Serbia

The fall of Slobodan Milosevic on October 5th 2000 was supposed to be watershed moment in Serbia’s democratic transition. Reforms were implemented slowly and not without resistance. Over the last decade, however, the new regime led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has done its best to discontinue and reverse institution-building efforts of its democratic predecessors. The young party rode on the promise of fighting corruption and organized crime, thus gaining unprecedented popular support, but its bombastic measures came short of actual results.

La polemica sulle targhe tra Pristina e Belgrado provoca nuove tensioni al confine. Von der Leyen in missione nella regione, ma pesa lo stallo del processo di allargamento Ue.

Early on Wednesday morning, October 13th, Kosovo’s police raided several targets across the country, including Mitrovica. During and after the raids against suspected smugglers, they arrested eight people and issued arrest warrants for another ten. Six of the arrested people are of Albanian nationality, one is Serb Serbia, and another is Bosnjak. Eight out of the ten people who received arrest warrants are Albanian while two are Serbs.

In some of the countries of the Western Balkans, criminal groups and political elites have grown increasingly interdependent. In particular, Serbia’s and Montenegro’s societies have suffered the most from these links. The two countries have long been considered frontrunners in the EU integration process, whose final completion, however, is difficult to foresee. Similarly, Albania’s EU negotiating process has also been delayed for years, in part because of the country's role in global drug trafficking schemes.

A series of houses demolished overnight without any police intervention, a strange deal between a state-owned munitions factory and a private company, a smear campaign against an independent media outlook that has been investigating over these and similar episodes.

La Serbia è uno dei paesi europei che sta procedendo meglio nella campagna vaccinale. Al 28 marzo, i dati riportano che è seconda in Europa dopo il Regno Unito, e settima a livello mondiale. Le ragioni di tale performance sono due.

Ritardi nelle consegne, mancato rispetto degli accordi, attese per le approvazioni finali. La più grande campagna di vaccinazione mondiale è seguita dai media con grande palpitazione e aspettativa. Ai margini dell’Unione Europea – a voler far leva sul gioco di parole – c’è una sorpresa in serbo.

On 5 October 2000 the regime of Slobodan Milosevic was toppled amid popular protests, but the past 20 years have been anything but simple in Serbia.

October 5, 2000, is a Serbian metaphor for a dream of democracy. Like many dreams, it encouraged and mobilized those who shared it, while it was unrealistic about the scope and pace of changes after the defeat of Milosevic’s regime and naïve about the ways to move from traumatic experiences into a future free from fear.

Last July, Serbian parliamentary elections crowned an 8-year-long trend that was just previously described by Freedom House: Serbia is no longer a democracy.

Today, 20 years ago, hundreds of thousands of citizens gathered in Belgrade and assaulted the parliament asking for the resignation of the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who was accused of electoral fraud. The day after, he recognized the defeat in the presidential elections. Since then, Serbia underwent a democratic transition – a process that was never completed.