Massive protests in Serbia are heard after a year and a half: President Aleksandar Vucic announces his resignation

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic resigns prematurely. He will leave office within a few weeks and new elections will follow, he announced on Saturday evening.

The president thus appears to be giving in to the main demand of the demonstrators for more than a year and a half protest en masse against his government. Tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of demonstrators blocked intersections and highways and stood in front of the doors of government buildings, resulting in heavy police action.

The unrest began after an accident in late 2024, when a 48-meter-long concrete canopy at the train station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing 16 people. The demonstrators, led by students, saw the accident as a symbol of corruption and poor government oversight.

President Vucic’s term actually lasts about a year. Because it is his second term, he is constitutionally barred from running in the next presidential election. Vucic says he wants to help his party win the elections. It is not excluded that he will try to return as prime minister himself.

Although Prime Minister Milos Vucevic and then the entire government resigned last year, the demonstrations continued. The new cabinet consisted largely of ministers who had also served in the previous government.

Vucevic did not want to budge for a long time. In 2025 he stated after the largest demonstration to date that the demonstrators had to take his life to get him out of the presidential residence. Vucic’s conservative Serbian Progressive Party has been in power in the country since 2012.

It is not yet clear when exactly the new elections will take place.

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