Snap parliamentary elections were held on 17 December 2023, which brought a new parliamentary convocation in 2024. The constitutive sitting of the Fourteenth convocation of the National Assembly began on 6 February, 97 days after the elections were called. It will continue on 18 March. The Government has still not been elected.
This sitting started 26 days from the day the official election results were proclaimed, which is within legal deadlines. Per these deadlines, the constitutive session of the National Assembly should be held no later than 30 days after the announcement of the final election results, after which the 90-day deadline for the formation of the Government begins.
Waiting through the years
From one election cycle to the next, the constitution of the Assembly and the formation of the Government have been happening just before the expiration of these deadlines. The state, if we take into account the election campaign period as well, has been in an ‘acting mode’ for a very long time.
As a matter of fact, in the last eleven years, the citizens of Serbia have spent a total of two years, three months, and four days in periods from calling parliamentary elections to the formation of the Government. Expressed as a single figure, that is 824 days.
The calculation of this institutional vacuum primarily involves parliamentary elections held in 2012. At that time, from the official commencement of election activities to the decision on the new Government, 137 days passed. Two years later, in 2014, during the snap parliamentary elections, we got a new prime minister and his cabinet in a significantly shorter period of time – 89 days after the elections were called.
On the other hand, the 2016 snap elections brought a three-digit number. From the moment the president of the country called the elections to the day when the Assembly elected the Government, 161 days passed.
The next electoral episode followed in 2020. The elections were regular, but the situation was extraordinary due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Election activities were interrupted the moment the state of emergency was declared and resumed after it was lifted. If this interruption of the electoral process is also taken into account, the state spent 239 days in the ‘acting mode’, whereas normal circumstances – the campaign period and the periods for the constitution of the Assembly and the formation of the Government lasted a total of 183 days.
Although there was no state of emergency, the snap elections held in 2022 set a record in the decade behind us. The period from the day elections were called to the day we got a new Government lasted a lengthy 254 days.