How the downfall of Serbia's Vučiċ mirrored that of Hungary's Orbán

How Serbia’s Vučiċ downfall echoed Hungary’s Orbán

When Serbian President Aleksandar Vučiċ and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met in northern Serbia last November, neither could have imagined that both would be out of power within a year.

Both were removed by popular movements. Orbán was the first to go, in April, when Péter Magyar’s Tisza party defeated him. Then last Sunday, a student movement that is less than two years old won Serbia’s parliamentary elections in a landslide.

Hungary’s Tisza party and Serbia’s Student List are very different. Tisza revolves around the personality and momentum of its leader, while the Serbian students insist they have no leader at all.

Yet in both countries, the massive turnout - 79% in Hungary and 69% in Serbia - was driven by tech-savvy young people. They used AI tools to process numbers, spot threats to the vote, and mobilise tens of thousands of election monitors to stop intimidation and electoral fraud by the governing parties.

Opposition activists from Hungary shared election monitoring methods that helped shape the outcome in Serbia.

Voter mobilisation, along with the work of election monitors, played a major part in the opposition victories in both countries.

Last weekend, Hungary’s DE civic action group sent 70 election monitors to Serbia to work with representatives of the students’ movement, visiting polling stations in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

Even before the election was called, they held workshops over the summer to pass on their experience and techniques from the Hungarian election to the Serbian students.

One important tactic was to identify “infected” polling districts ahead of time - places where unusually high support for the governing party in earlier elections suggested voter intimidation or “chain voting” may have been used.

“From around 16:00 on election day, we noticed groups of masked hooligans - Vučiċ supporters - gathering near voting stations,” Péter Klemm, a student activist from Subotica, told the BBC. “So we sent mobile teams, and started filming everything.”

Together with the “stationary” monitors already deployed, 20 to 30 volunteers at each threatened polling station acted as a powerful deterrent, he believes, and helped prevent intimidation or fraud.

In Hungary, Orbán; in Serbia, Vučiċ - both had seemed untouchable. Both were dominant leaders, in power for 16 and 14 years, who had captured state institutions and built business empires spanning the two countries.

When they sat down for a quick lunch of traditional burek pastries at a small, popular bakery in Subotica’s town centre almost a year ago, Orbán chose cheese and Vučiċ chose meat.

They then went on to a local winery to discuss oil and other business deals - including the planned Hungarian purchase of Serbia’s Nis oil refinery. The two nationalist leaders had plenty in common, in both business and politics, not least their friendship with Vladimir Putin in Russia and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and their strong backing of Milorad Dodik, the separatist leader of the Bosnian Serbs.

A high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest is being built with Chinese finance and expertise.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučiċ and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, made simultaneous visits to China in 2025

The similarities between the two men’s fall from power are remarkable. Aleksandar Vučiċ conceded defeat at exactly 21:30 on Sunday evening, just as Viktor Orbán did on 12 April. Few observers expected either leader to admit defeat peacefully.

This week there has been speculation that Vučiċ called Orbán twice on Sunday night to seek his advice - once before conceding, and again at 23:15. It has also been suggested that Orbán persuaded his Serbian ally not to resort to force.

Vučiċ denies speaking to Orbán before making his announcement, but confirms the later call. Viktor Orbán, when contacted by the BBC, declined to comment.

An hour before polls closed in Serbia, masked and hooded vigilantes took up positions in central Belgrade. During the vote, similar groups were photographed at many polling stations and were blocked by election monitors.

There is also another striking numerical parallel. The Student List will hold 140 seats in the 250-seat Serbian parliament, the same number Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won in the 199-seat Hungarian parliament.

Magyar was the only European leader to phone the students directly that evening to congratulate them - and probably the only one who had their number.

“It is always good to hear that the story of Tisza could provide an inspiration for other nations,” the Hungarian prime minister told the BBC.

“The result of the Hungarian election clearly showed us that what we are doing here is right,” the head of the Student List, Ilija Srdanoviċ, said on the eve of the vote.

Srdanoviċ was among those Péter Magyar spoke to that Sunday evening.

There has been speculation that Victor Orbán persuaded Aleksandar Vučiċ not to use force during a telephone call on election day.

Orbán, 63, and Vučiċ, 56, may now both face prosecution for corruption and abuse of power.

The legal systems in both countries are similar. Serbia’s special prosecution service for organised crime, JTOK, and Hungary’s new special prosecutors, known as NVVH, have comparable powers. They could be useful to each other.

Hungarian companies close to Orbán were also involved in the Novi Sad railway station construction project. The collapse of the station’s canopy on 1 November 2024 - blamed on corruption as well as negligence - killed 16 people and became the catalyst for the Serbian student movement.

“There was a perception in Europe that the longer the Orbán and Vučiċ regimes stayed in office, the stronger they got,” Áron Timar, founder of the DE civic action group in Hungary, told the BBC.

“In fact they got weaker. And once society found its voice and rose up, there was no way of stopping it.”