Ana Brnabić

She was Prime Minister from 2017 to 2024, has been President of the National Assembly since March 2024 and, since 28 September 2026, acting President of Serbia after Aleksandar Vučić resigned. She was third on the list Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia, which came second in the Serbian parliamentary election of 25 October 2026; the next day she said the SNS would be a fierce opposition.

Career

Brnabić holds a business degree from Northwood University in Michigan and an MBA from the University of Hull. She worked for over a decade on USAID-funded projects and with investors and local governments, helped found and later chaired the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) and directed Continental Wind Serbia. Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government from 2016, she became Prime Minister on 29 June 2017 on Vučić's proposal, the first woman in the post, and served until 6 February 2024. She joined the SNS in 2019 and became a vice-president in 2021. Elected Speaker on 20 March 2024, she chaired the session of 4 March 2025 at which opposition MPs set off smoke bombs; she refused a recess and called the opposition 'bullies, haters and a terrorist gang' (European Western Balkans). As speaker she became acting president when Vučić resigned.

Positions

Brnabić has called herself a pro-European, technocratic prime minister focused on modernisation and digitisation; critics cited by Wikipedia described her cabinets as conservative and nationalist, with pro-Russian ministers, and opposition figures called her dependent on Vučić, whom she has called a 'mentor'. Serbia's first openly gay head of government, she attended Belgrade Pride in 2017 and supports inheritance rights for same-sex couples. In the campaign she called the Student List a 'fraud' run from abroad; on 5 October 2026 she said she would call the presidential election 'when the time comes, in line with the Constitution', rejected the view that she had to call it on taking office, and would not say whom Vučić had pardoned, as her working hours as acting president were over (Danas). On 26 October she told TV Informer that the SNS would be a fierce opposition, putting Serbia first and fighting 'by democratic means' (Tanjug).

Controversies

In a Deutsche Welle interview in November 2018 Brnabić, then prime minister, said the 1995 Srebrenica massacre had not been genocide. Theodor Meron, president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, told N1 he was disappointed and troubled by the remark, recalled that the Hague tribunal had established beyond doubt that Srebrenica was genocide, and said he expected the government not to question the court's judgments. Wikipedia adds that the European Parliament then regretted the continuing denial of the genocide by parts of the Serbian authorities.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · Tanjug · Danas · European Western Balkans · N1

Photo: Jennifer Jacquemart/Service audiovisuel, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)