The Serbian Progressive Party (, abbr. SNS) has been the ruling political party of Serbia since 2012. Miloš Vučević has served as its president since 2023.
Founded by Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić in 2008 as a split from the Serbian Radical Party, SNS served in opposition to the Democratic Party until 2012. SNS gained prominence and became the largest opposition party due to their anti-corruption platform and the protests in 2011 at which they demanded early elections. In 2012, Nikolić was elected president of Serbia and succeeded by Vučić as president of SNS. A coalition government led by SNS and Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) was also formed. Vučić became prime minister in 2014 while SNS became the largest party in Belgrade and Vojvodina in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
SNS chose Vučić as their presidential candidate for the 2017 election, which he ultimately won. Mass protests were organised following his election, while Ana Brnabić, an independent who later joined SNS, succeeded him as prime minister. SNS was later faced with protests from 2018 to 2020 and gained a supermajority of seats in the National Assembly of Serbia after the 2020 election which was boycotted by most opposition parties. The Serbian Patriotic Alliance merged into SNS in 2021 while environmental protests were also organised in 2021 and 2022. Vučić was re-elected as president in 2022, while SNS has continued to lead the government with SPS. A year later, Vučić was succeeded by Vučević as president of SNS.
Political scientists have described SNS as a populist and catch-all party that has a weak ideological profile or that is non-ideological. SNS supports Serbia's accession to the European Union but its support is rather pragmatic. An economically neoliberal party, SNS has pushed for austerity, market economy reforms, privatisation, economic liberalisation, and has reformed wages, pensions, the labour law, introduced a lex specialis for Belgrade Waterfront, and reformed the Constitution in the part related to judiciary. Critics have assessed that after it came to power, Serbia has suffered from democratic backsliding into authoritarianism, as well as a decline in media freedom and civil liberties. As of 2020, SNS has at least 800,000 members and it is the largest political party by membership in Europe.
History
Formation
The conflict between Tomislav Nikolić and Vojislav Šešelj came to light after Nikolić's statement that the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), a far-right political party, in the National Assembly would support the Stabilisation and Association Process agreement for the accession of Serbia to the European Union; Nikolić's statement was met with the resistance from Šešelj and his supporters. Nikolić, who was the head of the SRS parliamentary group and a deputy president of the party since 1992, resigned from these posts on 7 September 2008. A day later, Nikolić formed the "Forward, Serbia" parliamentary group with 10 other MPs; five more MPs joined the parliamentary group in the following days. Božidar Delić and Jorgovanka Tabaković, high-ranking members of SRS, were one of the founding members of the parliamentary group.
On 11 September, Nikolić announced that the "Forward, Serbia" parliamentary group would transform itself into a political party. It was speculated that Aleksandar Vučić, the general-secretary of SRS, would join the newly formed party; Nikolić later that day confirmed that he would join the party. A day later, SRS dismissed Nikolić and 17 other MPs from the party due to their opposition to Šešelj, while Vučić left SRS on 13 September. Nikolić stated that the newly formed party would be the party of the "modern right", whilst supporting strengthening relations with the European Union and Russia. On 24 September, Nikolić announced that the party would be called the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). SNS was registered as a political party on 10 October, while the founding convention was held on 21 October, at which a 20-man presidency was presented with Nikolić as the president and Vučić as deputy president. During the period of its formation, SNS gained 21 members in the National Assembly in total and members of local chapters of SRS switched their affiliation to SNS.