EU Values Without EU Flags

The lecture examines how, throughout 2024–2025, Serbian university students mobilised around issues such as academic freedom, corruption, media pluralism, and the rule of law—core principles associated with the European Union—while deliberately distancing themselves from overt pro-EU symbolism. In a political environment shaped by rising Euroscepticism, governmental pressure, and contested elections, the student movement articulated a civic, values-based agenda that challenged both illiberal state practices and the binary framing of Serbia’s geopolitical orientation. Drawing on protest discourse, public reactions, and comparative insights from European democratic movements, the lecture analyses why EU-aligned norms continue to inspire grassroots activism even when the EU itself is perceived as distant, ambivalent, or compromised, and what this reveals about the paradoxes of Europeanisation “from below” in contemporary Serbia.

Organised in cooperation with Jean Monnet Module “EU Prox” (https://cjm.unitn.it/eu-prox)

Prof. Jovan Teokarević is a leading Serbian political scientist and professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Belgrade, as well as a long-time visiting professor of European Studies at the College of Europe in Natolin. A specialist in post-communist transitions, Balkan politics, and EU–Western Balkans relations, he previously spent two decades at
the Institute for European Studies and founded the Belgrade Centre for European Integration. He has authored and edited numerous books, coordinated major regional academic programs, and taught widely across Europe, including at the NATO Defence College. A former chair of the Open Society Foundation Serbia, he is recognized as one of the foremost voices on Serbia’s political development and European integration.