Serbia¶
The Serbian cases show a government answering a demand for accountability by changing the question. Protest about responsibility is recast as a matter of loyalty, and suspicion voiced abroad is borrowed to give the recasting the weight of an investigation. Prosecutors and courts sit inside the contest rather than above it. The same institutions are asked to pursue critics and to pursue the powerful, and the rules on who may lead them are written by the governing majority. Each step can be presented as ordinary government. Together they decide who is made to answer, and to whom.
The clerk’s briefs¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
Read these. The students’ list goes to the vote already branded a foreign project. If it loses, the brand explains the loss. If it wins, the brand casts doubt on the win. Civic groups and election monitors remain under an investigation no court has tested, and donors may keep their distance. The families of the dead have a case again, but not yet a trial. Prosecutors have seen that their independence holds while the Union withholds money, and may wait for the result before charging anyone powerful. The governing party gains a ready excuse for setbacks. A new government would inherit the same excuse, and the same prosecutors. A clean count, a verdict in the canopy case and Union money kept conditional could each break the pattern.
September 2026: The president steps down¶
On 27 September 2026 President Aleksandar Vucic resigned to lead his Serbian Progressive Party into a snap parliamentary election on 25 October and to seek the premiership. The constitution barred him from a third term. Ana Brnabic, the speaker of parliament, became acting president. He accused opponents and critical media of intending to “destroy the state” under unspecified foreign influence, and said “foreign powers and unidentified people in the country” planned to stir unrest on election night. The clerks note that the foreign hand has been booked for election night in advance, so that whatever follows the count has an author ready.
June 2026: The judicial laws¶
The judicial laws proposed by Ugljesa Mrdic, an MP of the governing party, and adopted in January 2026 allowed court presidents and chief prosecutors to be elected more than once, made the high-tech crime prosecutors a department of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, and ended the secondments of some prosecutors, among them two in the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime. The Union suspended payments from its Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, and amending the laws became a condition for resuming them. In June a new package restored the earlier rules and met seven of the nine recommendations in the Venice Commission’s April opinion. The two prosecutors were reappointed on 18 June, at the third attempt. The clerks note that advice from Venice became law once Brussels stopped paying.
December 2025: Insufficient evidence¶
On 24 December 2025 a pre-trial panel of the Higher Court in Novi Sad halted proceedings against six of those indicted over the canopy collapse, among them the former minister Goran Vesic, finding “insufficient evidence to support reasonable suspicion”, and confirmed the indictment against seven others. Sixteen people died in the collapse. The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad appealed, and on 15 June 2026 the Court of Appeal in Novi Sad accepted the appeal, finding the Higher Court wrong to see no grounds for charges, and placed all six under house arrest without the use of a telephone or the internet. The clerks note that the case stopped for six people, a former minister among them, and started again six months later.
February 2025: The prosecutor follows the money¶
On 25 February 2025 police entered the offices of four civil society organisations in Serbia: Civic Initiatives, CRTA, the Trag Foundation and the Center for Practical Policy. The Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade had ordered them to collect evidence of alleged misuse of USAID funds, an investigation the report says was prompted by statements from US officials. The prosecutor’s own statement names them: President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the White House spokesperson, Elon Musk’s government-efficiency unit and the FBI director. The clerks note that the suspicion was voiced in Washington and acted on in Belgrade.
February 2025: The revolution declared over¶
At a rally in Sremska Mitrovica on 15 February 2025, President Aleksandar Vucic told the crowd “their colour revolution has failed”, and blamed international bodies, including USAID, for bankrolling efforts to destabilise the country. The protests he meant began with students, after a station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad. The clerks observe that calling a protest a colour revolution makes every protester a possible agent, which is international ties rewritten as disloyalty, said from a stage.
November 2024: The canopy falls¶
On Friday 1 November 2024, at lunchtime, the canopy of the railway station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing 14 people. The station was being rebuilt; the Chinese company doing the work said the canopy had not been part of it. President Vucic demanded criminal prosecution, and a day of national mourning was declared. The clerks note that fourteen people died under a public building, and that who will answer for it is still open.