Parliamentary election in Serbia: On the way to the einpartei state?

the results of The first parliamentary elections in Europe since then, in March, the social life in the fight against the pandemic to a large extent, the dangers are clear: According to the preliminary results of the "Serbian progressive party" received by President Aleksandar Vučić almost 63 percent of the vote and will occupy in the national Assembly in Belgrade in the future 189 of 250 Seats – considerably more than the constitutional two-thirds majority to be amended.

Michael Martens

a correspondent for Southeast European countries with headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

The former coalition of "Progress" and the socialists in Parliament together, even on the 221 the 250 mandates. Serbia's Opposition, which had boycotted the elections in Protest against the conditions of the part, is only négligeable a Quantité. Except for some representatives of minorities – Hungarians, Albanians and Muslims from Serbia's border area with Montenegro, for a lower lock-up clause applies – managed only a single (partial) of the Opposition party attributed the jump over the Three-percent hurdle to enter Parliament. And even she has expressed the intention to cooperate with the previous government.

Low turnout

"I'm a long time in politics, but for a Moment I have never experienced," said Vučić on the victory of his party. These have won the "huge trust of the people". The turnout was low, which is attributed to a combination of the Boycott of many opposition parties, the fear of Covid-19, and bad weather on polling day back.

How does this result suggest? You can interpret it as Oliver Varhelyi, the enlargement Commissioner of the EU. The Hungarian spoke of "an important day" for Serbia and said he was looking forward to a cooperation, the Balkan state could move quickly to accession to the EU. So you can see it also in the Hungarian government, Vučić has supported in the election campaign. Support also came from Donald Tusk, the Chairman of the European people's party, the merger of Christian Democrats and Conservative in Europe.

You can, however, look more closely. Then you see a country that is the Andes on the way to the einpartei state with plebiscitary girl. A country in which the party of the President in the future even more strongly represented in Parliament will be the Pro-Putin party "United Russia" in the Duma in Moscow. This could be as an amazing proof of the unanimity of the Serbian electorate to see.

development according to the Russian model?

the fact, that the pandemic has also strengthened in Serbia, at least in the short term, the already solid support for the Ruling once again. But apart from that it has other reasons, that the composition of the new Serbian Parliament is more reminiscent of Russian conditions than those in most of the democracies of the EU. Because of the state of Serbian democracy has developed in the past years, in some respects, more like Russian or white Russian as in accordance with EU-European standards.