Djilas Unveils European Serbia List: Tepic, Ponos
Dragan Djilas announced that SSP, Srbija Centar and Solidarity are running in the October 25 election together as the European Serbia list, led by Marinika Tepic and Zdravko Ponos.
The leader of the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), Dragan Djilas, announced today, September 9, in front of the National Assembly building in Belgrade, that SSP, Srbija Centar and the Solidarity movement will run together in the October 25 snap parliamentary election under the name “European Serbia, Marinika Tepic, Zdravko Ponos.” The press conference began at 11 a.m.
Although Djilas delivered the announcement himself, his name does not appear in the list’s title. Its leaders are Marinika Tepic of SSP and Zdravko Ponos, the head of Srbija Centar, meaning the coalition is formally putting forward two people other than Djilas, even though he remains its main spokesman to reporters.
As previously reported, the three parties had said they would announce their joint ticket within a day, and today that promise took concrete shape: the list’s full name, the order of its leaders and a program for the first days of a potential government. SSP, Srbija Centar, Solidarity and the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) had formed the Platform for a European Serbia together in June 2026. Last night, however, PSG decided not to run on its own in this election and to back the Students’ List instead, leaving three of the platform’s four founders on the ballot.
Djilas laid out the decision in the same words he later repeated to reporters gathered outside:
“Three pro-European organizations, the Party of Freedom and Justice, Srbija Centar (SRCE) and the Solidarity movement, have decided to run in the election together as the list ‘European Serbia, Marinika Tepic, Zdravko Ponos,’” Djilas said in front of the Assembly.
He named entry into the European Union and a better life for citizens as the list’s core goals. He also said the coalition already has a finished plan for the first 100 days of a potential government, which he said would include dismantling the rule of the Serbian Progressive Party.
“We have clear ideas and a program for how to dismantle the Serbian Progressive Party’s regime in 100 days, and how to start building the European Serbia we believe in and are fighting for. We also know how to deal with the biggest scourge, and that’s corruption,” Djilas said at the press conference in front of the National Assembly building.
By putting it this way, Djilas framed the fight against corruption as the coalition’s top task, not just one item in its campaign platform. He also offered his own forecast for the election result, saying the pro-European list will clearly clear the threshold and, once all the votes are counted, will finish third in the number of seats won. No independent source has verified that estimate so far; it is Djilas’s own calculation, made just as the campaign is getting underway.
Srbija Centar leader Zdravko Ponos explained the joint ticket as a response to the need to stop waiting for an outcome that might never come on its own.
“This is not a time when we can wait four years for our allies to arrive while we sit around cracking sunflower seeds in the meantime, or back someone weaker while some thug beats them up and we just hold the weaker guy’s jacket. This is not a time when we can wait for the election to pass and only then figure out where we go from there,” Ponos said.
The European Serbia list enters a campaign in which, based on announcements so far, voters can expect at least 16, and possibly as many as 19, lists on the ballot. Besides the pro-European coalition, the field so far also includes the Serbian Progressive Party’s list, running under the name “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia,” with Vucic as its candidate for prime minister; the Students’ List, backed without its own candidates by the Green-Left Front, Kreni-Promeni, the Democratic Party and Dveri; and the “Narodna Srbija” alliance of the Serbian People’s Movement, New Face of Serbia and the Ecological Uprising, running under the name “Choice of the People.”
The deadline to file election lists is October 4, three weeks before polls open. By then it should also be clear whether the number of lists climbs toward the higher end of that forecast, and whether coalitions still being negotiated, including among Bosniak and Albanian parties discussing a joint run, manage to reach a deal before time runs out.
