tents within went up in smoke, along with Vucic’s power.
The seismic shift came after two years of relentless organizing and sustained protests by the student movement, which accused the Kremlin-backed Vucic of increasing authoritarianism, connections to organized crime and runaway corruption.
It also echoed other bottom-up, youth-led protest movements that have recently challenged what they see as entrenched, unresponsive power structures in Europe and beyond. Close to home, in neighboring Hungary, they succeeded in ousting another entrenched leader.
Echoes of Hungary
Serbia’s popular student movement grew out of anger at Vucic and his government since 16 people were killed in 2024 when a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in Novi Sad. That set off the wave of youth protests that blamed the collapse on high-level corruption and cronyism during renovation work at the station.
When Vucic conceded defeat on Sunday and tens of thousands took to the streets to celebrate, the scenes bore a remarkable resemblance to the ouster of pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary just six months earlier.
Where the far-right Orbán’s 16-year grip on power had once seemed unshakable, growing anger over corruption and capture of the country’s institutions coalesced around a political newcomer, Péter Magyar, who — like Serbia’s students — spent two years relentlessly touring the countryside where Orbán was strongest.
Magyar campaigned heavily against corruption and in favor of bringing Hungary back into the fold of European Union democracies. When his center-right Tisza party won a landslide in the election, it was largely thanks to a groundswell of youth participation that delivered the highest electoral turnout in Hungary’s post-socialist history.
Like Serbia’s student movement, Magyar’s activists and supporters offered a vision of restoring Hungary’s institutions that had been hollowed out by Orbán, building a functioning state that responded to citizens’ needs and adhered to the rule of law.
Both in Serbia and Hungary, many have expressed hope that ousting their autocratic regimes would open up a chance for a new generation of political representation and genuine democratic participation.
In social media posts on Sunday and Monday, Magyar congratulated Serbia’s students, saying he was “delighted to hear how much strength our victory in April had given them during this difficult struggle.”
“Surely I wasn’t the only one feeling nostalgic when I saw those pictures coming out of Serbia last night?” he wrote, alluding to the joyful celebrations in Belgrade and Budapest six months apart.
Serbian students could learn from Hungary’s post-Orbán experience
Since he came to power, Magyar has used his party’s two-thirds parliamentary majority to gradually deliver on his promises to free the media, bring Hungary back into the EU sphere and punish members of Orbán’s regime and their allies who had accumulated wealth under his patronage.
Serbia’s youth movement now faces their own daunting task of restoring a ravaged democracy and institutions, but without the benefit of the constitutional majority that Magyar enjoys in Hungary. Their Students’ List of candidates includes various experts in their fields but with little or no experience in politics or state jobs. The name of the future prime minister remains a mystery.
“Today we are celebrating … but tomorrow, the job starts,” said Radomir Saicic, one of the candidates on the students’ ticket.
How the reform will play out will determine the success of the movement. Vucic’s loyalists installed over the years in the security services, coupled with a well-organized propaganda machine, are likely to try to undermine the effort as Vucic on Sunday announced a struggle from the opposition against the new authorities.
Youth protests spread further south to Albania and beyond
Youth protests have recently rocked another Balkan country, Albania, where actions by student groups seeking education reforms have morphed into broader anti-government sentiment — largely centered on anger over a major development project linked to President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Sustained demonstrations against the long-serving socialist government have escalated into violent clashes on the streets of the capital Tirana, with protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama — another Vucic ally — over allegations of widespread corruption. Riot police have responded with tear gas and water cannons.
Those clashes came as social unrest has set Europe’s streets ablaze from France and Italy to Spain and Portugal, fueled by youth frustration over the state of public education, social services and the high cost of housing.
María Silvestre, professor of sociology at the University of Deusto in Spain, said young Europeans are experiencing “a strong sense of uncertainty and a lack of control,” and that when specific conditions arise, “a spark suddenly ignites that is capable of channeling that discontent and driving people into the streets.”
It is about a new generation taking over
In a post-election analysis, Serbian professor Dejan Pavlovic wrote on X on Monday that the students’ lack of political experience or involvement in any dubious business dealings had “become their greatest strategic advantage.”
Vucic, on the other hand, had become “culturally obsolete,” Pavlovic said, as the new generation with their own values and ways stepped onto the scene.
The next challenge will be a presidential election that must be held by the end of the year. The students will have to avoid allowing political divisions that might split their movement. Some highly sensitive issues include relations with the European Union and Russia, but the primary focus will be dealing with corruption.
“Tentacles of Vucic’s octopus have spread around the entire country. Taking them out, dealing with them, is going to be one hell of a job,” warned political commentator Ivan Milenkovic.
Nonetheless, Pavlovic wrote, the Serbian students’ success “challenges conventional assumptions about the resources necessary to defeat an entrenched incumbent” and will become the subject of scholarly research.
Gec and Spike write for the Associated Press.