The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Belgrade on Wednesday 15 October, the third stop on her tour of the Western Balkans, at a time when the Serbian government is under fire, accused of authoritarianism and ideological closeness to Moscow (see EUROPE 13639/28).
At a time when the tone between the EU and Serbia is rising (see EUROPE 13705/19), Aleksandar Vučić continues to assert that his country’s strategic “priority” remains membership of the European Union (see EUROPE 13646/25).
“That won’t change before the next election, and I don’t think it will change afterwards either”, he insisted at a press conference. “I can’t promise anything to the (Serbian) people today, except that we’re going to work hard. We are committed to the reform programme. And I hope that in all this, we will have the support of the European Union and that Brussels will listen to us on this issue”, conceded the Serbian President.
Ursula von der Leyen, for her part, was more incisive than usual on the question of alignment with the Union’s foreign and security policy and Serbia’s relations with Russia.
“We live in a fragmented world, where the gap between democracies and autocracies is widening. You know the EU’s position. Our stance is for freedom, not oppression, including the right to peaceful assembly. We stand for partnership instead of domination. And diplomacy instead of aggression”, she insisted.
The Serbian President, who describes his relations with the Kremlin as cordial (see EUROPE 13695/3), continues to maintain that the demonstrations were not put down violently and that the reaction of the police and the government was proportionate to the events.
At the beginning of September, Aleksandar Vučić declared that the demonstrators “had been helped by scum from the European Green Party, the worst European scum who have come to Novi Sad this evening to support this violence” (see EUROPE 13705/9), causing a stir in Brussels.
The European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, retorted by declaring that these remarks “will not improve the EU’s opinion of Serbia”. “Calling MEPs ‘scum’ reveals a dubious understanding of democracy”, she quipped. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)