Sider Answers Brnabic Over Protest on Election Observers
Serbia's parliament speaker has challenged the make-up of the European Parliament's observer delegation in a letter to Roberta Mecola. Its head calls it an attack unlike any before.
The Speaker of Serbia’s National Assembly and acting President of the Republic, Ana Brnabic, has challenged the make-up of the delegation that will observe the elections in Serbia, in a letter to European Parliament President Roberta Mecola. The contents of the letter became known today, and Andreas Sider, the member of the European Parliament appointed to head the delegation, responded from Strasbourg.
RTS and the Austrian news agency APA have seen the letter. Brnabic is protesting over who will observe the October 25 parliamentary elections, and above all over the appointment of Sider, an Austrian Social Democrat from the SPÖ, to lead the mission. The delegation will be in the country from October 22 to 26, five days in all, one of them election day itself. None of the sources says how many members it has.
What does Brnabic say in the letter?
The core of the objection is bias. Brnabic writes that the public record of several delegation members shows political bias, which, as she points out, runs against international documents, including European Union codes and guidelines. She assesses the choice of members this way:
“The selection of individuals who continually voice markedly negative judgments about the authorities in Serbia, some of whom even publicly express an expectation that they be removed and support for other participants in the elections, clearly indicates that they are coming to Serbia with conclusions already formed.”
That is how Brnabic put it, according to RTS. She objects to Sider personally over his conduct at an earlier vote. According to her letter, as an observer in December 2023 he “repeatedly and obviously” breached the Code of Conduct for International Election Observers, which accompanies the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation.
The letter also names another delegation member, MEP Helmut Brandsteter of NEOS, who, ORF reports, has repeatedly spoken out publicly against Aleksandar Vucic’s system. Brnabic writes that she does not understand how he “can approach the electoral process impartially and base his assessments on verified facts”.
How did Sider respond?
Speaking to APA on the sidelines of the plenary session in Strasbourg, Sider said that protests against the European Parliament’s observer mission have reached a scale not seen before. Reacting to Brnabic’s letter, he described it as an “attack unlike any before”. Austrian media recall that Sider has criticized Serbia’s authorities in the past.
The same day, Tuesday, Austrian MEP Lukas Mandl of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) came out in his support. His statement, reported by ORF and N1, reads:
“Serbia believes it can choose for itself who will carry out this election observation. Austria is a strong pillar of support for the six Western Balkan states. As an Austrian, Andreas Sider is the ideal choice to lead the election observation.”
Mandl thereby added a second layer to the dispute: not only whether Sider is biased, but who gets to decide the make-up of a mission sent by the European Parliament.
What came before this letter?
We wrote about the topic on October 18, when it was reported that Brnabic would send an objection to the European Parliament over Sider. At that point only the announcement was known. Now the claims in the letter itself are public, along with the first reply from the other side.
Nothing in the sources available to us indicates that Mecola has answered the letter or that the delegation has been changed. Two days remain before the mission departs for Serbia: the first members arrive on October 22, and the elections follow three days later.
