The European Parliament (EP) will discuss the elections in Serbia on January 17, after the item was included in the agenda of the plenary session, which will be held from January 15 to 18 in Strasbourg.
The debate without conclusions will be held on Wednesday, January 17, and the Resolution on the elections in Serbia held in December 2023 should also be adopted at the plenary session that will be held in February.
The oral request to include this debate in the agenda was jointly submitted by social democrats, liberals, greens and leftists.
The Social Democrat group posted on the X network: "After our repeated demands, we finally succeeded - on Wednesday Parliament will discuss the difficult situation in Serbia after elections marred by serious reports of fraud. Despite the initial resistance of the EPP. We stand with the Serbs seeking justice, democracy and EU future".
In his explanation for the inclusion of the debate on Serbia, European representative from the Social Democrats, Andreas Šider, mentioned irregularities during the election process. Among them, he mentioned phantom voters, pressure on voters, as well as the decisive involvement of the President of Serbia in the campaign of the ruling party, which "undermined the electoral process".
"And when international election observers, such as from the European Parliament and myself, also raised this issue, the Government of Serbia and the president himself attacked these international observers," said Šinder.
He requested that the Resolution on the elections be adopted immediately, but the deputies voted to postpone the adoption of the Resolution until the plenary session in February.
The postponement of the adoption of the Resolution was also verbally requested by Vladimir Bilčik, from the European People's Group, the most numerous political group in the European Parliament, of which the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is an associated member.
They previously prevented the item on the elections in Serbia from being included in the agenda through the regular procedure, referring to the fact that the final report of the international observers has not yet been published.
Representative Bilčik, who is also the rapporteur for Serbia in the EP, repeated this argument with the request that the Resolution not be adopted at the plenary session.
"If we can reach an agreement to have a resolution by the time the ODHIR report is published, this would be a comprehensive answer," Vladimir Bilčik said at the opening of the plenary session.
ODIHR announced that the elections were marked by misuse of public funds, media dominance of the president, negative campaigning and the spread of fear.
Part of the MEPs previously called for an independent investigation of all reported irregularities. This was announced by Slovenian MEP Klement Grošelj, who headed the EP observation mission for the elections in December 2023.
Extraordinary parliamentary and local elections in Serbia were held on December 17, 2023.
The opposition coalition "Serbia against violence" does not accept the results and demands a repeat of the election, stating that the ruling SNS won through election theft.
That party and the state leadership deny these allegations.
Since the election, part of the opposition has organized protests every night with the demand that the results be annulled, and the last one was on December 30.
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