Wednesday’s resolution on Serbia by the European Parliament has wider implications that just supporting the ongoing mass protests in the country. It is a sign that „Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s foreign policy “balancing act” has entered a sputtering nosedive“, as Balkans experts Lily Lynch puts it in a very well informed analysis.

There was one thing that stood out in the European Parliament’s resolution that surprisingly openly backs the ongoing mass protests in Serbia.

This is a paragraph enumerated as B on page 2 of the document:

„whereas China’s presence and influence in Serbia has significantly increased in recent
years through large-scale infrastructure investments, raising concerns about
transparency, adherence to EU standards and environmental compliance; whereas the
station project formed part of the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway line and was
carried out under a Serbia-China intergovernmental agreement, outside the scope of the
EU’s ordinary public procurement legislative framework4, by two Chinese companies;
whereas the 2024 Commission report on Serbia had already warned about the
circumvention of procurement rules via such agreements; whereas in March 2025, the
European Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated an investigation into the potential misuse
of EU funds allocated to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station;“

Members of the European Parliament spent a lot of time worrying about the Chinese financing Serbian government projects in a resolution that is about the collapse of the freshly renovated canopy of Novi Sad’s freshly renovated train station on Nov 1. last year, the 16 people the debris killed, the mass protests this collapse has sparked and the Serbian regime’s attempts to quelch the protests.

True, this can not be entirely separated from China’s financing Serbia’s railway system. It was Chinese money that paid for the train station’s renovation that was obviously botched by corruption. One thing does have to do with the other.

But the point is yet to be made that with, say, EU financing no one in Serbia would have turned a blind eye to the shoddy reconstruction work on the station’s canopy that ultimately killed 16 people.

So this paragraph isn’t about the catastrophe of Novi Sad. The MEPs don’t like China’s growing influence in Serbia, and they spell it out in a somewhat roundabout way that seems to fit the occasion.

I chose not to include that point in the piece about the resolution I published on Thursday. In my eyes, this would have overburdened an article that was primarily intended to give my readers an idea about the state of the Serbian revolution.

The Geopolitical Implications Are Far Greater Than Meets The Eye

Luckily, there are fellow journalists who are a lot more familiar with the geopolitical contexts than I am, and much better at explaining them. One of the foremost experts when it comes to the Balkans is Lily Lynch.

She carefully vetted the entire document in a very well informed piece analysing the geopolitical contexts and what the resolution means for King Aleksandar.

Lily also elaborates on the pressure the EU’s decision to get out of Russian gas additionally puts on the Serbian government:

On October 20, the Council of the European Union adopted a plan to phase out imports of Russian gas, including a ban on gas transits through EU territory to third countries beginning January 1st. Serbia receives its Russian gas from Bulgaria and Hungary–two EU member states–so the news reportedly provoked “panic” among officials in Belgrade. Then, two days later, the European Parliament adopted its harshest ever resolution on Vučić’s government.

Lily Lynch in „The Curtain Falls on Aleksandar Vučić’s Foreign Policy “Balancing Act”

I don’t want to go too much into details on Lily’s analysis. I hope you do read it yourselves. It’s certainly worth it.

I do agree with most of her conclusions. The majority I choose not to agree with is stuff I don’t know enough about. I just reserve my judgement until I do.

The one thing I’m not so sure about is whether or not this spells the end of King Aleksandar’s rule.

He is a Survivor.

While certainly his foreign policy was a major tool in establishing and maintaining his rule in Serbia, I’m not sure that having to end it will mean his downfall – even though it is certainly a fall from grace. Not just the EU’s good graces, but also of those in Serbia who grudgingly accepted the authoritarian direction he took Serbia’s politics into for the foreign policy successes it brought.

What this geopolicial shift to King Aleksandar’s detriment certainly means, though, is that he has an ally less in politically surviving the ongoing mass protests.

Hitherto, the EU had turned a blind eye to the greatest protest movement on the continent since at least 1968. Securing the lithium deal with the Serbian government took priority. (Also see this analysis from March.)

This is over.

From King Aleksandar’s perspective, this is less than helpful in trying to survive Serbia’s deepest political crisis to date.

He certainly doesn’t like that.

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