By Štefan Brankovič
2025 – this was the date officially set by the European Commission on 6 February 2018 as a possible date for Serbia’s accession to the EU, which was enthusiastically welcomed by Belgrade. At the time, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stressed that the Western Balkan countries have their place in the European Union, and that without the inclusion of the region, the common European economic and political space cannot be complete.
However, it is now clear to all that the 2025 accession date is a mirage and that Serbian society has increasingly lost confidence in the EU institutions. And among the disappointed, geopolitical strategies aimed at strengthening the country’s ties with the East are increasingly popular.
The Causes of the Deadlock – Serbia’s Responsibility
It is an undeniable fact that, despite the large number of negotiating chapters that have been opened, reforms related to EU integration have stalled. The main reason for this is that the Serbian Progressive Party, with a secure parliamentary majority with its coalition partners, has not been brave enough to touch the large institutional and sectoral systems. It is not incidental that in the period since 2018, the portfolio of foreign minister in the various governments has been mostly held by the socialists, who are much more sceptical about Serbia’s integration with the West than the progressives. During this time, the European Parliament has on several occasions criticised Serbia’s domestic and foreign policy, which has mostly provoked strong reactions from Belgrade, rather than initiating substantive changes in the areas of contention.
The Causes of the Deadlock – The Responsibility of the European Union.
But if we look at the time since the 2025 accession date, we see much more serious failings on the part of the European Union, which have little to do with the misguided steps Belgrade has taken in the past. And the proof of this is none other than Montenegro, which was also promised accession in 2025 in 2018. In the meantime, Podgorica has moved barely faster than Belgrade along the bumpy road to integration.
However, the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in 2020 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 seem to have diverted attention from the need for integration of the Western Balkans, which was precisely the Russian power ambitions that had highlighted the need for it. Brussels failed to recognise in time that the balance of power and circumstances in world politics have changed radically in recent years. The EU has therefore not built an integration mechanism that would have taken account of these changes.
In the absence of a unified concept among the Member States, the institutions of the European Union have not been able to clearly present the conditions to be met by the countries wishing to join. Thus, while it has been repeatedly stressed that the conditions are the same for all candidates and have remained unchanged since the beginning of the process, the populations of the countries concerned have not felt this in the least. To take just two examples: for Serbia, the resolution of the Kosovo issue only became a condition for the integration process in the process, and Northern Macedonia has not been given a date for the start of accession negotiations, even though the name of the state has changed. The fact that the EU’s leading politicians have meanwhile shown great determination in the case of Ukraine and Moldova has only increased the mistrust.
The most significant of Brussels’ stumbles has undoubtedly been its failure to turn the European integration perspective into a stabilising factor, either politically or economically, either for the Western Balkans as a whole or for individual countries.
Are Countries in the Balkans Looking Somewhere Else?
Not surprisingly, some of the countries in the region are turning to Washington and others to Moscow with their problems, so Brussels is no longer a point of reference. It is also evident in the independent and opposition media in Serbia, where the EU is now portrayed more as a side player than as a shaper of the continent’s political and economic life.
In light of this, it is not surprising that the attitude of the Serbian population towards EU accession has fundamentally changed since the beginning of 2018: according to data from the Serbian Ministry for EU Integration, support for EU membership fell by more than 10 percentage points (from 55 to 43 percent) between July 2018 and December 2022, while the number of opponents has been growing year by year. Similar trends can be seen in independent polls.
A far greater risk is that, at the same time, the geopolitical alternatives that Russia and China offer Belgrade have become increasingly attractive to the country. When several pro-Russian political forces entered the Serbian parliament in April last year, EU decision-makers failed to recognise that their lost votes could shift the Progressives to the right. In order to win back the far-right vote, the electoral rhetoric of the Serbian Progressive Party has now placed a particular emphasis on sovereignty, and although the electoral coalition of Dveri and Zavetnici failed to enter parliament, Branimir Nestorovic’s explicitly Russophile-nationalist party, We the People’s Voice, easily crossed the threshold of entry and even became kingmaker in the Belgrade municipal elections.
But this will hardly be a sufficient warning for Brussels to change its views on enlargement, including the integration of Serbia. Although more and more analyses are now appearing on how Russia and China are increasing their influence in the Balkans, EU decision-makers have not yet realised that it is not just Serbia’s future that is at stake here, but that of the European Union as a whole.
Featured image credits: House of the National Assembly in Belgrade, Serbia (Photo: Boris Dimitrov)
