Vučić Promises Police Reform After the Nešović Case - "No Mafia Police," But Serbia Has 20 Years of Similar Promises and Very Little Reform

On RTS, on the programme "Thursdays at 9," Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić came out with a message that doesn't get spoken often in Serbian politics: "Anyone involved in protecting criminals has to go. We are not going to have a mafia police." Similar lines have come from dozens of such promises over the last twenty years - but this time it comes with concrete proposals.

"For us, there are no people who are above the law," Vučić added. A sentence that in the Serbian context means much more than its literal meaning. Given that in the last few months Serbia has faced several cases in which police officers were involved in protecting organised criminal groups - including the shocking murder of Aleksandar Nešović, whose body was found in a barrel and whose chief suspect is a former police officer - Vučić's proposal lands at the most sensitive moment.

The concrete reforms he announced: mandatory reporting of all police officer contacts with informants, and automatic dismissal of those who met with informants without filing a prior report. That's technical regulation that in theory should prevent the formation of "two-way" relationships between the police and organised crime - but in practice, anyone who has worked in these structures knows that a law without a built-in oversight system doesn't work.

The question is whether this is a political promise or a real reform. In the Serbian political system, the difference between the two has historically been very small. But the fact is that the Nešović case is a turning point: it isn't just one murder, it's a symptom of something bigger that everyone knows about, and nobody wants to say in public - that certain segments of the Serbian police have for years played both sides.

Will such a reform pass parliament? Maybe. Will it be implemented? That depends a great deal on who will have the political will to clash with the police unions - which in Serbia are fragmented, powerful, and have long-standing networks inside the penal apparatus. Vučić, who has the power to push the law forward, now has to prove he also has the will to keep it standing when his own structure pushes back.