Across the Danube-linked politics of Central Europe, a single autumn evening in Belgrade has joined a spring change in Budapest into one story about power that outlived its welcome. Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić, who had governed for fourteen years, conceded defeat to a student movement barely two years old, much as Viktor Orbán had surrendered his sixteen-year hold on Hungary months earlier. The ballots were counted in a climate of watchfulness, with young voters, AI-assisted tallies, and tens of thousands of volunteers guarding the polls against the intimidation that had long been take
How Serbia's Vučiċ Fell Along the Same Path as Hungary's Orbán, Driven by Youth Movements and Election Monitors
The 1 November 2024 collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy, blamed on corruption and negligence, killed 16 people and triggered the Serbian student movement.
Across the Danube-linked politics of Central Europe, a single autumn evening in Belgrade has joined a spring change in Budapest into one story about power that outlived its welcome. Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić, who had governed for fourteen years, conceded defeat to a student movement barely two years old, much as Viktor Orbán had surrendered his sixteen-year hold on Hungary months earlier. The ballots were counted in a climate of watchfulness, with young voters, AI-assisted tallies, and tens of thousands of volunteers guarding the polls against the intimidation that had long been taken for granted. What it means is less a single triumph than a reminder that institutions built to seem permanent can give way once a society decides to speak.
Last year, in the Serbian town of Subotica, Aleksandar Vučić and Viktor Orbán shared a casual lunch of burek and talked business, including a planned Hungarian purchase of a Serbian oil refinery. Neither imagined that within a year both would be out of power.
Orbán fell first, when Péter Magyar's Tisza party defeated him in April. Then a student movement less than two years old won Serbia's parliamentary election by a landslide. The movements differ: Tisza revolves around its leader, while the Serbian students insist they have none. Yet both were carried by young, tech-savvy voters, with turnout reaching 79 percent in Hungary and 69 percent in Serbia. Tens of thousands of monitors, some supported by AI tools, guarded the polls against intimidation and fraud.
The two movements were linked. Hungarian activists from the DE group sent 70 monitors to Vojvodina and had shared their methods over the summer, including identifying polling districts with suspicious voting patterns in advance. On election day, Subotica student Péter Klemm saw masked men gather near polling stations from the afternoon. Volunteers filmed them and stood their ground, and he believes that presence prevented fraud.
The endings echoed each other. Vučić conceded at 21:30, just as Orbán had, and few expected a peaceful exit. Magyar was the only European leader to call the students that evening. The Serbian movement began in tragedy: sixteen people died in November 2024 when the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapsed, a disaster blamed on corruption and negligence.
Both former leaders may now face prosecution. As Áron Timar of DE put it, such regimes did not grow stronger with time; once society found its voice, nothing could silence it.
Almost a year ago, in the northern Serbian city of Subotica, Aleksandar Vučić and Viktor Orbán sat down to a quick lunch of burek at a small, popular bakery in the town centre. Orbán chose cheese; Vučić chose meat. They went on to a local winery to talk about oil and other business, including a planned Hungarian purchase of Serbia's Nis oil refinery. Neither could have guessed that within a year both would be out of power.
Orbán fell first. In April, Péter Magyar's Tisza party defeated him in Hungary. Then, last Sunday, a student movement less than two years old won Serbia's parliamentary elections by a landslide. The two forces look different: Tisza is built around the personality and energy of its leader, while the Serbian students insist they have no leader. But in both countries the vote was driven by tech-savvy young people. Turnout reached 79% in Hungary and 69% in Serbia. Young organisers used AI tools to crunch numbers and identify threats to the vote, and they mobilised tens of thousands of election monitors to counter intimidation and fraud by the governing parties.
The two movements were also directly connected. Last weekend the DE civic action group in Hungary sent 70 monitors to Serbia to work with representatives of the students, visiting polling stations in the northern province of Vojvodina. Over the summer, before the election had even been called, they had run workshops to pass on their methods. A key technique was to identify "infected" polling districts in advance: places where unusually high votes for the governing party in earlier elections suggested voter intimidation or "chain voting".
Péter Klemm, a student activist from Subotica, told the BBC what he saw on election day. From around 16:00, he said, groups of masked hooligans, whom he identified as Vučić supporters, began gathering near polling stations. Mobile teams were sent out and began filming everything. Together with the stationary monitors already in place, 20 to 30 volunteers at each threatened station acted as a strong deterrent, he believes, and prevented intimidation or fraud. An hour before polls closed, masked and hooded vigilantes also took up position in central Belgrade, and similar groups were photographed at many polling stations, where monitors blocked them.
Both men had looked invincible. Orbán had been in office for 16 years and Vučić for 14, and each had taken over state institutions and built business interests that overlapped across the border. They shared friendships with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and strong support for Milorad Dodik, the separatist leader of the Bosnian Serbs. A high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest is being built with Chinese finance and know-how.
The endings echo each other closely. Vučić admitted defeat at exactly 21:30 on Sunday evening, just as Orbán had on 12 April, and few observers had expected either to concede peacefully. There has been speculation this week that Vučić phoned Orbán twice that night, once before conceding and again at 23:15, and that Orbán persuaded him not to use force. Vučić denies speaking to Orbán before his announcement but acknowledges the later call. Orbán, contacted by the BBC, declined to comment. The seat counts match too: the Student List will hold 140 seats in Serbia's 250-seat parliament, the same number Tisza won in Hungary's 199-seat chamber.
Magyar was the only European leader to ring the students directly that evening to congratulate them, and probably the only one who had their number. He spoke to Ilija Srdanović, head of the Student List, who had said on the eve of the vote that the Hungarian result showed the students were doing the right thing. Hungary's prime minister told the BBC it is always good to hear that Tisza's story could inspire other nations.
The Serbian movement began with a tragedy. On 1 November 2024, the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing 16 people. The collapse was blamed on corruption as well as negligence, and Hungarian companies close to Orbán were involved in the station's construction project.
Orbán, 63, and Vučić, 56, may now both face prosecution for corruption and abuse of power. Serbia's organised-crime prosecution service, JTOK, and Hungary's new special prosecutors, known as NVVH, have similar powers and could prove useful to each other. Áron Timar, founder of DE, said Europe had assumed such regimes grew stronger the longer they stayed. In fact, he said, they got weaker, and once society found its voice there was no stopping it.
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