Vucic Resigns as Serbian President to Run for Prime Minister

Aleksandar Vucic stood in the presidential palace in Belgrade on Sunday evening and told his supporters he was leaving. Not retiring from politics—leaving the presidency. By morning, he said, he would hand over his duties to the parliament speaker. The reason was simple, if strategically elegant: Serbia's constitution forbids a third presidential term, and Vucic, now 56, had already served two. So rather than exit politics altogether, he announced he would run for prime minister in snap elections scheduled for October.

This move keeps Vucic at the center of Serbian power after more than a decade of dominance. He has shaped the country's direction through periods of relative stability and development projects that his supporters credit him for championing. His political biography is complicated—he once served as a minister under Slobodan Milosevic, and he carries ties to Serbian nationalism. Supporters point to his patriotism and his role in a nation still finding its footing after the wars of the 1990s and the international isolation that followed. Critics, however, see something darker: increasingly authoritarian governance and a government riddled with corruption they say goes unchecked.

The snap election itself was not Vucic's idea, at least not publicly. In early September, he called for it, citing "major turbulence on the domestic political scene." That turbulence had a specific origin. In November 2024, an awning at a newly reconstructed railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, collapsed without warning. Sixteen people died. The disaster cracked open questions about how the station had been built, who had overseen it, and whether corners had been cut. It became a focal point for rage about corruption and accountability.

Students and opposition groups took to the streets demanding answers. They wanted transparency in public procurement. They wanted systemic corruption addressed. They wanted early elections. Vucic's government denied the accusations leveled against it, but the pressure was real enough that several officials resigned or were arrested in the aftermath, including two ministers. The snap election, then, is not a choice Vucic made in a vacuum—it is a response to a crisis that exposed fractures in his grip on power.

Now he is betting that a shift from the presidency to the prime minister's office will allow him to survive the October vote and maintain his dominance. Whether Serbian voters, still angry about Novi Sad and the corruption it symbolized, will grant him that survival is the question the coming weeks will answer. Vucic has also had to navigate a more complicated geopolitical position than most European leaders: Serbia aspires to join the European Union while maintaining close ties to Russia, a balance that has defined his foreign policy and will likely define whatever government emerges from these elections.