Dinar at Its Weakest This Year, Euro Hits 120 Dinars at Some Exchange Offices: Who Is Really Spreading the Panic?

Less than three weeks after Serbia's elections, the fiercest argument isn't about ministers - it's about the exchange rate. According to the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), the dinar is hitting a new low against the euro for 2026 almost daily, and at some exchange offices the euro has jumped to as much as 120 dinars.

Dejan Šoškić, a former NBS governor and the Student List's candidate for prime minister, insists the problem is panic, not the currency. In his view, the former government is only embarrassing itself with such stories and doesn't understand what is in the country's interest. "The country's interest is not to stoke baseless panics, but to tell the truth," Šoškić said.

Media close to the former government hit back with headlines about "financial collapse" and told the prime minister candidate to take a walk to the nearest exchange office. Yet they themselves cite reports that some exchange offices are trying to cash in on the nerves. So the 120 figure is a price at a kiosk, not the official rate. The official rate, though, is sliding.

Why is this news at all? Because for years the NBS kept the dinar practically nailed at around 117 to the euro. In a country where flats and cars are sold in euros but wages arrive in dinars, every wobble in the rate is felt at the counter, not on a chart.

Both sides are now using the exchange rate as a weapon. The former government sells every extra dinar as proof that the newcomers can't run a country. The newcomers brand every warning as panic. Neither side says what the NBS will do if the slide continues - and that is the answer that would calm the market more than any TV studio.

Macedonia's denar has been de facto pegged to the euro since the mid-nineties. That stability is easy to take for granted - right up until you glance at the exchange office next door. Will Belgrade manage to calm the nerves before it forms a new government?