Internet freedom has contracted for a sixteenth consecutive year, according to Freedom House's latest "Freedom on the Net" assessment, which surveys 38 countries worldwide. Serbia remains in the "partly free" category with a score of 66 out of 100 - a result that places it alongside Brazil and Ghana, and makes it, together with Hungary, one of only two European countries outside the "free" bracket that are not rated "not free."
Where Serbia Stands on the Global Map
Freedom House scores countries on a 100-point scale across three categories: obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. Estonia tops this year's ranking with 91 points, followed by Costa Rica and Taiwan, while China, Iran and Myanmar share the lowest score of nine points each. Serbia's 66 points put it two above Ukraine and three below Hungary, which scored 69. Within Europe, only Turkey fares worse, landing in the "not free" bracket with 31 points. That leaves Serbia and Hungary as the continent's sole representatives of the "partly free" middle tier - a narrowing club that underscores how much of Europe has either consolidated strong protections or slipped toward outright restriction.
Protests, Surveillance and the Role of Digital Tools
The report singles out Serbia as one of several countries - alongside India, Iran, Hungary, Kenya and Cuba - where citizens relied on digital platforms to organize mass protests that became turning points in national political life. In Serbia's case, the demonstrations trace back to the collapse of a canopy at a train station in 2024, which killed 16 people and triggered sustained, student-led protests against the government. Freedom House notes that authorities responded with considerable force, and that many of the protests being suppressed were themselves coordinated through digital channels - messaging apps, social media and organizing platforms that have become indispensable to grassroots mobilization but also newly exposed to state pressure.
This is not a new trajectory for Serbia. Last year's report already marked a downgrade from "free" to "partly free," with a score of 67, citing the detention of people who had expressed support for protests online. The slight further dip this year, paired with findings cited from Amnesty International that police and state services used spyware against journalists and activists, points to a pattern rather than an isolated episode. A separate Freedom House publication, "Freedom in the World 2026," reinforces this picture: Serbia scored 53 points there, also "partly free," with a three-point decline attributed to retaliation against university professors who joined the protests and to excessive use of police force.
Why the Score Matters Beyond the Numbers
Freedom House frames the global decline as the product of two reinforcing trends: authoritarian governments working to cut populations off from open internet access, and the growing abuse of laws nominally designed to regulate online content and artificial intelligence-generated material. Both dynamics create new, often subtler barriers to free expression - less a matter of outright blackouts than of selective enforcement, legal harassment and targeted surveillance tools such as spyware.
For Serbia, the practical stakes are tied closely to its electoral calendar and its European Union accession process. Digital channels have become the main artery through which independent media and opposition voices reach the public, making the openness of that space a direct factor in how freely citizens can organize and inform themselves ahead of elections. A one-point movement in either direction may seem marginal, but in this case it signals stagnation rather than reform - the situation has not collapsed, but it has not improved either. Because media freedom and freedom of expression are formally part of the EU's negotiating framework, Serbia's position as the second-worst performer in Europe carries weight well beyond the report itself, even though the government has previously contested Freedom House's conclusions as politically motivated rather than objective.