Now that Aleksandar Vučić’s government is gone, evicted by joyous voters, EU leaders will be wondering how to approach Serbia’s new administration.
What can the West offer? There will no doubt be many answers, but the best is to encourage root-and-branch reform of the country’s over-mighty and outdated security system.
The election victory changes the government and provides a strong political mandate, but it will not automatically affect the agencies at the heart of government. The state remains the same until the people, rules and assumptions in the intelligence services and the army change. That is why the first serious test of the new government will be the security sector, and not the distribution of ministries.
This is an important moment. Serbia has too often experienced politicized and violent behavior by elements of its security apparatus, not least the 2003 assassination of the modernizing prime minister, Zoran Đinđić, carried out by plotters from the state security’s Special Operations Unit and organized crime, and the use of spyware against journalists and activists in recent years, which Amnesty International said had created a “digital prison.” Street-level thuggery has added to the toll: pro-government hooligans have attacked peaceful protesters, with the police too often looking on.
Serbia has a written doctrine that officially confirms its ambiguous security policy. The 2019 Defense Strategy, adopted when Aleksandar Vulin was minister of defense, makes a key distinction between two words. Cooperation with NATO is an “interest,” it states, while cooperation with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance under Russian leadership, is a “commitment.”
Serbia is not a member of CSTO, but the National Assembly has had observer status in the parliamentary assembly of that organization since 2013. An interest is assessed case by case. A commitment is not reconsidered.
This is not a rhetorical slip. The 2019 Defense Strategy and the 2019 National Security Strategy remain the formal framework of Serbian security policy, and this hierarchy is built into their language. The new authorities therefore should not only change the signature on those documents. They should change the assumption from which the documents emerged: that security is above all a question of political loyalty, and not of professional capability, legality and democratic control.
That assumption also gives rise to a mistaken distinction between threats: criticism of the government, independent media and universities are not a hybrid threat, but a network, foreign or domestic, that weakens the state through corruption, crime and disinformation is identified as one.
The National Security Strategy also names among national interests the preservation of the existence and the protection of the Serbian people “wherever they live.” The Constitution is more precise: it protects the rights and interests of citizens abroad and develops relations with Serbs who live there. The Strategy erases that gap and turns ethnic belonging into an object of state protection in a region with an unfinished history of conflict.
Change must begin with new personnel. The police, the Serbian Armed Forces, the Security Information Agency (BIA), the Military Security Agency (VBA) and the Military Intelligence Agency (VOA) cannot be an extension of party headquarters, business interests or criminal structures. An urgent vetting of managers and key operatives is needed, covering professional qualifications, assets, conflicts of interest and ties to criminal circles, with zero tolerance for such ties and a clear separation of the political from the professional leadership.
This is not about a purge or political revenge, but about professionalization: those whose loyalty is to the Constitution and the law, and not to the headquarters of a single party, should remain in the service.
In 2024, the European Union signed security and defense partnerships with North Macedonia and Albania. Serbia, although a candidate for membership, has no such agreement.
Countries with a partnership can take part in joint defense procurement under SAFE, an instrument worth up to €150bn ($167bn) and the most concrete part of the Readiness 2030 package, formerly known as ReArm Europe. Serbia cannot request a SAFE loan on its own, because these are reserved for EU member states. But a partnership opens the door to joint procurement and European supply chains, from ammunition and drones to communications, cyber and air-defense equipment.
Brussels will not offer this unconditionally. Such partnerships imply closer alignment with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Serbia lags in that respect, above all because it has not joined the sanctions against Russia, and the student-led Student List that won the election has said it will not introduce them. That is not a reason to withhold the offer; it is the reason for making it. The partnership is a mechanism by which the new authorities can turn a political mandate into a strategic choice, and Brussels can tie it to verifiable steps. This is not an ideological question: it is not about NATO membership (which the Student List has said it will not seek) or automatic entry into the EU, but about whether Serbia wants a professional, modern and capable army, or an army that serves political symbolism.
This is not only a Serbian question. If a democratic mandate for changing strategic course can be institutionalized in a country that has balanced between the West and Russia for decades, it is an example that’s useful far beyond Serbia. If it cannot, the message will be heard by Moscow and by everyone in the region counting on Western fatigue.
That is why Brussels and Washington must not respond separately. The EU offers a partnership and access to joint procurement, and the United States and NATO have operational cooperation through the Partnership for Peace and a presence in Kosovo through KFOR. If the offers are not coordinated, the new authorities will read them as rivalry, and this is exactly what has for decades allowed Belgrade to skirt a choice. If they arrive as one coordinated sequence of verifiable steps, balancing will not work.
Institutionalization would mean that change survives the next elections: a law on the services, civilian and parliamentary control, transparent procurement and revised strategies. The West can help with expert support and training and can tie assistance to results, but it must not replace the Serbian choice with its own.
Russian influence in the Balkans does not work only through propaganda. It works through corruption, energy dependencies, intermediary channels, criminal networks, and political elites who interpret security as an instrument for the survival of those in power. That is why the reform of the services is at once a domestic and a foreign policy matter. Serbia does not have to choose between sovereignty and European cooperation. Sovereignty without the ability to defend the state is an illusion. A country without professional services, transparent procurement, reliable partners and a modern defense industry does not make decisions on its own. It only rubber-stamps them.
The Student List has received enormous political capital, and capital is spent quickly.
The new government must now choose: security institutions that protect the state, or institutions that protect those who have turned the state into their property. It cannot have both. The choice is Serbian, but the West can decide whether to make it easier – or leave it to those who live off the old ways.
Nikola Lunić is a Serbian geopolitical and security analyst and retired Navy Captain. He previously served as Serbia’s Defense Attaché in London and as Executive Director of the Council for Strategic Policy. He is currently a strategic affairs consultant and a regular guest lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Osijek. He writes on Balkan security, intelligence governance, and European defense policy for outlets including the Kyiv Post and New Eastern Europe.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
