The European Commission’s 2026 report on Serbia is at once the most important and the most insignificant report ever published by this institution on the candidate country.
It could be considered the most important because of its very critical tone, harsh language, as many as four recorded instances of backsliding (!), and a general warning – more or less explicit - that a country behaving this way has no chance of becoming an EU member state.
At the same time, it is the most insignificant one because the Serbian government which governed the country for 14 years, took it to such lows in the EU accession process, and whose actions the Commission describes so negatively in its report, is now gone.
Formally speaking, Serbia has stagnated since 2025, with its preparedness level rising only slightly from 3.12 to 3.13. However, the Commission noted backsliding in four areas: freedom of expression, public administration reform, external relations, and education and culture. Serbia had previously faced backsliding only twice (CFSP in 2022 and freedom of expression in 2025), as the Commission was reluctant to use this designation.
But if we move from grades to substance, the picture gets much darker. The European Commission describes a country with unfair elections and a highly dysfunctional parliament, unconstitutionally governed by the president. It also mentions attacks and intimidation against civil society, unchallenged police violence toward peaceful protesters, and the “chilling effects” of prosecuting those who demand justice for the government’s alleged use of a sonic weapon.
Among other things, it noted backsliding in freedom of expression due to “the environment for journalists, media professionals, and outlets continuing to deteriorate, media legislation remaining inconsistently implemented, and the media market becoming more concentrated.”
The report states that Serbia “disengaged from regional cooperation activities, blocking progress on Common Regional Market for the entire region.” It also notes glorification of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić “in a manner contradicting the values underpinning Serbia’s path towards the European Union.” Hardly the description of a country dedicated to EU membership.
On October 25, the Student List soundly defeated the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in parliamentary elections, winning more than 53% of the vote and an absolute majority of 140 seats in the Serbian parliament. Aleksandar Vučić resigned as president in late September, and it seems likely that the SNS will not even field a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections.
In less than two weeks after these historic elections – and before the new parliament was even assembled – the entire corrupt system of state capture and clientelism began to collapse. It is hard to keep up with all the news in recent days, with public broadcasters apologizing, prosecutors waking from their slumber, loyalist police officials being arrested, and even pro-regime TV stations being sanctioned by a media regulatory body that was until recently captured.
In these circumstances, hardly anyone in Serbia, including those genuinely interested in the country’s EU accession, worries about what the European Commission says about the outgoing regime, whose authoritarianism, state capture, corruption, and inherent hostility to basic democratic and European values were evident long before the Commission’s reports noted them. For this reason, the report received little coverage in the Serbian media.
Nevertheless, the importance of this report is not limited to being a “historical” document about the lows that Vučić’s regime brought Serbia to while allegedly pursuing EU integration. It now also serves as homework for the new government, which will have a lot of work to undo the damage and put Serbia on the right track toward meeting the criteria for EU membership.
The good news is that the new Serbian democratic government is expected to focus primarily on the issues the European Commission identified as most problematic in the latest report: strengthening democratic institutions, ending state and media capture, and halting the toxic nationalist rhetoric that the former regime weaponized against both the student movement and the European Union.
Even better news is that the new government will likely do so regardless of its stance on EU accession, which means that getting Serbia on the right track should not be politically controversial or costly, nor should it be perceived as merely appeasing Brussels. There is finally a chance for the European Union and Serbian citizens to recognize common interests. Perhaps that’s one way to improve the Serbian public’s opinion of EU accession.