{"id":78695,"date":"2026-05-09T17:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T17:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/78695\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T17:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T17:27:12","slug":"serbian-students-and-diaspora-maintain-pressure-for-vucic-to-call-elections-with-no-eu-help-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/78695\/","title":{"rendered":"Serbian students and diaspora maintain pressure for Vu\u010di\u0107 to call elections, with no EU help \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worldwide Serbian diaspora will observe 16 minutes of silence at 11:52AM on Saturday (9 May). The timing marks the moment the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapsed in Serbia, killing 16 people on 1 November 2024, while 9 May 2025 is when student protesters first demanded new elections.<\/p>\n

In Brussels, the civil society group Palac gore (Thumbs up, in English) organises the gatherings. Two of its members, Miloje Savi\u0107 and Stanislav Markovi\u0107, discussed the diaspora\u2019s role in supporting Serbian students<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is Palac gore, who founded your group, when, and why?<\/p>\n

Miloje Savi\u0107: Palac gore is an informal Serbian diaspora group. It was founded in 2021 and the participants joined at various times. Personally, I joined early last year. I discovered it when the students who were running the ultramarathon from Belgrade to Brussels arrived in Brussels finally.<\/p>\n

Stanislav Markovi\u0107: Basically the group was a response to various political events in Serbia. The first maybe major point was the lithium mining issue<\/a> [environmental risk] in Serbia, where the group was active.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How many protests have you held in Brussels, how many people have attended them, is it mostly young Serbian expats, or also others?<\/p>\n

Markovi\u0107:\u00a0 We are not only students. It is a diaspora group \u2013 a WhatsApp chat group. In the widest sense, you have about 300 members. There are maybe 30 people who are very active. If you tell them \u2018come here for a protest,\u2019 they will show up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The students decided to engage the diaspora in a meaningful way this time for these elections that we hope are coming. In the beginning, when the whole thing began in Novi Sad, we protested several times a month. The big one was in June last year when the marathon ran from Belgrade to Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Serbians hold 16 minutes of silence to commemorate 16 deaths of the Novi Sad tragedy. Source : Petra Pavlovi\u010dov\u00e1<\/p>\n

Why is it still important to show solidarity with the Serbian student movement more than one year after the Novi Sad tragedy. How do you do it?<\/p>\n

Markovi\u0107: All the diaspora is showing solidarity this weekend. It is being organised in more than 50 cities around the world at the same local time: 11:52, which is the time when the concrete canopy collapsed at the station in Novi Sad.<\/p>\n

Savi\u0107: In Serbia, the institutions are not working; the government is not really functioning except for themselves. There is a huge need for a reset in the country. Since the tragedy in Novi Sad in 2024, there are still too many unanswered questions [on who was responsible] and demands from the public, but the government is pretending that nothing happened.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stanislav Markovi\u0107 and Sanja from Palac gore on the 9th May protest in Brussels. Source: Petra Pavlovi\u010dov\u00e1<\/p>\n

Saturday [9 May] is exactly one year since they [the students] demanded early elections from the government. We support the students and the citizens who joined this \u2018rebellion\u2019. <\/p>\n

We will start our protests in New Zealand and Australia, then it goes across Europe, and finishes somewhere in Vancouver [Canada]. The point is to show solidarity with students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are you hoping to make a particular impact on EU policymakers by protesting in the EU capital?<\/p>\n

Savi\u0107: That is our primary aim. Also to support the [Serbian] movement in this country by bringing international awareness. Hopefully, it builds pressure over time and shows how dysfunctional the [Serbian] state has become.<\/p>\n

Markovi\u0107: Raising awareness is very important, especially in Brussels. Pressure from here can also help. It\u2019s part of a movement. In a way, it is similar to what happened in Hungary.<\/p>\n

Where there is a lack of meaningful dialogue with civil society, it is all just a monologue with the government telling everyone how it is going to be. That is a discrepancy between the distribution of political power and the real mood of society.<\/p>\n

Does your group think president Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 would listen to the EU if it pressed him for reforms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The worldwide Serbian diaspora will observe 16 minutes of silence at 11:52AM on Saturday (9 May). The timing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[5754,211,210,5766,41363,42014,42017,42012,41361,5764,42015,42013,41362,5765,42016],"class_list":{"0":"post-78695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-brussels","11":"tag-identifier29","12":"tag-identifier4069","13":"tag-identifier4459","14":"tag-identifier4492","15":"tag-namecivil-society","16":"tag-nameinterview","17":"tag-namerule-of-law","18":"tag-nameserbia","19":"tag-termcodecivil-society","20":"tag-termcodeinterview","21":"tag-termcoderule-of-law","22":"tag-termcodeserbia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116545798043301841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}