Hybrid Authoritarian
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HRF classifies Serbia as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Serbia is a parliamentary republic with a unicameral, 250-member National Assembly elected for four-year terms. Executive power rests with a cabinet subject to parliamentary oversight. The president is formally the head of state and exercises mostly ceremonial powers. As one of the six constituent republics forming the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992), Serbia remained in a federal union with Montenegro following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. The dissolution brought a series of armed conflicts and crises in the 1990s, marked by systematic violations of human rights and international law. In 2006, Serbia gained its independence de jure when Montenegro, also a former Yugoslavian republic, declared independence and thus ended the state union between the two countries. From 1989 to 2000, Serbia was ruled by Slobodan Milošević, whose increasingly repressive rule led to mass protests and his ultimate defeat in the 2000 presidential elections. Since then, the country has held competitive multiparty elections. However, since coming to power in 2012, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its de facto leader, Aleksandar Vučić, have steadily undermined Serbia’s democratic gains.
Electoral competition in Serbia is significantly skewed in favor of the regime, to the point where the real, mainstream opposition has a highly unlikely, although realistic chance to win. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in power since 2012, enjoys significant and unfair campaign advantages that seriously undermine the opposition’s ability to compete, including significant overrepresentation in the media and abuse of public resources. The opposition’s discontent with its inability to compete equitably under such circumstances culminated in a boycott of the 2020 parliamentary elections. Following the parliamentary election in December 2023, marred by allegations of fraud and assessed by international observers as “dominated” by the SNS due to “systemic advantages”, the mainstream opposition organized mass protests and called for a rerun with enhanced oversight.
Independent media and organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered in their capacity to openly criticize or challenge the regime. Independent media outlets that challenge the SNS’s policies face obstruction by the powerful Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), whose executive Council consists almost exclusively of pro-regime officials directly appointed by a parliamentary majority. Gratuitous legal persecution initiated by members of Parliament and other elites and frequent intimidation campaigns by non-state actors plausibly affiliated with the regime also pose significant threats to independent journalism. While the regime has refrained from shutting down major dissenting organizations, new “anti-terror” legislation, introduced in 2020, imposed arbitrarily strict reporting requirements for NGOs that receive foreign funding and introduced hefty penalties for non-compliance. Civil society leaders are also frequently subjected to verbal harassment by regime officials and smear campaigns in pro-regime media. Members of the general public can generally dissent freely, as demonstrated by large pro-democracy demonstrations in recent years. Nonetheless, law enforcement used excessive force against protesters on several notable occasions in the fall of 2025, prompting international criticism.
Serbian institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. While the ruling party has adopted certain internationally endorsed practices that strengthen judicial independence, it has also weakened the independence and operational capacity of the specialized prosecution, responsible for politically sensitive cases. Similarly, the courts have played a dual role, at times enabling and at other times constraining regime officials’ infringements on freedom of dissent. Finally, the capture of key oversight institutions has further insulated party officials from accountability for electoral violations, the misuse of public funds, and other abuses of power. This pattern, in which institutions are neither fully independent nor thoroughly hollowed out, is a salient characteristic of Serbia’s regime.
In Serbia, electoral competition is significantly skewed in favor of the regime, to the point where the real, mainstream opposition has a highly unlikely, although realistic chance to win. The ruling SNS party has systematically abused state resources and engaged in various forms of illicit voter mobilization. At the same time, it has obstructed the opposition’s campaigns, targeting it with smear campaigns and arguably enabling impunity for non-state actors who have attacked opposition party offices and harassed members. International observers also noted concerning electoral irregularities perpetrated by the ruling party in the December 2023 elections. These structural barriers to fair competition, which make challenging the SNS’s dominance through elections alone largely untenable, have prompted opposition boycotts and bottom-up mobilization against the ruling party.
Since it came to power in 2012, the ruling SNS party has benefited from unfair campaign advantages hampering its opponents’ capacity to compete in all subsequent national elections, according to international observers, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). These recurrent advantages include pressure on public sector employees, abuse of state resources to coax voters’ support, and, increasingly, overrepresentation in the mainstream media (both state and privately owned). In the most recent parliamentary elections, in 2023, President Aleksandar Vučić and the SNS featured in more than 90% of all political coverage during the campaign period on the four most-watched television channels in the country: the state-owned RTS and RTV and the private Pink TV and TV Prva. Equally important, they were portrayed in a positive light in a majority of cases. At the same time, the mainstream opposition, to the extent that it received any airtime at all, was primarily portrayed negatively. While Serbia has a large number of registered independent electronic media (approx. 2,600), RTS and RTV remain the most-watched channels in the country, with 20% joint audience share, while Pink TV and TV Prva boast about 18% and 16%, respectively. By contrast, the most popular channel critical of the regime, TV N1, which the OSCE and other observers have assessed positively for its balanced political coverage and investigative reporting, has about 0.5% – 1% audience share, which is at least partly due to regime officials’ systemic obstruction of its operations.
Abuse of administrative resources and pressure on public sector employees to support the incumbents also skewed the playing field in favor of the SNS. In 2023, as in the 2022 and 2020 parliamentary elections, the ruling party disbursed one-time welfare benefits to vulnerable groups during the campaign period. Students automatically received about 1,000 RSD (10 USD) credited to their travel cards, while persons with disabilities and pensioners received one-time payments of 10,000 RSD (about 100 USD) and 20,000 RSD (200 USD), respectively. These are significant amounts compared to Serbia’s mean monthly salary, about 500 USD. While not technically illegal under Serbia’s electoral law, these payments, together with social media publications in which the SNS claimed credit for the benefits, tilted the playing field in favor of the ruling party. In addition, acting President Vučić campaigned on behalf of the SNS in his official capacity on multiple occasions. Observers have also noted the SNS’s repeated use of public funds for campaign activities and materials, such as rallies, billboards, and promotional materials. Party officials have also used public venues and vehicles free of charge and obtained preferential access to state subsidies and loans, while the opposition has faced obstacles and delays.
The regime has obstructed the mainstream opposition’s campaigns through sustained smear campaigns in regime-friendly media and has enabled impunity for perpetrators of violence against opposition members and property. In 2022, Pink TV, a channel closely aligned with the regime, aired “Target Family,” a supposed documentary that portrayed multiple opposition leaders, activists, and independent journalists as “mercenaries” who were covertly collaborating with foreign intelligence services to “liquidate” President Vučić and his family. The unfounded allegations were reminiscent of previous smear campaigns, in which opposition figures were portrayed as “enemies of the state” and “traitors” in outlets linked to the SNS. Physical attacks against rival politicians or political parties’ property, committed by non-state actors, are also rarely properly investigated or sanctioned. In 2024, Dragan Đilas, leader of the opposition Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), was briefly hospitalized after a group of men, who were putting up posters with his photo and the title “thief,” attacked him when he approached. Despite Đilas’s subsequent complaint and testimony indicating the presence of a senior SNS politician at the scene, none of the attackers were held accountable. Similarly, non-state actors have disrupted opposition events and vandalized property (particularly during the 2018 local and 2022 presidential and parliamentary elections), often with the implicit sanction of law enforcement who were present or nearby during those incidents. International observers, such as the OSCE, have noted that, combined, these actions have produced a systemic chilling effect discouraging political participation.
In addition to benefiting from these structural advantages, the ruling party has also likely engaged in serious electoral irregularities. Multiple domestic observers noted that in the December 2023 local elections, which took place at the same time as the parliamentary vote, the SNS bused thousands of ethnic Serbs from neighboring countries to Belgrade and issued them dubious identity documents so that they could cast a vote. While the full extent and impact are difficult to ascertain, it is likely that it helped the SNS narrowly defeat its main opponent, the Serbia Against Violence coalition (with 39.9% vs 35.4% of the popular vote, respectively) and remain the biggest party in the City Assembly.
Citing the absence of an equal playing field, the most popular opposition parties, including the Democratic Party, the People’s Party, and the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), boycotted the 2020 parliamentary polls by refusing to field candidates and calling on citizens to abstain from voting. As a result, the SNS won 63% of the vote and 188 out of 250 seats, gaining one of the largest supermajorities in Europe at the time. The party defeated the mainstream opposition’s umbrella coalitions in landslides in both the 2022 and the 2023 snap parliamentary elections, with 44% vs 14% and 48% vs 24% of the vote, respectively.
Independent media and civil society organizations in Serbia are seriously and unfairly hindered in their capacity to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While there are still multiple independent outlets in Serbia, discriminatory treatment by the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), opaque allocation of state funding, and frequent legal harassment by regime officials have created a chilling effect and hampered pluralism. While refraining from overtly shutting down independent dissenting organizations, the regime has obstructed their work through vague “anti-terrorism” legislation and smear campaigns. Lastly, law enforcement unduly interfered with peaceful demonstrations on a number of occasions during the 2023 and 2024-2025 cycles of mass mobilization against the regime’s policies.
The SNS regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent and dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public by weaponizing key oversight bodies or enabling more overt forms of repression. The Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) has repeatedly demonstrated a double standard in its treatment of outlets aligned with the ruling party versus more neutral or critical ones. For instance, the agency readily renewed the national broadcasting licenses of four pro-regime media in early 2022, even though they had repeatedly failed to comply with key regulations, including the requirement to provide fairly balanced coverage of national elections. By contrast, several independent channels (e.g., N1 and Nova S, among others) applied and fulfilled the formal criteria for licensing, but REM declined their requests, preventing them from obtaining nationwide reach through the state-owned Telecom Serbia. As a result, N1 and Nova S remained available only through a different broadcaster, SBB, part of the Netherlands-based United Group, whose capacity to compete with Telecom Serbia has been significantly hampered by the regime’s policies. The disparity was so severe that United Group filed an arbitration lawsuit against Serbia in January 2024. Both N1 and Nova S have been repeatedly harassed and smeared by SNS officials, who claimed, for instance, that the channels were “responsible” for a fatal school shooting in 2023. In the same year, law enforcement failed to intervene after more than 30 unidentified “protesters” heckled N1 staff and broke into the channel’s offices, in an incident symptomatic of the ongoing harassment and intimidation of journalists in Serbia. Supporters of the SNS have also physically and verbally attacked N1 journalists attempting to report on public party activities, including speeches and rallies, with impunity, further highlighting the regime’s adversarial stance towards the outlet. Other notable instances of violence against journalists include the 2018 arson attack against investigative journalist Milan Jovanovic, instigated, as a subsequent police investigation revealed, by a prominent SNS official. In 2020, investigative journalist Bojana Pavlović was stopped and briefly questioned by individuals claiming to be police officers after photographing President Vučić’s son, Danilo, sitting in a cafe with a known member of organized crime. These self-identified members of law enforcement then left her unprotected as another group of men approached her, intimidated her, and seized her phone.
Regime officials and non-state actors affiliated with the SNS have also attempted to unfairly censor dissenting speech by abusing vague laws criminalizing insult and defamation. They have increasingly pursued legal action to silence dissenting media and civil society organizations, as evident from the growing (per the European Commission’s 2023 report on Serbia) number of SLAPPs filed in Serbia. To illustrate, in a consequential 2016 defamation case, SNS-member and former Minister of Internal Affairs Stefanovic sued the Peščanik newspaper for calling him “stupid” in the context of a story which assessed his response to outstanding gaps in local policing. The High Court of Belgrade ordered the publication to compensate Stefanovic around $2,000 for causing him “mental anguish” and harming his reputation, arguably disregarding a key principle of European Court case law that public officials ought to tolerate a higher degree of criticism and scrutiny.
The regime has not unfairly shut down independent or dissenting organizations, and Serbian civil society remains robust. Nonetheless, the SNS has somewhat obstructed their work through burdensome reporting requirements under a 2020 “anti-terrorist” law (some provisions of which are reminiscent of other countries’ “foreign agents” laws). Smear campaigns against dissenting organizations in pro-regime media are also common. Shortly after the adoption of the “anti-terrorism law”, the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering obtained access to the banking data of about 50 NGOs and independent media outlets critical of the regime, a measure typically reserved for credible suspicions of money laundering or financing of terrorism. International organizations, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), condemned the investigations as “unjustified” and “intimidating” for civil society actors.
The regime has also increasingly repressed dissenting protests and gatherings, particularly as mass discontent with its conduct periodically erupted in 2023 and 2025. In December 2023, law enforcement detained about 40 individuals who participated in protests denouncing the results of that year’s parliamentary elections as fraudulent. Eleven were later charged with “seeking a violent change of the constitutional order”, even though it remained unclear whether they were involved in the storming of key government institutions in Belgrade on December 24th. Punishments for the crime range between six months and five years imprisonment. As of the end of 2025, these trials are still ongoing.
In Serbia, institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. The ruling party has a checkered record of reforming the judiciary, adopting some good international practices, while undermining the operational capacity of key investigative bodies and agencies. Similarly, the courts have both enabled and checked the regime’s infringements on the freedom of dissent in different instances. The capture of key oversight institutions, a cornerstone of the SNS’s consolidation of power, has helped shield party officials from accountability for electoral violations or public funds mismanagement. The ruling party also centralized executive control of the intelligence services, enabling the selective application of security measures against dissidents.
Having inherited a judicial system already prone to excessive political influence, the regime has made some positive steps, but also pursued reforms weakening the independence and effectiveness of certain branches of the judiciary. For instance, Constitutional changes introduced following a 2022 referendum removed Parliament’s role in the appointment of judges and prosecutors. These duties were transferred to the influential High Judicial Council (HJC), a majority of whose members are judges elected by their peers. International experts welcomed the reforms. On the other hand, towards the end of 2025, the regime hastily pushed through a reform which severely hampered the mandate of the special Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime at a time when the Office was investigating multiple senior officials, including the Minister of Culture, Nikola Selakovic, who was indicted for unlawfully removing a cultural site’s protected status. This overall context and the absence of sufficient parliamentary review raised serious concerns and criticism, including by the Venice Commission and domestic watchdogs, of the reform’s ramifications.
Reflecting their susceptibility to elite capture and limited operational capacity, judicial institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold former and current regime officials accountable. SNS officials pledged to improve the prosecution of war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars by adopting a National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes (2016-2020), renewed for five years in 2021, which aimed to address ongoing shortages of funding and qualified personnel that have hampered these efforts. However, domestic and international experts have assessed progress towards the goals outlined in the Strategy as generally lacking: Between 2016 and 2020, there were 31 indictments, of which only 8 originated within Serbia. At the same time, the backlog of cases pending preliminary investigation stands at about 1,700 as of 2023, according to a Council of Europe estimate. Such figures suggest a lack of political will for the effective prosecution of war crimes, not just the inherent complexity of such cases.
At the same time, the courts have increasingly enabled the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. International watchdogs, such as Article 19, have noted that significant shortcomings in Serbia’s defamation laws and courts’ adjudication of SLAPPs have enabled regime officials’ growing legal harassment of critical media outlets. More specifically, judges often failed to take into account that public officials must tolerate a higher degree of criticism and scrutiny, a principle well-established in European Court case law, and didn’t require the plaintiffs to demonstrate both the falsity and the reputational harms of the statements in question. Instead, courts often awarded damages on the basis of “mental anguish” caused to the plaintiff, a much vaguer offense that doesn’t need to meet the same evidentiary standards as reputational harm. The damages awarded in successful lawsuits typically ranged between 1,000 and 5,000 USD. As some critical media face multiple suits at the same time (such as KRIK, which had to contend with 12 such cases at one point in 2022), they often find themselves in a precarious financial position. These penalties contrast sharply with the relative impunity for attacks against journalists. Monitoring conducted by the local Slavko Curuvija Foundation and the Center for Judicial Research (CEPRIS) found that, on average, only one in 10 reported cases of harassment or intimidation of journalists results in a binding court decision. In addition, sanctions were often lenient: of 20 convictions for such crimes recorded between 2017 and 2020, only one involved a prison sentence of 6 months.
Stopping short of a complete erosion of judicial independence, however, the courts have occasionally sanctioned the regime’s attempts to repress dissent. A notable recent example is the case of Dragoljub Simonovic, a former mayor of the Grocka Municipality in Belgrade and member of the SNS, who was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in 2023 for inciting arson and endangering the life of investigative journalist Milan Jovanovic. In 2018, three masked men set Jovanovic’s car on fire, which caught on to his garage and house. He had previously reported on alleged abuses of power and embezzlement in local government on the regime-critical Zig news portal.
Since coming to power, the SNS has captured Serbia’s key oversight institutions to a considerable extent and seriously weakened their independence and effectiveness. The party’s control of the legislature has enabled it to distort the appointment of leadership for these bodies, favoring candidates aligned with the regime. Once in office, these civil servants often demonstrate systemic bias in favor of the regime. For instance, the parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information, dominated by SNS MPs, committed various procedural violations during its review and selection of appointees to the powerful media watchdog, REM, in 2025. Domestic observers noted that most new appointees failed to meet minimal professional criteria or were nominated by CSOs established under dubious circumstances shortly before the selection process. As previously discussed, REM clearly disadvantaged independent and critical outlets by declining to award them national broadcasting frequencies, while readily granting them to media affiliated with the regime. The SNS has also eroded independent electoral oversight, as discussed previously, by appointing loyalists to the national Electoral Commission. In turn, the Commission has been selective in its application of electoral regulations. For instance, its leadership has been conspicuously reluctant to address persistent issues with the voter register (where deceased individuals and fictitious addresses are ubiquitous). These shortcomings, in turn, have enabled repeated electoral violations, from multiple voting to coerced vote-casting with pre-marked ballots, observed in at least three elections through the 2010s.
Lastly, the regime has subjected executive institutions to reforms that seriously weakened their independence and operational effectiveness. In 2012, the SNS moved to amend the Law on the Bases Regulating Security Services, which placed the appointment of the National Security Council Secretary and the Security Services Coordination Bureau head under direct presidential control. As a result, Vučić himself served as secretary of the National Security Council between 2012 and 2014. While the purported rationale was strengthening oversight of these powerful agencies, the reforms effectively centralized the executive’s influence over Serbia’s security apparatus. Vučić’s term as Secretary saw a wave of highly publicized, and arguably politically motivated, arrests of business moguls and former public officials affiliated with the opposition, intended to bolster the SNS’s anti-corruption credentials and popularity. In 2017, the regime appointed Bratislav Gasic head of the Security and Intelligence Agency (BIA), the primary body responsible for domestic security. Gasic was a longtime SNS sponsor and one of several close allies of Vučić who would fill the post in the years to come. In addition, the regime adopted further amendments to the Law that gave the director carte blanche to dismiss employees with no available legal avenues for contestation. The ongoing capture of the intelligence and security services, in turn, has enabled the unlawful surveillance of opposition members and journalists, including well-documented cases of spyware attacks.
HRF classifies Serbia as ruled by a hybrid authoritarian regime.
Serbia is a parliamentary republic with a unicameral, 250-member National Assembly elected for four-year terms. Executive power rests with a cabinet subject to parliamentary oversight. The president is formally the head of state and exercises mostly ceremonial powers. As one of the six constituent republics forming the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992), Serbia remained in a federal union with Montenegro following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. The dissolution brought a series of armed conflicts and crises in the 1990s, marked by systematic violations of human rights and international law. In 2006, Serbia gained its independence de jure when Montenegro, also a former Yugoslavian republic, declared independence and thus ended the state union between the two countries. From 1989 to 2000, Serbia was ruled by Slobodan Milošević, whose increasingly repressive rule led to mass protests and his ultimate defeat in the 2000 presidential elections. Since then, the country has held competitive multiparty elections. However, since coming to power in 2012, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its de facto leader, Aleksandar Vučić, have steadily undermined Serbia’s democratic gains.
Electoral competition in Serbia is significantly skewed in favor of the regime, to the point where the real, mainstream opposition has a highly unlikely, although realistic chance to win. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in power since 2012, enjoys significant and unfair campaign advantages that seriously undermine the opposition’s ability to compete, including significant overrepresentation in the media and abuse of public resources. The opposition’s discontent with its inability to compete equitably under such circumstances culminated in a boycott of the 2020 parliamentary elections. Following the parliamentary election in December 2023, marred by allegations of fraud and assessed by international observers as “dominated” by the SNS due to “systemic advantages”, the mainstream opposition organized mass protests and called for a rerun with enhanced oversight.
Independent media and organizations are seriously and unfairly hindered in their capacity to openly criticize or challenge the regime. Independent media outlets that challenge the SNS’s policies face obstruction by the powerful Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), whose executive Council consists almost exclusively of pro-regime officials directly appointed by a parliamentary majority. Gratuitous legal persecution initiated by members of Parliament and other elites and frequent intimidation campaigns by non-state actors plausibly affiliated with the regime also pose significant threats to independent journalism. While the regime has refrained from shutting down major dissenting organizations, new “anti-terror” legislation, introduced in 2020, imposed arbitrarily strict reporting requirements for NGOs that receive foreign funding and introduced hefty penalties for non-compliance. Civil society leaders are also frequently subjected to verbal harassment by regime officials and smear campaigns in pro-regime media. Members of the general public can generally dissent freely, as demonstrated by large pro-democracy demonstrations in recent years. Nonetheless, law enforcement used excessive force against protesters on several notable occasions in the fall of 2025, prompting international criticism.
Serbian institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. While the ruling party has adopted certain internationally endorsed practices that strengthen judicial independence, it has also weakened the independence and operational capacity of the specialized prosecution, responsible for politically sensitive cases. Similarly, the courts have played a dual role, at times enabling and at other times constraining regime officials’ infringements on freedom of dissent. Finally, the capture of key oversight institutions has further insulated party officials from accountability for electoral violations, the misuse of public funds, and other abuses of power. This pattern, in which institutions are neither fully independent nor thoroughly hollowed out, is a salient characteristic of Serbia’s regime.
In Serbia, electoral competition is significantly skewed in favor of the regime, to the point where the real, mainstream opposition has a highly unlikely, although realistic chance to win. The ruling SNS party has systematically abused state resources and engaged in various forms of illicit voter mobilization. At the same time, it has obstructed the opposition’s campaigns, targeting it with smear campaigns and arguably enabling impunity for non-state actors who have attacked opposition party offices and harassed members. International observers also noted concerning electoral irregularities perpetrated by the ruling party in the December 2023 elections. These structural barriers to fair competition, which make challenging the SNS’s dominance through elections alone largely untenable, have prompted opposition boycotts and bottom-up mobilization against the ruling party.
Since it came to power in 2012, the ruling SNS party has benefited from unfair campaign advantages hampering its opponents’ capacity to compete in all subsequent national elections, according to international observers, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). These recurrent advantages include pressure on public sector employees, abuse of state resources to coax voters’ support, and, increasingly, overrepresentation in the mainstream media (both state and privately owned). In the most recent parliamentary elections, in 2023, President Aleksandar Vučić and the SNS featured in more than 90% of all political coverage during the campaign period on the four most-watched television channels in the country: the state-owned RTS and RTV and the private Pink TV and TV Prva. Equally important, they were portrayed in a positive light in a majority of cases. At the same time, the mainstream opposition, to the extent that it received any airtime at all, was primarily portrayed negatively. While Serbia has a large number of registered independent electronic media (approx. 2,600), RTS and RTV remain the most-watched channels in the country, with 20% joint audience share, while Pink TV and TV Prva boast about 18% and 16%, respectively. By contrast, the most popular channel critical of the regime, TV N1, which the OSCE and other observers have assessed positively for its balanced political coverage and investigative reporting, has about 0.5% – 1% audience share, which is at least partly due to regime officials’ systemic obstruction of its operations.
Abuse of administrative resources and pressure on public sector employees to support the incumbents also skewed the playing field in favor of the SNS. In 2023, as in the 2022 and 2020 parliamentary elections, the ruling party disbursed one-time welfare benefits to vulnerable groups during the campaign period. Students automatically received about 1,000 RSD (10 USD) credited to their travel cards, while persons with disabilities and pensioners received one-time payments of 10,000 RSD (about 100 USD) and 20,000 RSD (200 USD), respectively. These are significant amounts compared to Serbia’s mean monthly salary, about 500 USD. While not technically illegal under Serbia’s electoral law, these payments, together with social media publications in which the SNS claimed credit for the benefits, tilted the playing field in favor of the ruling party. In addition, acting President Vučić campaigned on behalf of the SNS in his official capacity on multiple occasions. Observers have also noted the SNS’s repeated use of public funds for campaign activities and materials, such as rallies, billboards, and promotional materials. Party officials have also used public venues and vehicles free of charge and obtained preferential access to state subsidies and loans, while the opposition has faced obstacles and delays.
The regime has obstructed the mainstream opposition’s campaigns through sustained smear campaigns in regime-friendly media and has enabled impunity for perpetrators of violence against opposition members and property. In 2022, Pink TV, a channel closely aligned with the regime, aired “Target Family,” a supposed documentary that portrayed multiple opposition leaders, activists, and independent journalists as “mercenaries” who were covertly collaborating with foreign intelligence services to “liquidate” President Vučić and his family. The unfounded allegations were reminiscent of previous smear campaigns, in which opposition figures were portrayed as “enemies of the state” and “traitors” in outlets linked to the SNS. Physical attacks against rival politicians or political parties’ property, committed by non-state actors, are also rarely properly investigated or sanctioned. In 2024, Dragan Đilas, leader of the opposition Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), was briefly hospitalized after a group of men, who were putting up posters with his photo and the title “thief,” attacked him when he approached. Despite Đilas’s subsequent complaint and testimony indicating the presence of a senior SNS politician at the scene, none of the attackers were held accountable. Similarly, non-state actors have disrupted opposition events and vandalized property (particularly during the 2018 local and 2022 presidential and parliamentary elections), often with the implicit sanction of law enforcement who were present or nearby during those incidents. International observers, such as the OSCE, have noted that, combined, these actions have produced a systemic chilling effect discouraging political participation.
In addition to benefiting from these structural advantages, the ruling party has also likely engaged in serious electoral irregularities. Multiple domestic observers noted that in the December 2023 local elections, which took place at the same time as the parliamentary vote, the SNS bused thousands of ethnic Serbs from neighboring countries to Belgrade and issued them dubious identity documents so that they could cast a vote. While the full extent and impact are difficult to ascertain, it is likely that it helped the SNS narrowly defeat its main opponent, the Serbia Against Violence coalition (with 39.9% vs 35.4% of the popular vote, respectively) and remain the biggest party in the City Assembly.
Citing the absence of an equal playing field, the most popular opposition parties, including the Democratic Party, the People’s Party, and the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), boycotted the 2020 parliamentary polls by refusing to field candidates and calling on citizens to abstain from voting. As a result, the SNS won 63% of the vote and 188 out of 250 seats, gaining one of the largest supermajorities in Europe at the time. The party defeated the mainstream opposition’s umbrella coalitions in landslides in both the 2022 and the 2023 snap parliamentary elections, with 44% vs 14% and 48% vs 24% of the vote, respectively.
Independent media and civil society organizations in Serbia are seriously and unfairly hindered in their capacity to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While there are still multiple independent outlets in Serbia, discriminatory treatment by the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), opaque allocation of state funding, and frequent legal harassment by regime officials have created a chilling effect and hampered pluralism. While refraining from overtly shutting down independent dissenting organizations, the regime has obstructed their work through vague “anti-terrorism” legislation and smear campaigns. Lastly, law enforcement unduly interfered with peaceful demonstrations on a number of occasions during the 2023 and 2024-2025 cycles of mass mobilization against the regime’s policies.
The SNS regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent and dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public by weaponizing key oversight bodies or enabling more overt forms of repression. The Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) has repeatedly demonstrated a double standard in its treatment of outlets aligned with the ruling party versus more neutral or critical ones. For instance, the agency readily renewed the national broadcasting licenses of four pro-regime media in early 2022, even though they had repeatedly failed to comply with key regulations, including the requirement to provide fairly balanced coverage of national elections. By contrast, several independent channels (e.g., N1 and Nova S, among others) applied and fulfilled the formal criteria for licensing, but REM declined their requests, preventing them from obtaining nationwide reach through the state-owned Telecom Serbia. As a result, N1 and Nova S remained available only through a different broadcaster, SBB, part of the Netherlands-based United Group, whose capacity to compete with Telecom Serbia has been significantly hampered by the regime’s policies. The disparity was so severe that United Group filed an arbitration lawsuit against Serbia in January 2024. Both N1 and Nova S have been repeatedly harassed and smeared by SNS officials, who claimed, for instance, that the channels were “responsible” for a fatal school shooting in 2023. In the same year, law enforcement failed to intervene after more than 30 unidentified “protesters” heckled N1 staff and broke into the channel’s offices, in an incident symptomatic of the ongoing harassment and intimidation of journalists in Serbia. Supporters of the SNS have also physically and verbally attacked N1 journalists attempting to report on public party activities, including speeches and rallies, with impunity, further highlighting the regime’s adversarial stance towards the outlet. Other notable instances of violence against journalists include the 2018 arson attack against investigative journalist Milan Jovanovic, instigated, as a subsequent police investigation revealed, by a prominent SNS official. In 2020, investigative journalist Bojana Pavlović was stopped and briefly questioned by individuals claiming to be police officers after photographing President Vučić’s son, Danilo, sitting in a cafe with a known member of organized crime. These self-identified members of law enforcement then left her unprotected as another group of men approached her, intimidated her, and seized her phone.
Regime officials and non-state actors affiliated with the SNS have also attempted to unfairly censor dissenting speech by abusing vague laws criminalizing insult and defamation. They have increasingly pursued legal action to silence dissenting media and civil society organizations, as evident from the growing (per the European Commission’s 2023 report on Serbia) number of SLAPPs filed in Serbia. To illustrate, in a consequential 2016 defamation case, SNS-member and former Minister of Internal Affairs Stefanovic sued the Peščanik newspaper for calling him “stupid” in the context of a story which assessed his response to outstanding gaps in local policing. The High Court of Belgrade ordered the publication to compensate Stefanovic around $2,000 for causing him “mental anguish” and harming his reputation, arguably disregarding a key principle of European Court case law that public officials ought to tolerate a higher degree of criticism and scrutiny.
The regime has not unfairly shut down independent or dissenting organizations, and Serbian civil society remains robust. Nonetheless, the SNS has somewhat obstructed their work through burdensome reporting requirements under a 2020 “anti-terrorist” law (some provisions of which are reminiscent of other countries’ “foreign agents” laws). Smear campaigns against dissenting organizations in pro-regime media are also common. Shortly after the adoption of the “anti-terrorism law”, the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering obtained access to the banking data of about 50 NGOs and independent media outlets critical of the regime, a measure typically reserved for credible suspicions of money laundering or financing of terrorism. International organizations, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), condemned the investigations as “unjustified” and “intimidating” for civil society actors.
The regime has also increasingly repressed dissenting protests and gatherings, particularly as mass discontent with its conduct periodically erupted in 2023 and 2025. In December 2023, law enforcement detained about 40 individuals who participated in protests denouncing the results of that year’s parliamentary elections as fraudulent. Eleven were later charged with “seeking a violent change of the constitutional order”, even though it remained unclear whether they were involved in the storming of key government institutions in Belgrade on December 24th. Punishments for the crime range between six months and five years imprisonment. As of the end of 2025, these trials are still ongoing.
In Serbia, institutions are somewhat independent but frequently constrained by the regime. The ruling party has a checkered record of reforming the judiciary, adopting some good international practices, while undermining the operational capacity of key investigative bodies and agencies. Similarly, the courts have both enabled and checked the regime’s infringements on the freedom of dissent in different instances. The capture of key oversight institutions, a cornerstone of the SNS’s consolidation of power, has helped shield party officials from accountability for electoral violations or public funds mismanagement. The ruling party also centralized executive control of the intelligence services, enabling the selective application of security measures against dissidents.
Having inherited a judicial system already prone to excessive political influence, the regime has made some positive steps, but also pursued reforms weakening the independence and effectiveness of certain branches of the judiciary. For instance, Constitutional changes introduced following a 2022 referendum removed Parliament’s role in the appointment of judges and prosecutors. These duties were transferred to the influential High Judicial Council (HJC), a majority of whose members are judges elected by their peers. International experts welcomed the reforms. On the other hand, towards the end of 2025, the regime hastily pushed through a reform which severely hampered the mandate of the special Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime at a time when the Office was investigating multiple senior officials, including the Minister of Culture, Nikola Selakovic, who was indicted for unlawfully removing a cultural site’s protected status. This overall context and the absence of sufficient parliamentary review raised serious concerns and criticism, including by the Venice Commission and domestic watchdogs, of the reform’s ramifications.
Reflecting their susceptibility to elite capture and limited operational capacity, judicial institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold former and current regime officials accountable. SNS officials pledged to improve the prosecution of war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars by adopting a National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes (2016-2020), renewed for five years in 2021, which aimed to address ongoing shortages of funding and qualified personnel that have hampered these efforts. However, domestic and international experts have assessed progress towards the goals outlined in the Strategy as generally lacking: Between 2016 and 2020, there were 31 indictments, of which only 8 originated within Serbia. At the same time, the backlog of cases pending preliminary investigation stands at about 1,700 as of 2023, according to a Council of Europe estimate. Such figures suggest a lack of political will for the effective prosecution of war crimes, not just the inherent complexity of such cases.
At the same time, the courts have increasingly enabled the regime’s attempts to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. International watchdogs, such as Article 19, have noted that significant shortcomings in Serbia’s defamation laws and courts’ adjudication of SLAPPs have enabled regime officials’ growing legal harassment of critical media outlets. More specifically, judges often failed to take into account that public officials must tolerate a higher degree of criticism and scrutiny, a principle well-established in European Court case law, and didn’t require the plaintiffs to demonstrate both the falsity and the reputational harms of the statements in question. Instead, courts often awarded damages on the basis of “mental anguish” caused to the plaintiff, a much vaguer offense that doesn’t need to meet the same evidentiary standards as reputational harm. The damages awarded in successful lawsuits typically ranged between 1,000 and 5,000 USD. As some critical media face multiple suits at the same time (such as KRIK, which had to contend with 12 such cases at one point in 2022), they often find themselves in a precarious financial position. These penalties contrast sharply with the relative impunity for attacks against journalists. Monitoring conducted by the local Slavko Curuvija Foundation and the Center for Judicial Research (CEPRIS) found that, on average, only one in 10 reported cases of harassment or intimidation of journalists results in a binding court decision. In addition, sanctions were often lenient: of 20 convictions for such crimes recorded between 2017 and 2020, only one involved a prison sentence of 6 months.
Stopping short of a complete erosion of judicial independence, however, the courts have occasionally sanctioned the regime’s attempts to repress dissent. A notable recent example is the case of Dragoljub Simonovic, a former mayor of the Grocka Municipality in Belgrade and member of the SNS, who was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in 2023 for inciting arson and endangering the life of investigative journalist Milan Jovanovic. In 2018, three masked men set Jovanovic’s car on fire, which caught on to his garage and house. He had previously reported on alleged abuses of power and embezzlement in local government on the regime-critical Zig news portal.
Since coming to power, the SNS has captured Serbia’s key oversight institutions to a considerable extent and seriously weakened their independence and effectiveness. The party’s control of the legislature has enabled it to distort the appointment of leadership for these bodies, favoring candidates aligned with the regime. Once in office, these civil servants often demonstrate systemic bias in favor of the regime. For instance, the parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information, dominated by SNS MPs, committed various procedural violations during its review and selection of appointees to the powerful media watchdog, REM, in 2025. Domestic observers noted that most new appointees failed to meet minimal professional criteria or were nominated by CSOs established under dubious circumstances shortly before the selection process. As previously discussed, REM clearly disadvantaged independent and critical outlets by declining to award them national broadcasting frequencies, while readily granting them to media affiliated with the regime. The SNS has also eroded independent electoral oversight, as discussed previously, by appointing loyalists to the national Electoral Commission. In turn, the Commission has been selective in its application of electoral regulations. For instance, its leadership has been conspicuously reluctant to address persistent issues with the voter register (where deceased individuals and fictitious addresses are ubiquitous). These shortcomings, in turn, have enabled repeated electoral violations, from multiple voting to coerced vote-casting with pre-marked ballots, observed in at least three elections through the 2010s.
Lastly, the regime has subjected executive institutions to reforms that seriously weakened their independence and operational effectiveness. In 2012, the SNS moved to amend the Law on the Bases Regulating Security Services, which placed the appointment of the National Security Council Secretary and the Security Services Coordination Bureau head under direct presidential control. As a result, Vučić himself served as secretary of the National Security Council between 2012 and 2014. While the purported rationale was strengthening oversight of these powerful agencies, the reforms effectively centralized the executive’s influence over Serbia’s security apparatus. Vučić’s term as Secretary saw a wave of highly publicized, and arguably politically motivated, arrests of business moguls and former public officials affiliated with the opposition, intended to bolster the SNS’s anti-corruption credentials and popularity. In 2017, the regime appointed Bratislav Gasic head of the Security and Intelligence Agency (BIA), the primary body responsible for domestic security. Gasic was a longtime SNS sponsor and one of several close allies of Vučić who would fill the post in the years to come. In addition, the regime adopted further amendments to the Law that gave the director carte blanche to dismiss employees with no available legal avenues for contestation. The ongoing capture of the intelligence and security services, in turn, has enabled the unlawful surveillance of opposition members and journalists, including well-documented cases of spyware attacks.
