Serbia votes for a new government, but its freight still has to find a way round Šid

The rail item I would act on this week is a single test train. LOG Rail and Željeznice Republike Srpske ran a train between Croatia and Serbia that avoided the Tovarnik–Šid crossing. It ran about 200 km further than the usual itinerary and still arrived a day sooner, according to LOG Rail’s chief executive, Zlatko Martić. When a detour that long wins, the constraint is the border, not the track. The report I could read gives no schedule, cargo or date for the run, so I would ask both operators for repeatable slots before treating it as a product. It matters more because the main line will not get better soon: as No. 01 noted, Dugo Selo–Novska is only due to be double-tracked around 2032–33.

At the head of the Adriatic, Hungary’s government is reviewing the Adria Port terminal project at Trieste, questioning its financial, technical and commercial viability. That is the facility meant to give a landlocked country its own outlet on the sea. If Budapest steps back, Hungarian volume stays open to Koper and Rijeka instead of being tied to a Hungarian-owned terminal. I could read only the lead of that report, so I am not putting numbers on it.

On the Danube, the fallback route is getting expensive. Coaster freight from the Danube to Egypt reached about $108–110 a tonne on 23 October, against roughly $30 in June, and about 80 vessels were still waiting at the Sulina Canal on 21 October. The reasons given are weather closures at Sulina, attacks on merchant ships in the Black Sea, fewer available vessels and draft restrictions on the river. For relief cargo and anything else routed through Ukraine’s Danube ports, I now price the rail alternatives every time instead of assuming the river is the cheap option.

Behind the logistics, Serbia voted on 25 October and the Student List won. Crta’s count gives it 51.47% against 40.42% for the “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia” coalition. Vučić conceded and projected 135 to 140 seats for the Student List; a majority is 126 of 250. Official results are still pending, and Crta reported pressure on voters and other irregularities. The movement’s stated priorities so far are corruption, the justice system and trust in institutions, and it has not yet set out a full foreign-policy programme. Nothing changes at Šid overnight. But the NIS ownership question, the Kosovo dialogue and Serbia’s EU chapters will now be handled by new people, and I expect a slow few months of appointments before anyone in the ministries, customs or the railways makes a decision. Further south, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at the Berlin Process summit in Montenegro on 22 October that Montenegro joining the EU by 2028 is realistic. That would put EU customs rules on the southern Adriatic within the life of a normal multi-year contract.

Note on scope: three logistics items and two context items passed verification this week. I found nothing new in the window from Luka Koper, Intereuropa or Pošta Slovenije, and I left out anything I could not confirm by reading the source.