The origin of the name Serbia is unclear. Historically, authors have mentioned the Serbs (Serbian: Srbi / Срби) and the Sorbs of Eastern Germany (Upper Sorbian: Serbja; Lower Sorbian: Serby) in a variety of ways: Cervetiis (Servetiis), gentis (S)urbiorum, Suurbi, Sorabi, Soraborum, Sorabos, Surpe, Sorabici, Sorabiet, Sarbin, Swrbjn, Servians, Sorbi, Sirbia, Sribia, Zirbia, Zribia, Suurbelant, Surbia, Serbulia / Sorbulia among others.[15][16][17] These authors used these names to refer to Serbs and Sorbs in areas where their historical and current presence is not disputable (notably in the Balkans and Lusatia). However, there are also sources that have used similar names in other parts of the world (most notably in the Asiatic Sarmatia in the Caucasus).
From 1815 to 1882, the official name for Serbia was the Principality of Serbia. From 1882 to 1918, it was renamed to the Kingdom of Serbia, later from 1945 to 1963, the official name for Serbia was the People's Republic of Serbia. This was again renamed the Socialist Republic of Serbia from 1963 to 1990. Since 1990, the official name of the country has been the Republic of Serbia.
Archaeological evidence of Paleolithic settlements on the territory of present-day Serbia is scarce. A fragment of a hominid jaw found in Sićevo (Mala Balanica) is believed to be up to 525,000–397,000 years old.[19]
During the Iron Age, local tribes of Triballi, Dardani, and Autariatae were encountered by the Ancient Greeks during their cultural and political expansion into the region, from the 5th up to the 2nd century BC. The Celtic tribe of Scordisci settled throughout the area in the 3rd century BC. It formed a tribal state, building several fortifications, including their capital at Singidunum (present-day Belgrade) and Naissos (present-day Niš).
The Romans conquered much of the territory in the 2nd century BC. In 167 BC, the Roman province of Illyricum was established; the remainder was conquered around 75 BC, forming the Roman province of Moesia Superior; the modern-day Srem region was conquered in 9 BC; and Bačka and Banat in 106 AD after the Dacian Wars. As a result of this, contemporary Serbia extends fully or partially over several former Roman provinces, including Moesia, Pannonia, Praevalitana, Dalmatia, Dacia, and Macedonia. Seventeen Roman Emperors were born in the area of modern-day Serbia, second only to contemporary Italy.[22] The most famous of these was Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, who issued an edict ordering religious tolerance throughout the Empire.
When the Roman Empire was divided in 395, most of Serbia remained under the Byzantine Empire, and its northwestern parts were included in the Western Roman Empire. By the 6th century, South Slavs migrated into the Byzantine territory in large numbers.[25] They merged with the local Romanised population that was gradually assimilated.[26][27][28]
During these centuries the Serbian state (and influence) expanded significantly. The northern part (modern Vojvodina), was ruled by the Kingdom of Hungary. The period after 1371, known as the Fall of the Serbian Empire saw the once-powerful state fragmented into several principalities, culminating in the Battle of Kosovo (1389) against the rising Ottoman Empire.[38] By the end of the 14th century, the Turks had conquered and ruled the territories south of the Šar Mountains. The political center of Serbia shifted northwards, when the capital of the newly established Serbian Despotate was transferred to Belgrade in 1403,[39] before moving to Smederevo in 1430.[40] The Despotate was then under the double vassalage of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.[41] The fall of Smederevo on 20 June 1459, which marked the full conquest of the Serbian Despotate by the Ottomans, also symbolically signified the end of the Serbian state.[42]
In all Serbian lands conquered by the Ottomans, the native nobility was eliminated and the peasantry was enserfed to Ottoman rulers, while much of the clergy fled or were confined to the isolated monasteries. Under the Ottoman system, Serbs and Christians were considered an inferior class and subjected to heavy taxes, and a portion of the Serbian population experienced Islamization. Many Serbs were recruited during the devshirme system, a form of slavery, in which boys from Balkan Christian families were forcibly converted to Islam and trained for infantry units of the Ottoman army known as the Janissaries.[44][45][46][47] The Serbian Patriarchate of Peć was extinguished in 1463,[48] but reestablished in 1557,[49][50][51] providing for limited continuation of Serbian cultural traditions within the Ottoman Empire, under the Millet system.[52][53]
After the loss of statehood to the Ottoman Empire, Serbian resistance continued in northern regions (modern Vojvodina), under titular despots (until 1537), and popular leaders like Jovan Nenad (1526–1527). From 1521 to 1552, Ottomans conquered Belgrade and regions of Syrmia, Bačka, and Banat.[54] Wars and rebellions constantly challenged Ottoman rule. One of the most significant was the Banat Uprising in 1594 and 1595, which was part of the Long War (1593–1606) between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.[55][56] The area of modern Vojvodina endured a century-long Ottoman occupation before being ceded to the Habsburg monarchy, partially by the Treaty of Karlovci (1699),[57] and fully by the Treaty of Požarevac (1718).[58]
During the Habsburg-Ottoman war (1683–1699), much of Serbia switched from Ottoman rule to Habsburg control from 1688 to 1690.[59] However, the Ottoman army reconquered a large part of Serbia in the winter of 1689/1690, leading to a brutal massacre of the civilian population by uncontrolled Albanian and Tatar units. As a result of the persecutions, several tens of thousands of Serbs, led by the patriarch, Arsenije III Crnojević, fled northwards to settle in Hungary,[60] an event known as the Great Migration of 1690.[61] In August 1690, following several petitions, the Emperor Leopold I formally granted Serbs from the Habsburg monarchy a first set of "privileges",[62][63] primarily to guarantee them freedom of religion.[64] As a consequence, the ecclesiastical centre of the Serbs also moved northwards, to the Metropolitanate of Karlovci,[65] and the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć was once-again abolished by the Ottomans in 1766.[66][67]
In 1718–39, the Habsburg monarchy occupied much of Central Serbia and established the Kingdom of Serbia as crownland.[58] Those gains were lost by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, when the Ottomans retook the region.[68] Apart from territory of modern-day Vojvodina which remained under the Habsburg Empire, central regions of Serbia were occupied once again by the Habsburgs in 1788–1792.
Following the clashes between the Ottoman army and Serbs in Belgrade in 1862,[80] and under pressure from the Great Powers, by 1867 the last Turkish soldiers left the Principality, making the country de facto independent.[81] By enacting a new constitution in 1869,[82] without consulting the Porte, Serbian diplomats confirmed the de facto independence of the country. In 1876, Serbia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, siding with the ongoing Christian uprisings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria.[83][84]
In the First Balkan War in 1912, the Balkan League defeated the Ottoman Empire and captured its European territories, which enabled territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Serbia into regions of Raška, Kosovo, Metohija, and Vardarian Macedonia. The Second Balkan War soon ensued when Bulgaria turned on its former allies, but was defeated, resulting in the Treaty of Bucharest. In two years, Serbia enlarged its territory by 80% and its population by 50%,[90] it also suffered high casualties on the eve of World War I, with more than 36,000 dead.[91] Austria-Hungary became wary of the rising regional power on its borders and its potential to become an anchor for unification of Serbs and other South Slavs, and the relationship between the two countries became tense.
Serbia won the first major battles of the war, including the Battle of Cer,[93] and the Battle of Kolubara.[94] Despite initial success, it was eventually overpowered by the Central Powers in 1915 and Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia followed. Most of its army and some people retreated to Greece and Corfu, suffering immense losses on the way. After the Central Powers' military situation on other fronts worsened, the remains of the Serb army returned east and led a final breakthrough through enemy lines on 15 September 1918, liberating Serbia and defeating Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary.[95] Serbia, with its campaign, was a major Balkan Entente Power[96] which contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the Balkans in November 1918, especially by helping France force Bulgaria's capitulation.[97] Serbia's casualties accounted for 8% of the total Entente military deaths; 58% (243,600) soldiers of the Serbian army perished in the war.[98] The total number of casualties is placed around 700,000,[99] more than 16% of Serbia's prewar size,[100] and a majority (57%) of its overall male population.[101][102][103] Serbia suffered the biggest casualty rate in World War I.[104]
On 26 November 1918, the Podgorica Assembly deposed the House of Petrović-Njegoš and united Montenegro with Serbia.[106] On 1 December 1918, in Belgrade, Serbian Prince Regent Alexander Karađorđević proclaimed the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, under King Peter I of Serbia.[107][108] King Peter was succeeded by his son, Alexander, in August 1921. Serb centralists and Croat autonomists clashed in the parliament, and most governments were fragile and short-lived. Nikola Pašić, a conservative prime minister, headed or dominated most governments until his death. King Alexander established a dictatorship in 1929 with the aim of establishing the Yugoslav ideology and single Yugoslav nation, changed the name of the country to Yugoslavia. The effect of Alexander's dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs living in Yugoslavia from the idea of unity.[109]
Draginac and Loznica massacre of 2,950 villagers in Western Serbia in 1941 was the first large execution of civilians in occupied Serbia by Germans, with Kragujevac massacre and Novi Sad Raid of Jews and Serbs by Hungarian fascists being the most notorious, with over 3,000 victims in each case.[110][111] After one year of occupation, around 16,000 Serbian Jews were murdered in the area, or around 90% of its pre-war Jewish population during The Holocaust in Serbia. Many concentration camps were established across the area. Banjica concentration camp was the largest concentration camp and jointly run by the German army and Nedić's regime,[112] with primary victims being Serbian Jews, Roma, and Serb political prisoners.[113]
The Republic of Užice was a short-lived liberated territory established by the Partisans and the first liberated territory in World War II Europe, organised as a military mini-state that existed in the autumn of 1941 in the west of occupied Serbia. By late 1944, the Belgrade Offensive swung in favour of the partisans in the civil war; the partisans subsequently gained control of Yugoslavia.[119] Following the Belgrade Offensive, the Syrmian Front was the last major military action of World War II in Serbia. A study by Vladimir Žerjavić estimates total war-related deaths in Yugoslavia at 1,027,000, including 273,000 in Serbia.[120]
The principle of non-alignment was the core of Yugoslav and later Serbian diplomacy. The First Non-Aligned Movement Summit Conference took place in Belgrade in September 1961.
The victory of the Communist Partisans resulted in the abolition of the monarchy and a subsequent constitutional referendum. A one-party state was soon established in Yugoslavia by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It is claimed between 60,000 and 70,000 people died in Serbia during the 1944–45 communist purge.[121] Serbia became a constituent republic within the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia known as the People's Republic of Serbia, and had a republic-branch of the federal communist party, the League of Communists of Serbia. Serbia's most powerful and influential politician in Tito-era Yugoslavia was Aleksandar Ranković, one of the "big four" Yugoslav leaders. Ranković was later removed from the office because of the disagreements regarding Kosovo's nomenklatura and the unity of Serbia. Ranković's dismissal was highly unpopular among Serbs. Pro-decentralisation reformers in Yugoslavia succeeded in the late 1960s in attaining substantial decentralisation of powers, creating substantial autonomy in Kosovo and Vojvodina, and recognising a distinctive "Muslim" nationality. As a result of these reforms, there was a massive overhaul of Kosovo's nomenklatura and police, that shifted from being Serb-dominated to ethnic Albanian-dominated through firing Serbs on a large scale. Further concessions were made to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo in response to unrest, including the creation of the University of Pristina as an Albanian language institution. These changes created widespread fear among Serbs of being treated as second-class citizens.[122]
In 1989, Slobodan Milošević rose to power in Serbia. Milošević promised a reduction of powers for the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, where his allies subsequently took over power, during the Anti-bureaucratic revolution.[126] This ignited tensions between the communist leadership of the other republics of Yugoslavia and awoke ethnic nationalism across Yugoslavia that eventually resulted in its breakup, with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia declaring independence during 1991 and 1992.[127][bettersourceneeded] Serbia and Montenegro remained together as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).[12] However, according to the Badinter Commission, the country was not legally considered a continuation of the former SFRY, but a new state.
Fueled by ethnic tensions, the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001) erupted, with the most severe conflicts taking place in Croatia and Bosnia, where the large ethnic Serb communities opposed independence from Yugoslavia. The FRY remained outside the conflicts, but provided logistic, military and financial support to Serb forces in the wars. In response, the UN imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia which led to political isolation and the collapse of the economy (GDP decreased from $24 billion in 1990 to under $10 billion in 1993). Serbia was in the 2000s sued on the charges of alleged genocide by neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia but in both cases the main charges against Serbia were dismissed.[128][129]
Multi-party democracy was introduced in Serbia in 1990, officially dismantling the one-party system. Despite constitutional changes, Milošević maintained strong political influence over the state media and security apparatus.[130][131] When the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia refused to accept its defeat in municipal elections in 1996, Serbians engaged in large protests against the government.
Serbia's political climate remained tense and in 2003, Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated as result of a plot originating from organised crime and former security officials. In 2004 unrest in Kosovo took place, leaving 19 people dead and a number of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries destroyed or damaged.[140][141]
On 21 May 2006, Montenegro held a referendum which showed 55.4% of voters in favour of independence, just above the 55% required by the referendum. This was followed on 5 June 2006 by Serbia's declaration of independence, marking the re-emergence of Serbia as an independent state. The National Assembly of Serbia declared Serbia to be the legal successor to the former state union.[142]
The Assembly of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Serbia immediately condemned the declaration and continues to deny any statehood to Kosovo. The declaration has sparked varied responses from the international community.[143]Status-neutral talks between Serbia and Kosovo-Albanian authorities are held in Brussels, mediated by the EU.
Serbia officially applied for membership in the European Union on 22 December 2009,[144] and received candidate status on 1 March 2012, following a delay in December 2011.[145][146] Following a positive recommendation of the European Commission and European Council in June 2013, negotiations to join the EU commenced in January 2014.[147]
The country was chosen to host international specialised expositionExpo 2027.[163] The Serbian government is working with Rio Tinto corporation on a project which aims to develop Europe's biggest lithium mine.[164] Mining lithium became a matter of debate in the society and several protests against mining took place.[165][166][167]
Bačka region; northern part of the country is defined by its mostly flat and fertile terrain.
A landlocked country situated at the crossroads between Central[169][170] and Southeastern Europe, Serbia is located in the Balkan peninsula and the Pannonian Plain. Serbia lies between latitudes 41° and 47° N, and longitudes 18° and 23° E. The country covers a total of 88,499km2 (34,170sqmi);[e] with Kosovo excluded, the total area is 77,474km2 (29,913sqmi).[3][2] Its total border length amounts to 2,027km (1,260mi): Albania 115km (71mi), Bosnia and Herzegovina 302km (188mi), Bulgaria 318km (198mi), Croatia 241km (150mi), Hungary 151km (94mi), North Macedonia 221km (137mi), Montenegro 203km (126mi) and Romania 476km (296mi).[3] All of Kosovo's border with Albania (115km (71mi)), North Macedonia (159km (99mi)) and Montenegro (79km (49mi))[171] are under control of the Kosovo border police.[172] Serbia treats the 352km (219mi) border with Kosovo as an "administrative line"; it is under shared control of Kosovo border police and Serbian police forces.[173] The Pannonian Plain covers the northern third of the country (Vojvodina and Mačva[174]) while the easternmost tip of Serbia extends into the Wallachian Plain. The terrain of the central part of the country consists chiefly of hills traversed by rivers. Mountains dominate the southern third of Serbia. Dinaric Alps stretch in the west and the southwest, following the flow of the rivers Drina and Ibar. The Carpathian Mountains and Balkan Mountains stretch in a north–south direction in eastern Serbia.[175]
Ancient mountains in the southeast corner of the country belong to the Rilo-Rhodope Mountain system. Elevation ranges from the Midžor peak of the Balkan Mountains at 2,169 metres (7,116 feet) (the highest peak in Serbia, excluding Kosovo) to the lowest point of just 17 metres (56 feet) near the Danube river at Prahovo.[176] The largest lake is Đerdap Lake (163 square kilometres (63sqmi)) and the longest river passing through Serbia is the Danube (587.35 kilometres (364.96mi)).
The climate of Serbia is under the influences of the landmass of Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. With mean January temperatures around 0°C (32°F), and mean July temperatures of 22°C (72°F), it can be classified as a warm-humid continental or humid subtropical climate.[177] In the north, the climate is more continental, with cold winters, and hot, humid summers along with well-distributed rainfall patterns. In the south, summers and autumns are drier, and winters are relatively cold, with heavy inland snowfall in the mountains.
Differences in elevation, proximity to the Adriatic Sea and large river basins, as well as exposure to the winds account for climate variations.[178] Southern Serbia is subject to Mediterranean influences.[179] The Dinaric Alps and other mountain ranges contribute to the cooling of most of the warm air masses. Winters are quite harsh in the Pešter plateau, because of the mountains which encircle it.[180] One of the climatic features of Serbia is Košava, a cold and very squally southeastern wind which starts in the Carpathian Mountains and follows the Danube northwest through the Iron Gate where it gains a jet effect and continues to Belgrade and can spread as far south as Niš.[181]
The average annual air temperature for the period 1961–1990 for the area with an elevation of up to 300m (984ft) is 10.9°C (51.6°F). The areas with an elevation of 300 to 500m (984 to 1,640ft) have an average annual temperature of around 10.0°C (50.0°F), and over 1,000m (3,281ft) of elevation around 6.0°C (42.8°F).[182] The lowest recorded temperature in Serbia was −39.5°C (−39.1°F) on 13 January 1985, Karajukića Bunari in Pešter, and the highest was 44.9°C (112.8°F), on 24 July 2007, recorded in Smederevska Palanka.[183]
Serbia is one of few European countries with very high risk of natural hazards (earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts).[184] It is estimated that potential floods, particularly in areas of Central Serbia, threaten over 500 larger settlements and an area of 16,000 square kilometres.[185] The most disastrous were the floods in May 2014, when 57 people died and a damage of over 1.5 billion euros was inflicted.[186]
Almost all of Serbia's rivers drain to the Black Sea, by way of the Danube river. The Danube, the second largest European river, passes through Serbia with 588 kilometres[188] (21% of its overall length) and represents the major source of fresh water.[189][190] It is joined by its biggest tributaries, the Great Morava (longest river entirely in Serbia with 493km (306mi) of length[191]), Sava and Tisza rivers.[192] One notable exception is the Pčinja which flows into the Aegean. Drina river forms the natural border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and represents the main kayaking and rafting attraction in both countries.
Due to configuration of the terrain, natural lakes are sparse and small; most of them are located in the lowlands of Vojvodina, like the aeolian lake Palić or numerous oxbow lakes along river flows (like Zasavica and Carska Bara). However, there are numerous artificial lakes, mostly due to hydroelectric dams, the biggest being Đerdap (Iron Gates) on the Danube with 163km2 (63sqmi) on the Serbian side[193] (a total area of 253km2 (98sqmi) is shared with Romania); Perućac on the Drina, and Vlasina. The largest waterfall, Jelovarnik, located in Kopaonik, is 71 m high.[194] Abundance of relatively unpolluted surface waters and numerous underground natural and mineral water sources of high water quality presents a chance for export and economy improvement; however, more extensive exploitation and production of bottled water began only recently.[citation needed]
Serbia is a country of rich ecosystem and species diversity—covering only 1.9% of the whole European territory, Serbia is home to 39% of European vascular flora, 51% of European fish fauna, 40% of European reptiles and amphibian fauna, 74% of European bird fauna, and 67% European mammal fauna.[195] Its abundance of mountains and rivers make it an ideal environment for a variety of animals, many of which are protected including wolves, lynx, bears, foxes, and stags. There are 17 snake species living all over the country; 8 of them are venomous.[196]
Mountain of Tara in western Serbia is one of the last regions in Europe where bears can still live in absolute freedom.[197][bettersourceneeded] Serbia is home to about 380 species of birds. In Carska Bara, there are over 300 bird species on just a few square kilometres.[198]Uvac Gorge is considered one of the last habitats of the Griffon vulture in Europe.[199] In area around the city of Kikinda, in the northernmost part of the country, some 145 endangered long-eared owls are noted, making it the world's biggest settlement of these species.[200] The country is considerably rich with threatened species of bats and butterflies as well.[201]
There are 380 protected areas of Serbia, encompassing 4,947 square kilometres or 6.4% of the country.[195] Those protected areas include 5 national parks (Đerdap, Tara, Kopaonik, Fruška Gora and Šar Mountain), 15 nature parks, 15 "landscapes of outstanding features", 61 nature reserves, and 281 natural monuments.[194] With 29.1% of its territory covered by forest, Serbia is considered to be a middle-forested country, compared on a global scale to world forest coverage at 30%, and European average of 35%. The total forest area in Serbia is 2,252,000 ha (1,194,000 ha or 53% are state-owned, and 1,058,387 ha or 47% are privately owned) or 0.3 ha per inhabitant.[202] It had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 5.29/10, ranking it 105th globally out of 172 countries.[203] The most common trees are oak, beech, pines, and firs.
Air pollution is a significant problem in Bor area, due to work of large copper mining and smelting complex, and Pančevo where oil and petrochemical industry is based.[204] Some cities suffer from water supply problems, due to mismanagement and low investments in the past, as well as water pollution (like the pollution of the Ibar River from the Trepčazinc-lead combinate,[205] affecting the city of Kraljevo, or the presence of natural arsenic in underground waters in Zrenjanin).[206]
Poor waste management has been identified as one of the most important environmental problems in Serbia and the recycling is a fledgling activity, with only 15% of its waste being turned back for reuse.[207] The 1999 NATO bombing caused serious damage to the environment, with several thousand tonnes of toxic chemicals stored in targeted factories and refineries released into the soil and water basins.[208]
Serbia is a parliamentary republic, with the government divided into legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. The current constitution was adopted in 2006 in the aftermath of the Montenegro independence referendum.[209] The Constitutional Court rules on matters regarding the Constitution.
The President of the Republic (Predsednik Republike) is the head of state, is elected by popular vote to a five-year term and is limited by the Constitution to a maximum of two terms. In addition to being the commander in chief of the armed forces, the president has the procedural duty of appointing the prime minister with the consent of the parliament, and has some influence on foreign policy.[210] Aleksandar Vučić of the Serbian Progressive Party is the current president following the 2017 presidential election.[211] Seat of the presidency is Novi Dvor.[212]
Banovina Palace complex, seat of the provincial government and the assembly of Vojvodina province
The Government (Vlada) is composed of the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The Government is responsible for proposing legislation and a budget, executing the laws, and guiding the foreign and internal policies. The current prime minister is Miloš Vučević, nominated by the Serbian Progressive Party.[213]
The National Assembly (Narodna skupština) is a unicameral legislative body. The National Assembly has the power to enact laws, approve the budget, schedule presidential elections, select and dismiss the Prime Minister and other ministers, declare war, and ratify international treaties and agreements.[214] It is composed of 250 proportionally elected members who serve four-year terms. Following the 2020 parliamentary election, the largest political parties in the National Assembly are the populist Serbian Progressive Party and Socialist Party of Serbia, that with its partners, hold more than a supermajority number of seats.[215]
In 2021, Serbia was the 5th country in Europe by the number of women holding high-ranking public functions.[216][bettersourceneeded]
Serbia has a three-tiered judicial system, made up of the Supreme Court of Cassation as the court of the last resort, Courts of Appeal as the appellate instance, and Basic and High courts as the general jurisdictions at first instance.[217][218]
Courts of special jurisdictions are the Administrative Court, commercial courts (including the Commercial Court of Appeal at second instance) and misdemeanor courts (including High Misdemeanor Court at second instance).[219] The judiciary is overseen by the Ministry of Justice. Serbia has a typical civil law legal system.
Law enforcement is the responsibility of the Serbian Police, which is subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior. Serbian Police fields 27,363 uniformed officers.[220] National security and counterintelligence are the responsibility of the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA).[221][222]
States which recognize Kosovo as an independent country
States that do not recognize Kosovo as an independent country
States that recognized Kosovo and later withdrew that recognition
Serbia has established diplomatic relations with 191 UN member states, the Holy See, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the European Union.[223] Foreign relations are conducted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Serbia has a network of 74 embassies and 25 consulates internationally.[224] There are 69 foreign embassies, 5 consulates and 4 liaison offices in Serbia.[225][226] Serbian foreign policy is focused on achieving the strategic goal of becoming a member state of the European Union (EU). Serbia officially applied for membership in the European Union on 22 December 2009.[227] It received a full candidate status on 1 March 2012 and started accession talks on 21 January 2014.[228][229]As of 2018[update], the European Commission considered accession possible by 2025.[230]
On 17 February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. In protest, Serbia initially recalled its ambassadors from countries that recognised Kosovo's independence.[231] The resolution of 26 December 2007 by the National Assembly stated that both the Kosovo declaration of independence and recognition thereof by any state would be gross violation of international law.[232]
Serbia began cooperation and dialogue with NATO in 2006, when the country joined the Partnership for Peace programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The country's military neutrality was formally proclaimed by a resolution adopted by Serbia's parliament in December 2007, which makes joining any military alliance contingent on a popular referendum,[233][234] a stance acknowledged by NATO.[235][236][237] On the other hand, Serbia's relations with Russia are habitually described by mass media as a "centuries-old religious, ethnic and political alliance"[238] and Russia is said to have sought to solidify its relations with Serbia since the imposition of sanctions against Russia in 2014.[239]
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Serbia drew international scrutiny for not joining EU sanctions against Russia and maintaining bilateral relations, citing its own past suffering with sanctions.[240] It is one of the only countries in Europe not to sanction Russia.[241] However, Serbia voted to condemn the invasion, supporting the adoption of the United Nations draft resolution demanding Russia to withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, as well as supporting the suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.[240][242]
The Serbian Armed Forces are subordinate to the Ministry of Defence, and are composed of the Army and the Air Force. Although a landlocked country, Serbia operates a River Flotilla which patrols on the Danube, Sava and Tisa rivers. The Serbian Chief of the General Staff reports to the Defence Minister. The Chief of Staff is appointed by the president, who is the commander-in-chief.[210]As of 2019[update], Serbian defence budget amounts to $804 million.[243]
Traditionally having relied on a large number of conscripts, Serbian Armed Forces went through a period of downsizing, restructuring and professionalisation. Conscription was abolished in 2011.[244] Serbian Armed Forces have 28,000 active troops,[245] supplemented by the "active reserve" which numbers 20,000 members and "passive reserve" with about 170,000.[246][247]
Serbia is a major producer and exporter of military equipment in the region. Defence exports totaled around $600 million in 2018.[251] The defence industry has seen significant growth over the years and it continues to grow on a yearly basis.[252][253]
Serbia is one of the countries with the largest number of firearms in the civilian population in the world.[254]
In 2024 the Serbian president approved the reintroduction of mandatory military service, which was abolished in 2011. If the Government adopts this decision, military service will last 75 days, starting with 2025.[255]
Serbia is a unitary state[256] composed of municipalities/cities, districts, and two autonomous provinces. In Serbia, excluding Kosovo, there are 145 municipalities (opštine) and 29 cities (gradovi), which form the basic units of local self-government.[257] Apart from municipalities/cities, there are 24 districts (okruzi, 10 most populated listed below), with the City of Belgrade constituting an additional district. Except for Belgrade, which has an elected local government, districts are regional centres of state authority, but have no powers of their own; they present purely administrative divisions.[257]
The Constitution of Serbia recognizes two autonomous provinces, Vojvodina in the north, and the disputed territory of Kosovo and Metohija in the south,[257] while the remaining area of Central Serbia has never had its own regional authority. Following the Kosovo War, UN peacekeepers entered Kosovo and Metohija, as per UNSC Resolution 1244. The government of Serbia does not recognise Kosovo's February 2008 declaration of independence, considering it illegal and illegitimate.[258]
Ethnic structure of Serbia by municipalities and cities in 2022
As of the 2022 census, Serbia (excluding Kosovo) has a total population of 6,647,003 and the overall population density is medium as it stands at 85.8 inhabitants per square kilometre.[5] The census was not conducted in Kosovo which held its own census that numbered their total population at 1,586,659. Serbia has been enduring a demographic crisis since the beginning of the 1990s, with a death rate that has continuously exceeded its birth rate.[259][260] It is estimated that 500,000 people left Serbia during the 1990s, 20% of whom had a higher education.[261][262] Serbia has one of the oldest populations in the world, with the average age of 43.3 years,[263] and its population is shrinking at one of the fastest rates in the world.[264] A fifth of all households consist of only one person, and just one-fourth of four and more persons.[265] The average life expectancy in Serbia is 76.1 years.[266]
During the 1990s, Serbia had the largest refugee population in Europe.[267]Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Serbia formed between 7% and 7.5% of its population at the time – about half a million refugees sought refuge in the country following the series of Yugoslav wars, mainly from Croatia (and to a lesser extent from Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the IDPs from Kosovo.[268]
Serbs with 5,360,239 are the largest ethnic group in Serbia, representing 81% of the total population (excluding Kosovo). Serbia is one of the European countries with the highest number of registered national minorities, while the province of Vojvodina is recognizable for its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural identity.[269][270][271] Despite a decline in recent years, with a population of 184,442, Hungarians remain the largest ethnic minority in Serbia, concentrated predominantly in northern Vojvodina and representing 2.8% of the country's population (10.5% in Vojvodina). Romani population stands at 131,936 according to the 2022 census but unofficial estimates place their actual number between 400,000 and 500,000.[272]Bosniaks with 153,801 and Muslims by nationality with 13,011 are concentrated in Raška (Sandžak), in the southwest. Other minority groups include Albanians, Croats and Bunjevci, Slovaks, Yugoslavs, Montenegrins, Romanians and Vlachs, Macedonians and Bulgarians. Chinese, estimated at 15,000, are the only significant non-European immigrant minority.[273][274] Most recently, tens of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians have immigrated to Serbia following the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.[275]
As of January 2024, more than 300,000 Russians had emigrated to Serbia since the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. About one in 10 have been issued a residence permit, though integration issues have been reported, with Russian immigrants living in a ″parallel society″.[276]
According to World Happiness Report 2024, Serbia is on 37th rank amount 140 countries.[277]
The majority of the population, or 59.4%, reside in urban areas and some 16.1% in Belgrade alone. Belgrade is the only city with more than a million inhabitants and there are four more with over 100,000 inhabitants.[278]
The Constitution of Serbia defines it as a secular state with guaranteed religious freedom. Orthodox Christians with 6,079,396 comprise 84.5% of country's population. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the largest and traditional church of the country, adherents of which are overwhelmingly Serbs. Other Orthodox Christian communities in Serbia include Montenegrins, Romanians, Vlachs, Macedonians and Bulgarians.
In 2011, Roman Catholics numbered 356,957 in Serbia, or roughly 6% of the population, mostly in northern Vojvodina which is home to ethnic minority groups such as Hungarians, Croats, and Bunjevci, as well as to some Slovaks and Czechs.[280]Greek Catholic Church is adhered by around 25,000 citizens (0.37% of the population), mostly Rusyns in Vojvodina.[281]
Muslims, with 222,282 or 3% of the population, form the third largest religious group. Islam has a strong historic following in the southern regions of Serbia, primarily in southern Raška. Bosniaks are the largest Islamic community in Serbia, followed by Albanians; estimates are that around a third of the country's Roma people are Muslim.[citation needed]
In 2011, there were only 578 Jews in Serbia,[283] compared to over 30,000 prior to World War II. Atheists numbered 80,053, or 1.1% of the population, and an additional 4,070 declared themselves to be agnostics.[283]
The standard Serbian language uses both the Cyrillic and the Latin script. Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them.
The official language is Serbian, native to 88% of the population.[283] Serbian is the only European language with active digraphia, using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Serbian Cyrillic is designated in the Constitution as the "official script".[284] A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of Serbians favour the Latin alphabet, 36% favour the Cyrillic one and 17% have no preference.[285]
Standard Serbian is mutually intelligible with recognised minority languages of Bosnian and Croatian, as all three are based on the most widespread Shtokavian dialect from Eastern Herzegovina.[286] Other recognised minority languages are: Hungarian, Slovak, Albanian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Rusyn, and Macedonian. All these languages are in official use in municipalities or cities where the ethnic minority exceeds 15% of the total population.[287] In Vojvodina, the provincial administration co-officially uses, besides Serbian, five other languages (Slovak, Hungarian, Croatian, Romanian and Rusyn).[288]
The healthcare system in Serbia is organized and managed by the three primary institutions: The Ministry of Health, The Institute of Public Health of Serbia "Dr Milan Jovanović Batut" and the Military Medical Academy. Healthcare protections are defined as a constitutional right in Serbia.[289] The Serbian public health system is based on the principles of equity and solidarity, organized on the model of compulsory health insurance contributions.[290] Private health care is not integrated into the public health system, but certain services may be included by contracting.[290]
The newly opened wing of the University Clinical Centre of Serbia, opened in 2022, has 3,150 beds, considered to be the highest number in Europe, and among the highest in the world.
The Ministry of Health determines the healthcare policy and adopts standards for the work of the healthcare service. The Ministry is also in charge of the health care system, health insurance, preservation and improvement of health of citizens, health inspection, supervision over the work of the healthcare service and other tasks in the field of health care.
The Institute of Public Health of Serbia "Dr Milan Jovanović Batut" is responsible for medical statistics, epidemiology and hygiene. This central, tertiary institution manages and coordinates a dense network of municipal and regional Centers of Public Health that provide epidemiological and hygiene services at primary and secondary levels.[291] The National Health Insurance Fund finances the functioning of health care at all levels, and also provides and implements the compulsory health insurance.[292]
One of the most important health institutions in Serbia is the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade.[293] It takes care of about 30,000 patients a year (military and civilian insured). The academy performs around 30,000 surgical interventions and more than 500,000 specialist examinations.[294]
The economy has been affected by the global economic crisis. After almost a decade of strong economic growth (average of 4.45% per year), Serbia entered the recession in 2009 with negative growth of −3% and again in 2012 and 2014 with −1% and −1.8%, respectively.[304] As the government was fighting effects of crisis the public debt has more than doubled: from pre-crisis level of just under 30% to about 70% of GDP and trending downwards recently to around 50%.[305][306] Labour force stands at 3.2 million, with 56% employed in services sector, 28.1% in industry and 15.9% in the agriculture.[307] The average monthly net salary in May 2019 stood at 47,575 dinars or $525.[308] The unemployment remains an acute problem, with rate of 11% as of 2021[update].[309]
Serbia has an unfavourable trade balance: imports exceed exports by 25%.[needs update] Serbia's exports, however, recorded a steady growth in the 2010s reaching $19.2 billion in 2018.[314] The country has free trade agreements with the EFTA and CEFTA, a preferential trade regime with the European Union, a Generalised System of Preferences with the United States, and individual free trade agreements with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkey.[315]
Serbia is one of the largest providers of frozen fruit to the EU and a big producer of fruits like raspberries, blackberries, apples and plums.
Serbia has very favourable natural conditions (land and climate) for varied agricultural production. It has 5,056,000 ha of agricultural land (0.7 ha per capita), out of which 3,294,000 ha is arable land (0.45 ha per capita).[318] In 2016, Serbia exported agricultural and food products worth $3.2 billion, and the export-import ratio was 178%.[319] Agricultural exports constitute more than a fifth of all Serbia's sales on the world market. Serbia is one of the largest provider of frozen fruit to the EU (largest to the French market, and 2nd largest to the German market).[320]
Agricultural production is most prominent in Vojvodina on the fertile Pannonian Plain. Other agricultural regions include Mačva, Pomoravlje, Tamnava, Rasina, and Jablanica.[321]
In the structure of the agricultural production, 70% is from the crop field production and 30% is from the livestock production.[321] Serbia is world's second largest producer of plums (582,485 tonnes; second to China), second largest of raspberries (89,602 tonnes, second to Poland), it is also a significant producer of maize (6.48 million tonnes, ranked 32nd in the world) and wheat (2.07 million tonnes, ranked 35th in the world).[194][322] Other important agricultural products are: sunflower, sugar beet, soybean, potato, apple, pork meat, beef, poultry and dairy.[323]
There are 56,000 ha of vineyards in Serbia, producing about 230 million litres of wine annually.[194][318] The most famous viticulture regions are located in Vojvodina and Šumadija.[324]
The industry was the economic sector hardest hit by the UN sanctions and trade embargo and NATO bombing during the 1990s and transition to market economy during the 2000s.[326] The industrial output saw dramatic downsizing: in 2013 it was expected to be only a half of that of 1989.[327] Main industrial sectors include: automotive, mining, non-ferrous metals, food-processing, electronics, pharmaceuticals, clothes. Serbia has 14 free economic zones as of September 2017,[328] in which many foreign direct investments are realised.
The automotive industry is dominated by cluster located in Kragujevac and its vicinity, and contributes to export with about $2 billion.[329] Country is a leading steel producer in the wider region of Southeast Europe and had production of nearly 2 million tonnes of raw steel in 2018, coming entirely from Smederevo steel mill, owned by the Chinese Hesteel.[330] Serbia's mining industry is comparatively strong: Serbia is the 18th largest producer of coal (7th in Europe) extracted from large deposits in Kolubara and Kostolac basins; it is also world's 23rd largest (3rd in Europe) producer of copper which is extracted by Zijin Bor Copper, a large copper mining company, acquired by Chinese Zijin Mining in 2018; significant gold extraction is developed around Majdanpek. Serbia notably manufactures intel smartphones named Tesla smartphones.[331]
Food industry is well known both regionally and internationally and is one of the strong points of the economy.[332] Some of the international brand-names established production in Serbia: PepsiCo and Nestlé in food-processing sector; Coca-Cola (Belgrade), Heineken (Novi Sad) and Carlsberg (Bačka Palanka) in beverage industry; Nordzucker in sugar industry.[320] Serbia's electronics industry had its peak in the 1980s and the industry today is only a third of what it was back then, but has witnessed a something of revival in last decade with investments of companies such as Siemens (wind turbines) in Subotica, Panasonic (lighting devices) in Svilajnac, and Gorenje (electrical home appliances) in Valjevo.[333] The pharmaceutical industry in Serbia comprises a dozen manufacturers of generic drugs, of which Hemofarm in Vršac and Galenika in Belgrade, account for 80% of production volume. Domestic production meets over 60% of the local demand.[334]
The energy sector is one of the largest and most important sectors to the country's economy. Serbia is a net exporter of electricity and importer of key fuels (such as oil and gas).
Serbia has an abundance of coal, and significant reserves of oil and gas. Serbia's proven reserves of 5.5 billion tonnes of coal lignite are the fifth largest in the world (second in Europe, after Germany).[335][336]
Coal is found in two large deposits: Kolubara (4 billion tonnes of reserves) and Kostolac (1.5 billion tonnes).[335] Despite being small on a world scale, Serbia's oil and gas resources (77.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent and 48.1 billion cubic metres, respectively) have a certain regional importance since they are largest in the region of former Yugoslavia as well as the Balkans (excluding Romania).[338] Almost 90% of the discovered oil and gas are to be found in Banat and those oil and gas fields are by size among the largest in the Pannonian basin but are average on a European scale.[339]
The production of electricity in 2015 in Serbia was 36.5 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh), while the final electricity consumption amounted to 35.5 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh).[340] Most of the electricity produced comes from thermal-power plants (72.7% of all electricity) and to a lesser degree from hydroelectric-power plants (27.3%).[341] There are 6 lignite-operated thermal-power plants with an installed power of 3,936 MW.[342] Total installed power of 9 hydroelectric-power plants is 2,831 MW.[343] In addition to this, there are mazute and gas-operated thermal-power plants with an installed power of 353 MW.[344] The entire production of electricity is concentrated in Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS), public electric-utility power company.
The current oil production in Serbia amounts to over 1.1 million tonnes of oil equivalent[345] and satisfies some 43% of country's needs while the rest is imported.[346] National petrol company, Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), was acquired in 2008 by Gazprom Neft. The company's refinery in Pančevo (capacity of 4.8 million tonnes) is one of the most modern oil-refineries in Europe; it also operates network of 334 filling stations in Serbia (74% of domestic market) and additional 36 stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 31 in Bulgaria, and 28 in Romania.[347][348] There are 155 kilometres of crude oil pipelines connecting Pančevo and Novi Sad refineries as a part of trans-national Adria oil pipeline.[349]
Serbia is heavily dependent on foreign sources of natural gas, with only 17% coming from domestic production (totalling 491 million cubic metres in 2012) and the rest is imported, mainly from Russia (via gas pipelines that run through Ukraine and Hungary).[346]Srbijagas, public company, operates the natural gas transportation system which comprise 3,177 kilometres (1,974mi) of trunk and regional natural gas pipelines and a 450 million cubic metre underground gas storage facility at Banatski Dvor.[350] In 2021, Balkan Stream gas pipeline opened through Serbia.[351]
Serbia has a strategic transportation location since the country's backbone, Morava Valley, represents the easiest land route from continental Europe to Asia Minor and the Near East.[352]
Serbian road network carries the bulk of traffic in the country. Total length of roads is 45,419km (28,222mi) of which 962km (598mi) are "class-IA state roads" (i.e. motorways); 4,517km (2,807mi) are "class-IB state roads" (national roads); 10,941km (6,798mi) are "class-II state roads" (regional roads) and 23,780km (14,780mi) are "municipal roads".[353][354][355] The road network, except for the most of class-IA roads, are of comparatively lower quality to the Western European standards because of lack of financial resources for their maintenance in the last 20 years.
Over 300km (190mi) of new motorways were constructed in the last decade and additional 154km (96mi) are currently under construction: A5 motorway (from north of Kruševac to Čačak) and 31km (19mi)-long segment of A2 (between Čačak and Požega).[356][357]Coach transport is very extensive: almost every place in the country is connected by bus, from largest cities to the villages; in addition there are international routes (mainly to countries of Western Europe with large Serb diaspora). Routes, both domestic and international, are served by more than hundred intercity coach services, biggest of which are Lasta and Niš-Ekspres. As of 2018[update], there were 1,999,771 registered passenger cars or 1 passenger car per 3.5 inhabitants.[358]
Serbia has 3,819km (2,373mi) of rail tracks, of which 1,279km (795mi) are electrified and 283km (176mi) are double-track railroad.[194] The major rail hub is Belgrade (and to a lesser degree Niš), while the most important railroads include: Belgrade–Subotica–Budapest (Hungary) (currently upgraded to high-speed status), Belgrade–Bar (Montenegro), Belgrade–Šid–Zagreb (Croatia)/Belgrade–Niš–Sofia (Bulgaria) (part of Pan-European Corridor X), and Niš–Thessaloniki (Greece). Some 75km (46mi) of new high-speed rail line between Belgrade and Novi Sad was opened in 2022 and additional 108km (67mi) from Novi Sad to Subotica and border with Hungary are currently under construction and due to open in 2025. Construction work for 212km-long prolongation of the high-speed rail line to the south, to the city of Niš, is set to commence in 2024 and with its planned completion by the end of the decade four of country's five largest cities will be connected by the high-speed rail lines.[359][360][361] Rail services are operated by Srbija Voz (passenger transport) and Srbija Kargo (freight transport).[362]
There are three airports with regular passenger services reaching over 6 million passengers in 2022 with Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport serving bulk of it, being a hub of flagship carrier Air Serbia which flies to 80 destinations in 32 countries (including intercontinental flights to New York City, Chicago and Tianjin) and carried 2.75 million passengers in 2022.[363][364]
Serbia has a developed inland water transport since there are 1,716km (1,066mi) of navigable inland waterways (1,043km, 648mi of navigable rivers and 673km, 418mi of navigable canals), which are almost all located in northern third of the country.[194] The most important inland waterway is the Danube. Other navigable rivers include Sava, Tisza, Begej and Timiş Rivers, all of which connect Serbia with Northern and Western Europe through the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal and North Sea route, to Eastern Europe via the Tisza, Begej and Danube Black Sea routes, and to Southern Europe via the Sava river. More than 8 million tonnes of cargo were transported on Serbian rivers and canals in 2018 while the largest river ports are: Novi Sad, Belgrade, Pančevo, Smederevo, Prahovo and Šabac.[365][366]
Fixed telephone lines connect 81% of households in Serbia, and with about 9.1 million users the number of cellphones surpasses the total population of by 28%.[367] The largest mobile operator is Telekom Srbija with 4.2 million subscribers, followed by Yettel with 2.8 million users and A1 with about 2 million.[367] Some 58% of households have fixed-line (non-mobile) broadband Internet connection while 67% are provided with pay television services (i.e. 38% cable television, 17% IPTV, and 10% satellite).[367]Digital television transition has been completed in 2015 with DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.[368][369]
Serbia is not a mass-tourism destination but nevertheless has a diverse range of touristic products.[370] In 2019, total of over 3.6 million tourists were recorded in accommodations, of which half were foreign.[371] Foreign exchange earnings from tourism were estimated at $1.5 billion.[372]
Tourism is mainly focused on the mountains and spas of the country, which are mostly visited by domestic tourists, as well as Belgrade and, to a lesser degree, Novi Sad, which are preferred choices of foreign tourists (almost two-thirds of all foreign visits are made to these two cities).[373][374] The most famous mountain resorts are Kopaonik, Stara Planina and Zlatibor. There are also many spas in Serbia, the biggest of which are Vrnjačka Banja, Soko Banja, and Banja Koviljača. City-break and conference tourism is developed in Belgrade and Novi Sad.[375] Other touristic products that Serbia offer are natural wonders like Đavolja varoš,[376] Christian pilgrimage to the many Orthodox monasteries across the country and the river cruising along the Danube. There are several internationally popular music festivals held in Serbia, such as EXIT and the Guča trumpet festival.[377]
According to 2011 census, literacy in Serbia stands at 98% of population while computer literacy is at 49% (complete computer literacy is at 34.2%).[378] Same census showed the following levels of education: 16.2% of inhabitants have higher education (10.6% have bachelors or master's degrees, 5.6% have an associate degree), 49% have a secondary education, 20.7% have an elementary education, and 13.7% have not completed elementary education.[379]
Education in Serbia is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Science. Education starts in either preschools or elementary schools. Children enroll in elementary schools at the age of seven. Compulsory education consists of eight grades of elementary school. Students have the opportunity to attend gymnasiums and vocational schools for another four years, or to enroll in vocational training for two to three years.
Following the completion of gymnasiums or vocational schools, students have the opportunity to attend university.[384] Elementary and secondary education are also available in languages of recognised minorities in Serbia, where classes are held in Hungarian, Slovak, Albanian, Romanian, Rusyn, Bulgarian as well as Bosnian and Croatian languages. Petnica Science Center is a notable institution for extracurricular science education focusing on gifted students.[385]
Serbia spent 0.9% of GDP on scientific research in 2017, which is slightly below the European average.[389] Serbia was ranked 52nd in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.[390] Since 2018, Serbia is a full member of CERN.[391][392] Serbia has a long history of excellence in maths and computer sciences which has created a strong pool of engineering talent, although economic sanctions during the 1990s and chronic underinvestment in research forced many scientific professionals to leave the country.[393] Nevertheless, there are several areas in which Serbia still excels such as growing information technology sector, which includes software development as well as outsourcing. It generated over $1.2 billion in exports in 2018, both from international investors and a significant number of dynamic homegrown enterprises.[394] Serbia is one of the countries with the highest proportion of women in science.[395] Among the scientific institutes operating in Serbia, the largest are the Mihajlo Pupin Institute and Vinča Nuclear Institute, both in Belgrade. The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts is a learned society promoting science and arts from its inception in 1841.[396]
For centuries straddling the boundaries between East and West, the territory of Serbia had been divided among the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire; then between Byzantium and the Kingdom of Hungary; and in the early modern period between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Empire. These overlapping influences have resulted in cultural varieties throughout Serbia; its north leans to the profile of Central Europe, while the south is characteristic of the wider Balkans and even the Mediterranean. Serbia was influenced by the Republic of Venice as well, mainly though trade, literature and romanesque architecture.[397][398]
Serbian monasteries were under the influence of Byzantine Art, particularly after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 when many Byzantine artists fled to Serbia.[405] The monasteries include Studenica (built around 1190), which was a model for such later monasteries as Mileševa, Sopoćani, Žiča, Gračanica and Visoki Dečani. Numerous monuments and cultural sites were destroyed at various stages of Serbian history, including destruction in Kosovo. In the late 14th and the 15th centuries, an autochthonous architectural style known as Morava style evolved in the area around Morava Valley. A characteristic of this style was the wealthy decoration of the frontal church walls. Examples of this include Manasija, Ravanica and Kalenić monasteries.
Frescos include White Angel (Mileševa monastery), Crucifixion (Studenica monastery) and Dormition of the Virgin (Sopoćani).[406]
There are 551 public libraries, the largest of which are: the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade with about 6 million items, and Matica Srpska (the oldest matica and Serbian cultural institution, founded in 1826) in Novi Sad with nearly 3.5 million volumes.[421][422] In 2010, there were 10,989 books and brochures published.[194] The book publishing market is dominated by several major publishers such as Laguna and Vulkan. The industry's centrepiece event, annual Belgrade Book Fair, is the most visited cultural event in Serbia with 158,128 visitors in 2013.[423] The highlight of the literary scene is awarding of NIN Prize, given every January since 1954 for the best newly published novel in Serbian.[424][425]
Traditional Serbian music includes various kinds of bagpipes, flutes, horns, trumpets, lutes, psalteries, drums and cymbals. The kolo is the traditional collective folk dance, which has a number of varieties throughout the regions. The most popular are those from Užice and Morava region. Sung epic poetry has been an integral part of Serbian and Balkan music for centuries. In the highlands of Serbia these long poems are typically accompanied on a one-string fiddle called the gusle, and concern themselves with themes from history and mythology. There are records of gusle being played at the court of the 13th-century king Stefan the First-Crowned.[452]
Balkan Brass, or truba ("trumpet") is a popular genre, especially in Central and Southern Serbia where Balkan Brass originated. There are two main varieties of this genre, one from Western Serbia and the other from Southern Serbia, with brass musician Boban Marković being one of the most respected names in the world of modern brass band bandleaders.[453]
Exit Festival in Novi Sad, proclaimed as the Best Major European festival at the EU Festival Awards
Folk music in its original form has been a prominent music style since World War I following the early success of Sofka Nikolić. The music has been further promoted by Danica Obrenić, Anđelija Milić, Nada Mamula, and during the 60s and 70s with performers like Silvana Armenulić, Toma Zdravković, Lepa Lukić, Vasilija Radojčić, Vida Pavlović and Gordana Stojićević.
Serbia has a well-established theatrical tradition with Joakim Vujić considered the founder of modern Serbian theatre.[464] Serbia has 38 professional theatres and 11 theatres for children,[465] the most important of which are National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, National Theatre in Subotica, National Theatre in Niš and Knjaževsko-srpski teatar in Kragujevac (the oldest theatre in Serbia, established in 1835). The Belgrade International Theatre Festival – BITEF, founded in 1967, is one of the oldest theatre festivals in the world, and it has become one of the five biggest European festivals.[466][467]Sterijino pozorje is, on the other hand, a festival showcasing national drama plays. The most important Serbian playwrights were Jovan Sterija Popović and Branislav Nušić, while recent renowned names are Dušan Kovačević and Biljana Srbljanović.[468]
The country has a rich cinematic legacy.[469] Serbia's film scene is one of the most dynamic smaller European cinemas. The film industry is heavily subsidized by the government, mainly through grants approved by the Film Centre of Serbia.[470] As of 2019, there were 26 feature films produced in Serbia, of which 14 were domestic films.[471] There are 23 operating cinemas in the country, with total attendance reaching 4.8 million. A comparatively high percentage of 20% of total tickets sold were for domestic films.[472] Modern PFI Studios located in Šimanovci is nowadays Serbia's only major film studio complex.[473] The Yugoslav Film Archive used to be former Yugoslavia's and now is Serbia's national film archive – with over 100 thousand film prints, it is among the five largest film archives in the world.[474][475]
Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are guaranteed by the constitution of Serbia.[479] Serbia is ranked 90th out of 180 countries in the 2019 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters Without Borders.[480] The report noted that media outlets and journalists continue to face partisan and government pressure over editorial policies.[481][482][483]
According to EBU research in 2018, Serbs on average watch five and a half hours of television per day, making it the second highest average in Europe.[484] There are seven nationwide free-to-air television channels, with public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) operating three (RTS1, RTS2 and RTS3) and private broadcasters operating four (Pink, Prva, Happy, and O2).[485] There are 28 regional television channels and 74 local television channels.[194] Besides terrestrial channels there are dozens of Serbian television channels available only on cable or satellite. These include regional news N1, commercial channel Nova S, and regional sports channels Sport Klub and Arena Sport, among others.
There are 247 radio stations in Serbia.[194] Out of these, six are radio stations with national coverage, including two of public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (Radio Belgrade 1 and Radio Belgrade 2/Radio Belgrade 3) and four private ones (Radio S1, Radio S2, Play Radio, and Radio Hit FM). Also, there are 34 regional stations and 207 local stations.[486]
There are 305 newspapers published in Serbia[487] of which 12 are daily newspapers. Dailies Politika and Danas are Serbia's papers of record, the former being the oldest newspaper in the Balkans, founded in 1904.[488] Highest circulation newspapers are tabloids Večernje Novosti, Blic, Kurir, and Informer, all with more than 100,000 copies sold.[489] There is one daily newspaper devoted to sports (Sportski žurnal), one business daily (Privredni pregled), two regional newspapers (Dnevnik published in Novi Sad and Narodne novine from Niš), and one minority-language daily (Magyar Szo in Hungarian, published in Subotica).
The main news agencies are Tanjug, Beta and Fonet.
As of 2017[update], out of 432 web-portals (mainly on the .rs domain)[490] the most visited are online editions of printed dailies Blic and Kurir, news web-portal B92 and classifieds KupujemProdajem.[491]
Serbian cuisine is largely heterogeneous in a way characteristic of the Balkans and, especially, the former Yugoslavia. It features foods characteristic of lands formerly under Turkish suzerainty as well as cuisine originating from other parts of Central Europe (especially Austria and Hungary). Food is very important in Serbian social life, particularly during religious holidays such as Christmas, Easter and feast days i.e. slava.[494]
Staples of the Serbian diet include bread, meat, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. Bread plays an important role in Serbian cuisine and can be found in religious rituals. A traditional Serbian welcome is to offer bread and salt to guests. Meat is widely consumed, as is fish. The southern Serbian city of Leskovac is host to Roštiljijada, considered the biggest barbecue festival in the Balkans.[495]
Other Serbian specialties include ćevapčići (grilled and seasoned caseless sausages made from minced meat), pljeskavica (grilled spiced meat patty made from a mixture of pork, beef and lamb), gibanica (cheese pie), burek (baked pastry made from a thin flaky dough that is stuffed with meat, cheese or vegetables), sarma (stuffed cabbage), punjena paprika (stuffed pepper), moussaka (casserole made from minced meat, eggs, and potatoes), Karađorđeva šnicla (veal or pork schnitzel that is stuffed with kajmak), đuveč (meat and vegetable stew), pasulj (bean soup), podvarak (roast meat with sauerkraut), ajvar (roasted red pepper spread), kajmak (dairy product similar to clotted cream), čvarci (variant of pork rinds), proja (cornbread) and kačamak (corn-flour porridge).[496]
Serbians claim their country as the birthplace of rakia (rakija), a highly alcoholic drink primarily distilled from fruit. Rakia in various forms is found throughout the Balkans, notably in Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Hungary and Turkey. Slivovitz (šljivovica), a plum brandy, is a type of rakia which is considered the national drink of Serbia.[497] In 2021, Serbia's sljivovica was added to the United Nations Intangible Cultural Heritage List as a "cherished tradition to be preserved by humanity".[498]
Serbian wines are produced in 22 different geographical regions, with white wine dominating the total amount.[499] Besides rakia and wine, beer is a very popular alcoholic beverage in the country.[500]Pale lagers are currently and have been the traditional beer choice for Serbians.[501] The most popular domestic brands of beer are Jelen, followed by Lav.[502][503][504]
As in the rest of the former Yugoslavia, coffee drinking is an important cultural and social practice and Serbian coffee (a local variant of Turkish coffee) is the most commonly consumed non-alcoholic beverage.[505]
Serbia has hosted a number of major international sport competitions. The most important annual sporting events in the country are the Belgrade Marathon and the Tour de Serbie cycling race.
The recent success of Serbian tennis players, especially Novak Djokovic, who holds a record 24 Grand Slam singles titles, has led to a surge in the sport's popularity in Serbia. Djokovic has held the No. 1 ATP ranking for a record 428 weeks and achieved a Career Super Slam with his Olympic gold in 2024. Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Janković and Nenad Zimonjić have also been ranked No. 1 in the WTA rankings.[512]
The Balkans, corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.
The State Union of Serbia and Montenegro or simply Serbia and Montenegro, known until 2003 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FR Yugoslavia (FRY) or simply Yugoslavia, was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The state was founded on 27 April 1992 as a federation comprising the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro. In February 2003, it was transformed from a federal republic to a political union until Montenegro seceded from the union in June 2006, leading to the full independence of both Serbia and Montenegro.
Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 to 1992. It came into existence following World War I, under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from the merger of the Kingdom of Serbia with the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and constituted the first union of South Slavic peoples as a sovereign state, following centuries of foreign rule over the region under the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The official name of the state was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who share a common Serbian ancestry, culture, history, and language. They primarily live in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro as well as in North Macedonia, Slovenia, Germany and Austria. They also constitute a significant diaspora with several communities across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
Vojvodina, officially the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, is an autonomous province that occupies the northernmost part of Serbia, located in Central Europe. It lies within the Pannonian Basin, bordered to the south by the national capital Belgrade and the Sava and Danube Rivers. The administrative centre, Novi Sad, is the second-largest city in Serbia.
The history of Serbia covers the historical development of Serbia and of its predecessor states, from the Early Stone Age to the present state, as well as that of the Serbian people and of the areas they ruled historically. Serbian habitation and rule has varied much through the ages, and as a result the history of Serbia is similarly elastic in what it includes.
The Serbian Orthodox Church is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fueled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
Central Serbia, also referred to as Serbia proper, is the region of Serbia lying outside the autonomous province of Vojvodina to the north and the disputed Kosovo region to the south. Central Serbia is a term of convenience, not an administrative division of Serbia as such, and does not have any form of separate administration.
Demographic features of the population of Serbia include vital statistics, ethnicity, religious affiliations, education level, health of the populace, and other aspects of the population.
The Kingdom of Serbia was a country located in the Balkans which was created when the ruler of the Principality of Serbia, Milan I, was proclaimed king in 1882. Since 1817, the Principality was ruled by the Obrenović dynasty. The Principality, under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, de facto achieved full independence when the very last Ottoman troops left Belgrade in 1867. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognized the formal independence of the Principality of Serbia, and in its composition Nišava, Pirot, Toplica and Vranje districts entered the South part of Serbia.
The History of the Serbs spans from the Early Middle Ages to present. Serbs, a South Slavic people, traditionally live mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and North Macedonia. A Serbian diaspora dispersed people of Serb descent to Western Europe, North America and Australia.
The Great Migrations of the Serbs, also known as the Great Exoduses of the Serbs, were two migrations of Serbs from various territories under the rule of the Ottoman Empire to the Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburg monarchy.
Foreign relations of Serbia are formulated and executed by the Government of Serbia through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Serbia established diplomatic relations with most world nations – 188 states in total – starting with the United Kingdom (1837) and ending most recently with Guyana (2024). Serbia has friendly relations with following neighboring countries: Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Hungary. It maintains colder, more tense relations with Albania and Croatia and to a lesser degree with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria due to historic nation-building conflict and differing political ideologies.
The history of the Jews in Serbia is some two thousand years old. The Jews first arrived in the region during Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late 15th century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in the Ottoman-ruled areas, including Serbia.
Kosovo Serbs are one of the ethnic groups of Kosovo and they form the largest ethnic minority community in Kosovo (5–6%). The precise number of Kosovo Serbs is difficult to determine as they have boycotted national censuses. However, it is estimated that there are about 95,000 of them, nearly half of whom live in North Kosovo. Other Kosovo Serb communities live in the Southern municipalities of Kosovo.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Serbia:
Israel and Serbia maintain diplomatic relations established between Israel and SFR Yugoslavia in 1948.
Relations between Hungary and Serbia, or Serbo-Hungarian relations form a part of the wider politics of Central and Southeast Europe. The two countries have a long relationship stretching back to the Middle Ages. History of official diplomatic relations of Hungary and Serbia dates back to 21 November 1882, when they were established between the Kingdom of Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Today, Hungary has an embassy in Belgrade and a general consulate in Subotica, while Serbia has an embassy in Budapest and an honorary consulate in Szeged.
Turkey–Yugoslavia relations were historical foreign relations between Turkey and now broken up Yugoslavia.
↑ "Serbia: On the Way to EU Accession". worldbank.org. World Bank. 8 April 2013. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023. One particular emphasis has been helping Serbia take advantage of its strategic location in central Europe through investments in transport infrastructure.
1 2 "Serbia – Countries". Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 28 June 1914. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
↑ Tito, Josip Broz (1945). Nacionalno pitanje u Jugoslaviji: u svjetlosti narodnooslobodilačke borbe (in Croatian). Zagreb: Naprijed. p.11. Archived from the original on 31 August 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2020. Moram ovdje podvući činjenicu da su u redovima naše Narodno-oslobodilačke vojske i partizanskih odreda u Jugoslaviji, od samog početka pa do danas, nalaze u ogromnoj većini baš Srbi, umjesto da to bude obratno.
↑ Bokovoy, Melissa Katherine; Irvine, Jill A.; Lilly, Carol S. (1997). State-society relations in Yugoslavia, 1945–1992. Scranton, Pennsylvania: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.295–296, 301.
↑ Norris, David A (2008). Belgrade A Cultural History. Oxford University Press. p.134. ISBN978-0-19-988849-8.
↑ Bilandžić, Vladimir; Dahlmann, Dittmar; Kosanović, Milan (2012). From Helsinki to Belgrade: The First CSCE Follow-up Meeting and the Crisis of Détente. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp.163–184. ISBN978-3-89971-938-3.
↑ Wide Angle, Milosevic and the Media."Part 3: Dictatorship on the Airwaves."Archived 9 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine PBS. Quotation from film: "...the things that happened at state TV, warmongering, things we can admit to now: false information, biased reporting. That went directly from Milošević to the head of TV".
↑ Ivan Vejvoda, 'Civil Society versus Slobodan Milošević: Serbia 1991–2000', in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 295–316. ISBN978-0-19-955201-6.
↑ Voltmer, Katrin (2019). Media, Communication and the Struggle for Democratic Change: Case Studies on Contested Transitions. Springer Nature. p.6. ISBN978-3-030-16747-9.
↑ Carević, Ivana; Jovanović, Velimir (2009). "Стратиграфско-тектонске карактеристике Мачванског басена"[Stratigraphic-structural characteristics of Mačva basin]. Bulletin of the Serbian Geographical Society (in Serbian and English). 4 (89). Belgrade: Serbian Geographical Society. ISSN0350-3593. Archived from the original on 8 December 2023. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
↑ Takić, Ljiljana M.; Mladenović-Ranisavljević, Ivana I.; Nikolić, Vesna D.; Nikolić, Ljubiša B.; Vuković, Milovan V.; Živković, Nenad V. (2012). "The assessment of the Danube water quality in Serbia"(PDF). Advanced Technologies: 59. Archived from the original(PDF) on 1 May 2020. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
↑ "Morava River -". 9 October 2015. Archived from the original on 29 April 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
↑ Martinović, Iva (13 December 2018). "Više novca za naoružanje". Radio Slobodna Evropa (in Serbo-Croatian). Archived from the original on 19 January 2019. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
↑ Lux, Gábor; Horváth, Gyula (2017). The Routledge Handbook to Regional Development in Central and Eastern Europe. Taylor & Francis. p.190.
↑ Filep, Béla (2016). The Politics of Good Neighbourhood: State, civil society and the enhancement of cultural capital in East Central Europe. Taylor & Francis. p.71.
↑ "Application of the Charter in Serbia"(PDF). European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. 11 June 2013. pp.4–5, 9. Archived(PDF) from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
↑ "Statistical Yearbook"(PDF). Statistički Godišnjak Srbije = Statistical Yearbook of Serbia. Belgrade: Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. 2019. ISSN0354-4206. Archived(PDF) from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 9 May 2022.
↑ "Tesla (1856)". Energy Kids: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Retrieved 3 December 2023.
↑ "Milutin Milankovitch: Feature Articles". Earthobservatory.nasa.gov. 24 March 2000. Retrieved 15 August 2012. The Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch is best known for developing one of the most significant theories relating Earth motions and long-term climate change.
↑ Dvornik, Francis (1956). The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences. p.179. The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or "modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches, and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing, which was more akin to the Greek uncial, simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs.
↑ "History". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
↑ Bracewell, Wendy (2003). "The Proud Name of Hadjaks". In Naimarkan, Norman M.; Case, Holly (eds.). Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Stanford University Press. pp.25–. ISBN978-0-8047-8029-2.
↑ Vlahović, Branislav; PUŠKARIĆ, ANTON; MAKSIMOVIĆ, BRANKA (December 2009). COMPETITIVENESS OF WINE EXPORT FROM THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA(PDF). 113th EAAE Seminar "THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE, INNOVATION AND HUMAN CAPITAL IN MULTIFUNCTIONAL AGRICULTURE AND TERRITORIAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT", Belgrade, Republic of Serbia, 9–11 December 2009. p.2.
↑ Christie, Jordanne (2 November 2019). Jelen. Open Library Publishing Platform – Pressbooks for Ontario's Postsecondary Educators. Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
Deliso, Christopher (2009). Culture and Customs of Serbia and Montenegro. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN978-0-313-34436-7.
Haag, John (2002). "Desanka Maksimović (1898–1993)". In Commire, Anne (ed.). Women in World History. Vol.10. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale Publishing. pp.120–124. ISBN978-0-78764-069-9.
Snel, Guido (2004). "The Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip". In Cornis-Pope, Marcel; Neubauer, John (eds.). History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Vol.1. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN978-90-27234-52-0.
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6,605,168 (excluding Kosovo) [4] (108th)
$191.561 billion [b] [6] (78th)
32.0 [7] 
