After Belgrade's diplomatic note, Croatian journalists are in the crosshairs ahead of Serbia's elections: a country that ranks last of 40 EU and Balkan states for media freedom

The protest note that Serbia's Foreign Ministry sent to Croatia isn't dying down - quite the opposite. Now the focus is on the Croatian journalists due to cover the elections. The reason for the note, as reported by Serbian media, is "the grossest interference in the electoral process in Serbia, as well as increasingly frequent biased reporting on internal political circumstances" in the country. Translated into plain language: Belgrade doesn't like what Croatian journalists are writing.

The timing isn't accidental. Serbia goes to the polls next weekend, and a diplomatic note over another country's articles says more about the nerves in Belgrade than about Croatian media. The Croatian government can't tell editors what to publish tomorrow - and in Belgrade they know that very well. So who is the note really meant for?

Who is interfering in the elections?

Croatian communications expert Maro Alavanja, appearing on Croatian television, believes Aleksandar Vučić has "definitely lost control" and compares the move to Viktor Orbán's behaviour before the elections in Hungary. His explanation is more down to earth: many people from Serbia work and study in Croatia and follow Croatian media. That, he says, is the heart of it - the fear isn't of Zagreb, but of what Serbian voters might find out.

Alavanja also draws a line that Belgrade deliberately blurs. Interfering in elections, he says, means covert advertising and funding in the media, or installing editors-in-chief close to the government. Critical reporting isn't interference, it's journalism. He describes most Serbian media as a notice board for the ruling SNS and points out that the few critical voices got new owners and editors ahead of the elections, and that satirist Zoran Kesić's show was taken off air too.

The numbers Belgrade keeps quiet about

On Reporters Without Borders' 2026 press freedom index, Serbia ranks 104th of 180 countries and territories - last among the 40 countries the organisation counts in its EU-Balkans region. In August the same organisation raised the alarm about several Serbian journalists working from exile. In July the European Federation of Journalists counted at least 38 documented police attacks on journalists since the start of 2025, with death threats and threats of sexual violence that also target their families.

With that record at home, the note to Zagreb looks like blaming the mirror for your face. In the late nineties Vučić was information minister in Slobodan Milošević's government, so he knows perfectly well how media are brought into line. The difference is that Croatian editors don't answer to him.

The journalists are the real target

The Croatian Journalists' Association warned that the note is an alarming attempt at intimidation and could be a prelude to pressure on Croatian reporters covering the elections from Serbia. Alavanja expects harassment and longer holdups at the border, but not a major escalation, because Vučić, he says, doesn't want an open problem with Europe while it is watching the elections closely.

The pattern is familiar. Earlier this year Vučić claimed that Croatia, Albania and Kosovo were just waiting for a chance to attack Serbia. Now the enemy writes articles. When voters are told every day that the danger lies across the border, wages, corruption and an honest vote count sink to the bottom of the list. Whether it works again this time, the weekend will show - and Alavanja warns that if the result is close, even civil unrest can't be ruled out.