Around 3,500 people took to their bikes to join a protest in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana on the evening of May 1.

Protesters accused the Prime Minister Janez Jansa’s right-wing government of curtailing civil liberties during the lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

Demonstrators aimed to observe social distancing rules by keeping a safe distance from each other as they rode past the parliament building and through city centre streets. Smaller bicycle protests took place in several other Slovenian cities and towns. 

The protest was organised by NGOs and other groups over social media with the hashtag #zbalkonovnakolesa (from the balconies to the streets) and followed several “pots and pans” protests that have become common in several countries as a way for citizens to express their discontent during strict lockdowns that have been introduced across most of Europe. 

“On Friday, thousands of us gathered … people felt that it was time to stand up for their freedom and support others who stand for a better society. … We are glad that we celebrated May 1 as it should be,” said a Facebook post from Zadruga Urbana (Urban Collective). 

Specifically, the organised criticised government austerity measures and “plundering people so that banks can survive”. 

Slovenia is not the only country in the region where discontent with the lockdowns in growing. 

In Serbia, critics of the government’s strict lockdown policy stood and their windows or balconies banging pots and pans or tooted car horns in the streets for several evenings. 

Serbia has one of the largest outbreaks of the virus in Southeast Europe, with 9,205 cases reported as of May 2 and 185 deaths. 

The government has sought to stop the spread of the virus with measures including a curfew and a complete ban on going out over the Easter weekend except with a police pass, but critics say the measures are too strict. 

The Savez za Srbiju (Save our Serbia) opposition coalition argues that the lockdown is unconstitutional. Opposition activists sought to deliver an appeal to the constitutional court on the issue, but finding the building closed glued their document to the door. 

Elsewhere in the Western Balkans, Bosnia & Herzegovina’s constitutional court ruled on April 22 against restrictions on movement of children and elderly people in the Muslim-Croat Federation, where people over 65 and under 18 were forbidden from leaving their homes at all. 

The constitutional court ruled that the restriction breached the right to free movement, and gave the authorities five days to amend the order in accordance with the constitution.

Businesses that are suffering under lockdown have also sought to pressure governments to relax the rules. In Ukraine, several hundred small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (SMEs) held a protest the morning of April 29 at the Cabinet of Ministers building to demand the equal relaxation of quarantine restrictions for all sectors of business as long as sanitary conditions are upheld, according to local media.

On April 28, PM Denys Shmyhal said that he has received many requests to relax the severe quarantine in place, to which he stressed that the cabinet expects the peak of infections in early May, which "we should successfully undergo in order to begin the process of loosening restrictions."