Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in Brussels, 15 October 2026. Photo: EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Thursday dismissed a diplomatic protest note from Belgrade alleging interference in the Serbian parliamentary election as “complete nonsense.”
“It is absolute nonsense to suggest that Croatia, presumably acting as both an external and an internal enemy, is interfering in the political process and the election race in Serbia,” Plenkovic said.
Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s outgoing president and the lead candidate on the “United Serbia” list, said that no country had ever interfered in another country’s elections as extensively as Croatia had done in Serbia’s upcoming parliamentary elections, Serbian news agency Tanjug reported on Thursday.
Vucic welcomed the Serbian Foreign Ministry’s decision to send Croatia a protest note, adding that it should have been done “perhaps a thousand times by now.
“It is important to leave a record that we were aware that Croatia was interfering in our electoral process in the most overt way. Therefore, we have issued a protest note,” Vucic said.
Serbian public broadcaster Radio-Television Serbia said the note stated that attempts to influence Serbia’s electoral processes were unacceptable, as were various aspects of Croatian media coverage of Serbia’s political situation.
“This narrative has been pushed for quite some time. As for the protests regarding coverage by Croatian media, I don’t know what more there is to add. As far as I recall, our media are free – people write what they want,” Plenkovic responded.
“Croatia does not interfere in such matters, nor is this an issue that concerns us. However, there are fundamental values on which Serbia needs to make progress rather than sending us ridiculous notes,” Plenkovic added.
“Unfortunately, we remember Aleksandar Vucic’s role in the [1990s military] aggression against Croatia, and 35 years later, we are witnessing the same rhetoric. This shows there has been no progress towards normalising relations in Serbia,” said Tomo Medved, Croatia’s Minister for Veterans and a member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, on Thursday.
Josko Klisovic, of the opposition Social Democratic Party, described the note as “completely groundless and diplomatically misguided.
“Croatia does not interfere in Serbia’s election campaign. However, it seems that Aleksandar Vucic wants to drag Croatia into it,” Klisovic said, adding that the goal was clear: “Vucic wants to mobilise his electorate to turn out in the largest possible numbers and grant him another term.
“I hope the citizens of Serbia will recognise this manipulation by Vucic and head to the polls with the reality of their current lives, and the lives they wish to lead in the future, in mind,” Klisovic said.
Marijana Puljak, an MP from the Center Party, said the dispute showed Vucic’s nervousness and that the opposition student movement in Serbia was putting him under pressure, prompting him to look for culprits everywhere.
Parliamentary elections in Serbia are scheduled for October 25 with the Student List seen as the main opponent for Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party.