Democratic Party (DS)(Demokratska Stranka) – The largest opposition party in Serbia since the parliamentary elections and the subsequent formation of a government in 2012. The DS was one of the two major opposition parties of the Milosevic era. Its murdered President Zoran Đinđic played a decisive role in creating and shaping the campaign of the opposition alliance DOS, which led to the overthrow of Milošević. As the first prime minister of a free Serbia, he was the opponent of both President Koštunica and the forces of the old regime. After his murder, Boris Tadić took over the leadership of the party after a short interlude. Tadić led his party to the top of the government in 2008 and won the office of President of Serbia in the same year. The DS lost both offices in 2012 in the parliamentary and presidential elections. With the loss of power, an intra-party power struggle began between Tadić and the then deputy chairman and Belgrade mayor Dragan Đilas for the leading party office, which Đilas was ultimately able to win for himself. A break-up of the party, which had meanwhile been traded in the Serbian public, was initially averted. With the loss of power and the loss of access to state resources, the party lost massive influence and there were significant upheavals within the party that continue to this day. Under the chairman Đilas, the party did not succeed in regaining a foothold politically and in calmness within the party. At a meeting of the party executive committee in January 2014, the attempt by the inner-party opponents of the chairman for his predecessor Tadić failed, Overthrow Đilas. On January 30th, Boris Tadić announced his resignation from the DS. Together with some party officials and members loyal to him, he founded a new party. After a disappointing result in the parliamentary elections in March 2014 (6 percent), Bojan Pajtić prevailed against Dragan Đilas in the election for the party chairmanship at the party congress in May of the same year. But even under Pajtić it was not possible to stop or reverse the decline of the party. In the last parliamentary elections, the DS was unable to improve its share of the vote. As an internal reaction to the stagnation, a party congress at the end of September 2016 elected the deputy and former Defense Minister of Serbia Dragan Šutanovacnew party chairman. The defeated Pajtić also resigned from the parliamentary group. After the elections to the Belgrade city parliament at the beginning of March 2018, in which the DS clearly missed the entry into the civic council with only 2.3% of the votes, the party chairman resigned. The new incumbent party chairman is the political scientist Zoran Lutovac.
Serbian Radical Party of Serbia (SRS) – As an extremely nationalist party under former dissident Vojislav Šešeljthe SRS was founded in 1990 with the support of the Milošević regime. Formally opposed, the SRS Milošević served in the 1990’s as the ideological mouthpiece of the nationalist Serbian war policy. SRS paramilitary units were involved in war crimes and ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav Wars. According to computergees, Vojislav Šešelj was therefore in a UN prison in The Hague from 2006, where a court case for War crimes ran against him. For a long time after 2000, the SRS was the strongest political force, but after the split of the SNS in 2008 it lost a lot of importance and fell out of parliament in 2014. The party experienced a new upswing after Šešelj was provisionally released to Serbia at the end of 2014 for health reasons. Shortly before the new elections in 2016, on 31.acquitted. Under his leadership, the SRS returned to parliament in April.
Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) – The party was founded in the 1990’s by the later Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica as a split from the DS. The conservative-nationalist party missed re-entry into parliament in the 2014 elections, for which it ran in alliance with the ultra-nationalist Dveri party. The alliance just managed to return to the House of Representatives in the 2016 elections. In October there was a break within the party leadership, as a result of which the new party leader, Sanda Rašković Ivić, who was responsible for the successful election campaign, resigned from office and was subsequently expelled from the party. As a result of this rift, the DSS lost 5 of its 8 MPs and thus its parliamentary group status.
Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) – The movement was founded in May 2017 by the former Serbian ombudsman Saša Janković and is therefore not yet represented in parliament. Janković ran in the Serbian presidential election in April 2017, supported by prominent intellectuals and the DS, and achieved a respectable success with 16.3% and second place behind President Vučić. Janković founded his liberal democratic party from the supporters of his election campaign. As a result of internal disputes in the leadership of the movement, Janković resigned from the party leadership in December 2018. The prominent Serbian actor Sergej Trifunović was elected as his successor in January 2019.
Freedom and Justice Party (SSP) – In April 2019, the former Belgrade mayor and chairman of the Democratic Party, Dragan Đilas, together with other members of his former party, founded the SSP. The re-establishment took place in the context of the opposition protests and the opposition alliance Alliance for Serbia, whose driving forces include Đilas. When the DS split off, the SSP gained faction strength in the Serbian parliament.
Serbian Patriotic Association (SPAS) – A party that has existed at the local level since 2010 around the current Mayor of the Belgrade Municipality of New Belgrade, Aleksandar Šapić. The national-conservative party without a pronounced programmatic profile has only been registered at the national level since 2018. When it first ran for parliamentary elections in June 2020, it entered the Serbian parliament with 3.8% of the vote and 11 seats – and as the only opposition party.