Vucic dissolved parliament and called early elections for 25 October. He signed the decision on a proposal from his own government, which means the authorities requested elections from themselves - a procedure that on paper looks institutionally impeccable, and in practice means both the date and the tempo are set by whoever is already in power.

In his address to citizens Vucic kept the rhetoric measured. "Citizens of Serbia, you will certainly have the chance to choose among many options. I ask you to do so in a peaceful and dignified manner," he said, adding that it is important to respect differing political views, the right to free assembly and freedom of expression. Almost anyone who has watched the streets in Serbia over the past year and a half will read that paragraph twice.

Because those streets are the real reason. Vucic himself admitted the past months brought "major turbulence on the domestic political scene", but immediately added the frame he wants it seen through: "With the involvement of foreign forces we had unrest and a divided society." The phrasing is familiar across the whole Balkans - when protests last longer than expected, the blame moves across the border.

The sentence that says more than the whole address

"The world order established in 1945 has been demolished," Vucic said, placing his decision in the context of a global upheaval. That is a classic technique: domestic elections get packaged as a response to global instability rather than a response to pressure from one's own citizens. Which other leader in the region would not want the same frame?

The most revealing part is the explanation of why the elections are now. "Were the elections necessary for us now? Without these tensions, without these political divisions and clashes, they certainly would not have been needed," Vucic said, and then added a sentence rarely heard from a head of state: "Any delay would endanger Expo and the survival of democracy." Expo. An international exhibition in Belgrade, placed in the same sentence as the survival of democracy.

Serbia enters an election campaign with its process towards the European Union locked - not a single new cluster in the negotiations has been opened since 2021. The elections on 25 October will not unblock that by themselves, but they will show how long one government can keep both the street and Brussels waiting at the same time.