Serbian Pride Condemns President’s Vow to Veto Law on Same Sex Unions

After Aleksandar Vucic said he will not sign any law permitting sex unions while he is head of state, Pride organisation reminds him that the government has promised the adoption of such a law 'several times'.

An activist holds a rainbow-coloured umbrella as police stand guard ahead of the EuroPride march in Belgrade, Serbia, September 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

Belgrade Pride condemned Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s statement that he will not sign the law permitting same sex unions in Serbia, nor will such a law be adopted while he is President.

Belgrade Pride said in press release that “the President has no right to divide and discriminate against citizens based on his personal opinion”.

“Laws are passed on the basis of the personal affinities of politicians in autocratic and dictatorial regimes, and President Vucic claims that Serbia is not like that,” Belgrade Pride said on Sunday evening.

“We remind the President that the adoption of the Law on Same-Sex Unions is an international obligation of Serbia that it is included in the action plans of the Ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue, and that the government has already promised the adoption of the Law several times,” it added.

In an interview for Pink Television on Sunday, Vucic said that he would not allow a law on same sex unions to be adopted in Serbia.

“While I am President, I will not sign any law or anything where it will be possible to have a third gender that is not male or female … as I was the one who, even though there is an initiative, even though [Prime Minister] Ana [Brnabic] is fighting for it, I asked her not to sign [the law on] same-sex marriages and so on while I am the President,” Vucic said.

“I told her that, I am the one who is to blame and when those from the European Union attack us because of that, great, attack me, don’t blame Ana Brnabic, she stands for it, I am the one who didn’t allow it”, he added.

For a law to be published in the Official Gazette and come into force, the President issues a decree on the promulgation of the law after parliament has adopted it.

Belgrade Pride has said that the position of the LGBT community in Serbia “has drastically worsened in the last year, and as a result of the negative campaign which was conducted due to the holding of last year’s EuroPride, in which the President of Serbia also participated”.

In September 2022, EuroPride in Belgrade was held on a very limited scale after the government banned the planned march, citing a “risk of violence” after right-wing anti-LGBT groups said they would also march through the capital on the same day. Police banned right-wing protests as well.

Adopting a law on same sex unions is one of seven requests of Belgrade Pride every year.

The law’s first draft was published in February 2021, but no further procedures were conducted.

In May 2021 Vucic told the daily Blic that he would not sign the law even if parliament adopted it because Serbia’s constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, although this draft does not mention the word “marriage”.

This year’s Pride week will be held from September 4 to 10 under the slogan “We’re not even close.”