Serbien

Serbia has set April 3 for a presidential election, twinning the vote with parliamentary and local balloting on the same day.

Serbia sees rise in lawsuits to silence media and activists: report

There has been an increase in so-called SLAPP lawsuits launched by Serbian officials and public figures seeking to curb scrutiny by muzzling independent media and rights campaigners, says a new report.

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) today opened an election observation mission for the 3 April presidential and early parliamentary elections in Serbia, … . The mission is headed by Douglas Wake and consists of a core team of 15 international experts based in Belgrade and 27 long-term observers, who will be deployed throughout the country from 4 March. ODIHR also plans to request 250 short-term observers, to arrive several days before election day.

Military veteran Zdravko Ponos, an opposition candidate for president in an election in April, tells BIRN that Serbia will struggle to recover from five more years of Aleksandar Vucic.

The draft election laws arose as a result of parallel inter-party dialogues on election conditions, conducted with and without EU mediators, as well as on the recommendations of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions.

In recent years, states in the Western Balkans have increasingly rearmed. The arms purchases – often accompanied by nationalist rhetoric – endanger the fragile trust in a region where conflicts remain unresolved. Serbia plays a key role in these dynamics. Belgrade also uses arms purchases to deepen its relations with Russia and China.

Jan Braathu, a Norwegian career diplomat of ambassador rank, assumed his duties as Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia on 1 January 2021. … Ambassador Braathu brings with him extensive knowledge of the Western Balkans region, coming to Belgrade from Pristina where he served as Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo from 2016 to 2020.

In a sign of warming relations between the two countries, Albania and Serbia on Monday signed a deal enabling citizens of both countries to enter the other one with only their ID cards.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday announced that early parliamentary elections will be held in April 2022, even though a new government has still has not been formed following the June 2020 elections.