European Contexts — Hybrid Panel

With Vukosava Crnjanski, founder/director of the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA); Milorad Ivanović, Editor-in-Chief of BIRN Serbia, Andrej Ivanji, Editor, Vreme weekly.

When: Monday, 19 October 2026, 9:30–11:30CEST
Where: Presseclub Concordia, Bankgasse 8, 1010 Vienna, and online

Registration deadline: Sunday, 18 October 2026, midday.

In person Registration
Zoom participation Registration

Background

Serbia will hold early parliamentary elections on 25 October 2026. For more than a decade, President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party have been the dominant force in Serbian politics, while opposition parties have repeatedly failed to challenge their hold on power.

But a new political force has emerged from the mass protests that followed the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people. What began as a student-led protest movement spread across Serbia, reaching cities, towns and villages. Through demonstrations, marches, public assemblies, bicycle rides and other actions, the movement has sought to mobilise citizens and channel widespread discontent into political change.

Now the students are taking that movement to the ballot box. Their “Student List – Students Win” has fielded 250 candidates for parliament. Some opposition parties are contesting the election separately, while others have chosen not to run and are backing the student list instead.

Can the student movement turn protest into votes? Can its candidates break the ruling party’s grip on power? And if the election produces a transfer of power, how would Vučić and his allies respond?

Speakers

Serbian Political Landscape

Andrej Ivanji, journalist, editor at Vreme weekly.

Will the Elections Be Free and Fair?

Vukosava Crnjanski is the founder and director of CRTA, a Serbian advocacy and watchdog organization established in 2002. CRTA’s Election Observation Mission has become synonymous with election observation in Serbia, reflecting the organization’s commitment to transparent, comprehensive and impartial citizen observation of the electoral process.

CRTA received the OSCE’s 2018 Democracy Defender Award for its contribution to promoting democracy and defending human rights.

Media Capture and International Influence in Serbia

Milorad Ivanović, journalist, is Editor-in-Chief of BIRN Serbia, the award-winning investigative journalism outlet of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek Serbia, Executive Editor of Novi Magazin, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Belgrade daily Blic. He is currently a visiting lecturer at Masaryk University in Brno.

Ivanović is a co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), the world’s largest international association of investigative journalists, and European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), a network of leading European media organizations.

Format

Panel discussion followed by a live Q&A session.

Moderator

Mirjana Tomic, fjum / Presseclub Concordia

Target Group

Journalists and academic researchers

Maximum Number of Participants

In person: 70
Online: 100