Do we like them?

Do we like Ana Brnabić?

Our score: 4 out of 10. Real good on LGBTQ+ rights, set against a loud run of attacks on protesters and independent media.

Brnabić is Serbia's career-insider success story: prime minister from 2017 to 2024, parliamentary speaker since March 2024, and in September 2026 acting head of state. In 2017 she became the country's first woman prime minister and its first openly lesbian one. She's also been a close ally of Aleksandar Vučić the whole way, which explains most of what follows.

On LGBTQ+ issues the record is better than the loudest critics allow, though thinner than activists wanted. In 2017 she became the first sitting Serbian prime minister to march at Belgrade Pride, saying the aim was to show that “diversity makes our society stronger”. Activists later complained about the lack of legal recognition for same-sex couples, and in April 2026 she was one of 30 MPs who voted for an opposition draft law on same-sex unions. Vučić has said he won't sign such a law while he is president.

The harm check is where it gets uncomfortable, and it isn't about LGBTQ+ people. In February 2026 she dismissed reports of students being beaten in Novi Sad as media spin, calling the protest “an assault on the Serbian state, the pillars of our society and people”. In June 2025 she wrote on X that students were planning “the ultimate coup against Serbia”. The report carried no response from the students.

The press is her other target. At a Brussels panel in September 2025 she claimed N1 had reported a 16-year-old's death at a protest, and N1's reporter said it never did. In February 2024 she accused United Group media of leaking an ODIHR report to push fraud claims, while opposition MP Marinika Tepić said the observers had recorded election fraud. It's the grievance-and-blame pattern, aimed at critics and journalists rather than the groups this page watches.

There's also a court stain. Opposition leader Dragan Đilas said in June 2025 he had to use debt collectors to extract 300,000 dinars awarded against her in a defamation suit over things she said about him. He says he gave the money to a charity for boys with muscular dystrophy. N1's report carried no response from her, so that's his account of the collection.

The recent chapter is a whirlwind. Vučić resigned on 27 September to contest the parliamentary election, and she took over as acting president the next day, calling the presidential seal “a bit ironic”. A month later he conceded his list had lost to the Student List, the very movement she had spent months attacking. Where that leaves her is anyone's guess.