European Serbia Signs Novi Sad Pledge Ruling Out SNS
Marinika Tepic, Zdravko Ponos, Dragan Djilas and Goran Jesic signed a pledge in Novi Sad committing not to negotiate or cooperate with the SNS after the October 25 election.
On September 24 the European Serbia coalition signed a document in Novi Sad called the Guarantee for European Serbia, in which the list’s leaders publicly pledged that after the October 25 parliamentary election they will not negotiate, form a coalition, or in any way help the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) form a government. The signing fell on the anniversary of the 2000 election that ousted Slobodan Milosevic, and the date appears to be no coincidence.
The document was signed by list leaders Marinika Tepic and Zdravko Ponos, top candidate Dragan Djilas, and parliamentary candidate Goran Jesic. These are the same people who unveiled the list’s so-called anti-corruption radar earlier in the week, so the Guarantee for European Serbia continues the same pattern: the coalition is turning each of its moves into a verifiable, signed pledge to voters rather than a routine campaign statement.
What the document says
According to the list’s statement, reported in nearly identical form by N1, Danas, and Insajder, the signatories guarantee three things:
- that after the election there will be no negotiations, coalition, support, or assistance of any kind that helps the SNS and its satellite parties form a government
- that any mandates the list wins belong solely to the cause of change, not to positions, personal interests, or office
- that the goal is to change the system, not merely to change who holds power, meaning a Serbia built on the rule of law, independent institutions, and security, with parastate structures dismantled
N1 also reports that the leaders committed to directing all available resources after the election toward dismantling the current SNS regime, rather than the usual party regrouping that election cycles in Serbia tend to produce.
Who is behind the signatures
The European Serbia list is made up of three parties: Dragan Djilas’s Party of Freedom and Justice, Zdravko Ponos’s Serbia Center (SRCE), and Goran Jesic’s Civic Platform Solidarity, whose representatives signed the document. According to nova.rs, Solidarity said the declaration was not paper for the cameras but an obligation made publicly.
This declaration is not paper for the cameras, it is an obligation made publicly to all citizens: once the election is over there will be no cooperation with the SNS, no trading of votes, no positions instead of change.
Speaking in Novi Sad, Goran Jesic drew a parallel with 2000 and warned against political rhetoric that, in his view, still lingers in public life.
We have to put an end to that rhetoric. To that savagery. To that kind of behavior that no longer has a place in politics.
Djilas, according to remarks carried by the outlets, said the list is not made up of people who hand out easy promises but of people with the knowledge, courage, and experience to carry out substantive change. Ponos recalled that Serbia set out on its European path 26 years ago and has not gotten far along it, but that the fight for freedom, as he put it, is an ongoing process. Tepic stressed that a change of government is only the start of the job, building a system in which the law applies equally to everyone.
Why now
The signing comes just after the coalition completed the formal steps of the election procedure. On September 19, European Serbia submitted its supporting signatures to the Republic Election Commission, and the commission certified its list for the October 25 parliamentary election the following day. That makes the Guarantee for European Serbia effectively the list’s first major political move since its official registration, and one aimed at a single question: whether any deal with the SNS will follow the election.
The answer the coalition offers, repeated in the same words across several outlets, is that no such deal will take any form. That puts European Serbia outside the kind of backroom arrangements that have typically followed the formation of a parliamentary majority after previous Serbian election cycles, including scenarios in which smaller coalition partners gave the SNS the qualified majority it needed to change the constitution or push through other sensitive votes.
Whether a written guarantee like this will actually hold up against pressure from party leaderships in any negotiations after October 25 will depend on how the election itself plays out and on the makeup of the new parliament.
