Saša Butorac
Saša Butorac was born in 1983 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Growing up during the violent 1990’s in Serbia, he became infected by the virus of activism, anti-nationalism and anti-militarism which he hasn’t cured himself of ever since.
He studied political science and philosophy at the University of Belgrade where he obtained his BA degree with a thesis on on Karl Popper’s notion of Open Society under the mentorship of professor Djordje Pavicevic. As an Open Society Institute (OSI) fellow, he studied abroad during the academic 2006-2007 year at Bard College, New York, where he also did a four-month internship at the EastWest Institute. In September 2009, he received his MA degree from the University College London where he studied as a Chevening/OSI fellow.
Moving to Brussels in October 2009, he started working as an adviser in the office of the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Serbia, where he stayed until the European elections in May 2014. During these years he established and developed wide and intricate contacts with civil society activists and the media in Serbia and the other Western Balkan countries and came to witness firsthand the precarious position of NGOs and progressive political forces in the face of regimes with an increasingly authoritarian leanings.
Building on his 2009-2014 work on EU enlargement, he started working in the EU politics as an environment and energy adviser for the European liberals in January 2015. He worked closely with environmental organisations and Brussels-based think-tanks maintaining that transparency of public institutions and the involvement of CSOs are essential for the survival of the European project. In early 2025, Saša took up new duties in the EP’s in-house think-tank as an energy policy analyst.
He has always been adamant that the key to a more just European society and a sustainable global economy lies in addressing political and corporate authoritarianism through a collective action whose key force must be a thriving civil society. In his free time, Saša loves exploring the Dinaric Alps and is humbled by a limited flexibility of his hamstrings evident in many vinyasa yoga postures.