Universities press new demands after 5/35 decree falls
Seven academic initiatives responded to the repeal of the 5/35 decree. It took the government 13 months, and their list now runs from the SPIRI system to the education minister's dismissal.
The seven academic initiatives that first called for the 5/35 decree to be scrapped issued a joint statement on Friday, saying the government’s decision closes nothing. They treat it as the first item ticked off a list that is still open, and they attached the arithmetic: 13 months passed between the day the demand was raised outside the government building in Nemanjina Street and the day the decree was withdrawn.
The Serbian government’s move to repeal the 2025 workload decrees has already been reported here. What is new is that the people who brought the decree down have spoken for the first time, and that they used the moment to publish a set of demands the repeal does not touch.
The statement is signed by Rebel University, Free University Novi Sad, the Free Universities of Nis, Kragujevac and Novi Pazar, the Forum of the University of the Arts, Proactive of the University of Pristina, temporarily seated in Kosovska Mitrovica, and the Academic Plenum.
What the 5/35 decree actually did
Formally it was the Decree on Norms and Standards of Working Conditions at Universities and Faculties. The academic community named it after the ratio it introduced. The document set staffing norms for teaching and non-teaching personnel, standards for operating costs, and the coefficients used to calculate salaries at state-funded faculties.
The decisive change sat in the structure of the working week. Teaching and research were rebalanced to 35 teaching hours and five research hours per week, where the earlier split had been 20 to 20. In practice, the part of the job by which a university is measured internationally was reduced to roughly one working day a month.
Repealing the decree was one of the demands raised during the 17-day blockade of the intersection outside the Serbian government building in June 2025.
How the initiatives read the decision
The statement describes the repeal as an admission that the academic community had been right from the start. The signatories also say there was never any justification for adopting the decree in the first place.
The decree was not a reform measure, nor an instrument for improving higher education. It was a party-motivated act of retaliation, repressive and aimed at punishing universities.
The judgment refers to the period when faculties backed student demands. The retaliation the signatories describe is financial, and they argue the machinery behind it is still running.
Why the repeal does not end the dispute
Because the decree was a single regulation and the list of demands is longer. The government decision covers norms and salary coefficients only, and leaves everything else untouched.
The initiatives are now asking for:
- the abolition of the SPIRI system, which they call an instrument of financial pressure on faculties
- a resolution of the cases of professors Jelena Kleut and Vladimir Mihic
- the return of the department taken from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Nis
- the dismissal of Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stankovic
- publication of the results of the Science Fund’s Ideas programme
The same list calls for an end to what the signatories describe as a tabloid campaign against the academic community.
The Nis case they keep pointing to
Nis is the most concrete part of the story, because it runs through accounting rather than through regulation. As of July 22 the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Nis still had no approved appropriations for money already allocated to it in the state budget. Without that approval the faculty cannot spend funds that are formally its own.
The result was that the July salary, due to be paid in August, was left in doubt. Other faculties had by then received appropriations covering the next three months.
That mechanism explains why the repeal reads as a partial win to the signatories. A norm is published in the official gazette and can be struck down by a single act. An appropriation is an administrative step that needs no explanation, and a faculty without one has no payroll.
What August will show
The first verifiable date is the July payroll in Nis. If the appropriations are approved, the financial pressure argument weakens. If they are not, a dispute that began over teaching norms carries on over budget lines, and the Education Ministry enters the new academic year with a demand for the minister’s removal still on the table.
