Aleksandar Vučić’s regime replaced almost all judges and prosecutors in Serbia over 12 years

Coordinated regime tabloid attacks are underway against judges and prosecutors who, in line with the law, are releasing students from detention over protests

In recent years, the regime of Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has fiercely attacked judges and prosecutors for issuing decisions and rulings that have placed their party colleagues and tycoons under the reach of the law, even though judges and prosecutors are acting strictly in accordance with the laws that those same authorities drafted and then unanimously adopted in the National Assembly.

At this moment, coordinated regime tabloid attacks are underway against judges and prosecutors who, in line with the law, are releasing students from detention over protests, as well as for the criminal prosecution of ministers whom the prosecution considers partly responsible for the deaths of 16 people at the Novi Sad railway station: Goran Vesić and Tomislav Momirović, and also Minister of Culture Nikola Selaković for removing protected cultural status from the General Staff building so it could be sold to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of United States President Donald Trump.

The regime’s attacks are aimed at discrediting the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime, Mladen Nenadić, and the Supreme Public Prosecutor, Zagorka Dolovac. At the same time, Minister of Justice Nenad Vujić has announced that, at the request of Uglješa Mrdić, president of the parliamentary Committee on the Judiciary, the ministry will amend the Law on Public Prosecution and the Law on Courts.

Under these amendments, the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime would be subordinated to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, while the Special Court for Organized Crime and the War Crimes Court and Prosecutor’s Office would be folded into the jurisdiction of the Higher Court and Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office.

What the Progressive Party loyalists and their propaganda outlets do not mention, however, is that over the past 12 years they have managed to almost completely replace the structure of Serbia’s judiciary, both courts and prosecution, with their own people.

According to data obtained by Danas from the two top bodies overseeing the work of courts and prosecution in Serbia, the High Judicial Council (VSS) and the High Prosecutorial Council (VST), from 2012 to today nearly 95 percent of judges and around 60 percent of prosecutors have been replaced.

VSS data show that there are currently 2,688 judges serving in Serbian courts, and that from January 1, 2013 to July 3 of this year, 2,245 judges took the judicial oath in parliament or were appointed for the first time. This means the judicial corps, or its structure, has been almost completely changed during the SNS’s time in power. Notably, from January 1, 2012 to July 31 of this year, a total of 1,602 judges left office due to dismissal, death, retirement, personal request, or permanent loss of working capacity.

Snežana Bjelogrlić, president of the Judges’ Association of Serbia, told that a large-scale personnel change in the judiciary had already been carried out in 2009, even though at that time a similar number of judges had already been “replaced” or “re-verified” compared to the 1992 reappointment that followed the 1990 constitutional change and the introduction of permanent judicial tenure.

She notes that in postwar West Germany, Portugal after the fall of the military junta, Spain after Franco’s death, and even modern Germany after reunification and the lustration of judges from East Germany, judges from previous periods were retained.

The wave of attacks on the prosecution and the judiciary, not only from political authorities but also from the media and demonstrators, followed over the past year or more as a reaction, first to the prosecution’s poor public communication after the Novi Sad tragedy, and then to the imprudent alignment of certain judges and prosecutors with one of the “warring” sides and their public involvement in a broader political process, in a social situation unusually complex, tense, and antagonistic.

The number of newly appointed holders of VST from January 1, 2012 to August 1, 2025 is 386, while 271 prosecutors and deputy prosecutors left office in that period. Today, according to data as of October 7, 2025, a total of 702 public prosecutors and 65 chief public prosecutors are working in prosecution offices. At the same time, at a session held on February 3, 2025, the High Prosecutorial Council decided to appoint 51 public prosecutors who have not yet taken the oath before the National Assembly, due to appeals filed with the Constitutional Court.