Meanwhile in Serbia

Aleksandar Vucic Concedes his election defeat, ending his 14-year run as Prime Minister and President of the Balkan nation.

Serbia’s longtime nationalist strongman, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat Sunday in a general election held after his once-tight grip on power was weakened by nearly two years of student-led street protests.

Serbia’s vote for a new Parliament came just six months after voters in neighboring Hungary rejected their own populist nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, a close ally of Mr. Vucic. The Serbian leader had adopted many of the Hungarian’s authoritarian methods — and, at the end, his gracious acceptance of defeat, as well.

“It is clear that we have lost these elections,” Mr. Vucic said in a surprisingly early speech congratulating the victors, a new political grouping called Student List-Students Win. He said that the slate of candidates selected by protesting students had won at least 135 seats in Serbia’s 250-member legislature, compared with around 105 for his own party.

A rather interesting observation here, neither party is big on joining the EU, and , "European Serbia, the only party that openly campaigned for speeding up Serbia’s stalled application to join the European bloc, failed to reach the 3 percent threshold of votes needed to enter Parliament."