118 Professors Ask von der Leyen to Delay Serbia Visit
118 professors from Serbia have written to Ursula von der Leyen asking her to delay her visit to Belgrade until after the election, warning it could be exploited in the campaign.
A group of 118 professors and researchers from Serbia’s academic community sent an open letter today, September 7, to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. They are asking her to consider postponing her announced visit to Belgrade until after the election. The letter comes ahead of snap parliamentary elections whose date has not yet been officially set, and it warns that a meeting between von der Leyen and President Aleksandar Vucic just before the vote could be read as European backing for the ruling party.
The signatories acknowledge in the letter that the visit was planned long before the snap election was announced. It is part of a multi day tour of the Western Balkans that the European Commission president makes almost every year, according to Nova.rs. The problem, as the signatories see it, arises if the election is held in late October: an official visit from von der Leyen could then fall right in the closing stretch of the campaign.
Sources differ on how precise the election date actually is. N1 reports only that the vote could take place in late October, without naming a specific day. Nova.rs and Masina report that President Vucic mentioned October 25 as a possible election date, one that, if confirmed, would nearly coincide with the announced visit.
What the professors are asking of von der Leyen
The letter, signed by 118 members of Serbia’s academic community, professors and researchers from universities across the country, lays out five concrete requests should the visit go ahead during the campaign. The first is that von der Leyen publicly address the pressure on the judiciary, the prosecution, the media and the right to assembly, and make that the official message of her trip. The second is that she meet with different parts of Serbian society, including citizens, independent media and universities, not only the government.
The third request is specific: that the European Commission president visit the railway station in Novi Sad and pay tribute to the victims of the canopy collapse. The fourth is that she publicly state the expectation that Serbian institutions provide full and independent answers about that tragedy. The fifth, and the one the signatories call most important, is that von der Leyen not take sides in the election race.
They back up their concern about a possible misuse of the visit with a broader description of the electoral climate in Serbia:
“International observers and European institutions have already documented on multiple occasions a highly unequal election race in Serbia, including covert forms of campaigning carried out by the state apparatus and the ruling parties, misuse of public resources, pressure on public sector employees and a drastic suppression of media pluralism.”
Under such circumstances, they write, a photograph of the European Commission president with Vucic just before the election could be used by pro government media as a signal that Europe backs the current authorities. The signatories add that they believe this is not von der Leyen’s intention, but that good intentions alone are not enough to prevent that kind of interpretation.
Delay as a last resort
The letter’s central request, the one that gave most reports their headline, is framed conditionally, as a last resort if the risk cannot be removed any other way:
“Should the timing and circumstances of the campaign not allow your visit to be shielded from this kind of instrumentalization, we kindly ask you to consider postponing it until after the election. Europe should not choose for Serbia. That is for the citizens of Serbia to do.”
The professors are especially insistent that their appeal does not favor any side in the political conflict that has gripped Serbia for more than a year, since the civil protests began:
“We are not asking you to support the student movement, the opposition or any election list. We are asking you not to support anyone.”
They repeat that position when asking von der Leyen to prevent her own authority from being misused:
“We ask you to take every step to prevent your institutional authority from being claimed by any participant in the election race.”
The letter also refers back to von der Leyen’s previous visit to Belgrade in October 2025, when the European Commission president spoke of the need for a “strong, vibrant and effective democracy” and announced progress on the rule of law, election conditions and media freedoms. The signatories note that some procedural steps have indeed been taken since then, but that they have not produced real change, and they point out that the European Commission itself documented further pressure on the judiciary and the prosecution during 2026, alongside concerns about pressure on the media and the safety of journalists.
A message about the legitimacy of the election
The letter does not stop at asking for the visit to be postponed. The professors are also asking von der Leyen to publicly state the criteria by which the European Union will judge the credibility of the election result itself, regardless of when the vote is held. In this part of the letter, the tone toward the authorities in Belgrade is sharpest:
“A government that maintains its stability by preventing citizens from removing it is not the kind of stability on which a democratic Europe should be built.”
The open letter thus ties together two questions that have mostly been discussed separately until now: the political timing of an EU official’s visit and whether Serbia’s snap election will be judged free and fair. The European Commission has not yet commented on the letter, and whether the visit stays on its announced October schedule or gets moved will depend above all on when the election date is officially set.
