APA: Vucic Uses Education Law to Target Universities

Belgrade’s universities, already at the center of the largest civic wave Serbia has seen in a generation for the past year and a half, are now being assessed from outside the domestic media circle. In its analysis, Austria’s national news agency APA reads the announced amendment to the higher education law not as a social reform, but as a political move aimed at the institutions that have openly backed the student movement since 2024. For the Serbian public, this means the homegrown conflict over the faculties is now being interpreted in foreign newsrooms as well, and an external reading of motives tends to carry added weight in the European institutions that track the rule of law in a candidate country.

APA relays both the Serbian president’s stated reasoning and a critical reading of his intent, which makes the assessment more substantial than a passing comment. Speaking to the broadcaster Prva, Aleksandar Vucic announced that he would do everything to secure a parliamentary majority for the change. He gave widening access to higher education for children from weaker socio-economic backgrounds as the official rationale, a goal that is hard to dispute in principle. The Austrian agency, however, places the same move within the context of a long-running clash between the state and autonomous universities.

What exactly does the Austrian agency claim?

The core of the APA assessment is the gap between the proclaimed and the actual aim. The reform is presented as a measure for broader and fairer access to studies, but the Austrian report sees its real reach in weakening institutions that have, in recent months, become strongholds of resistance. Serbia’s state universities, above all those in Belgrade, have stood with students since 2024, and their governing bodies have repeatedly sided with the protests rather than with the authorities. APA concludes that, viewed through this lens, the law could serve as a lever to reshape the balance of power inside higher education.

What calls for caution is that the concrete provisions of the proposed law have not yet been published. Without the text of the draft, both the government’s justification and the Austrian agency’s critical reading remain at the level of an announcement and an estimate. That is precisely why it matters to separate what was said on television from what will appear in the official proposal. Only when the bill enters parliamentary procedure will it be possible to check whether the reform’s mechanisms are aimed at access to studies or at the management structures of the faculties.

Why does a foreign assessment matter for Serbia?

For a country negotiating European Union membership, the way foreign agencies interpret its internal moves is not merely a matter of publicity. European institutions build their progress reports partly on independent sources, and university autonomy and academic freedom are standard items in those assessments. When Austria’s national agency links the announced law to pressure on academic institutions, that judgment easily finds its way to those who decide on the pace of Serbia’s European path.

The domestic debate now has a double bottom. On one side stands the promise of wider access to education, which is difficult to reject outright. On the other is the suspicion, now also voiced abroad, that this is an instrument for disciplining universities that have stepped outside the role the authorities had set for them. Without a published text of the law, that dilemma remains open, and the burden of proof rests with the proposer. When the bill is finally published, will you read it as a measure for equal chances or as a tool to control the faculties?