Throughout months of popular protests against the Serbian regime, the European Union has stubbornly backed president Aleksandar Vučić. But now, Vučić’s increasingly brutal repression of peaceful protests has put the EU’s policy at an inflection point: continue its transactional indulgence of Vučić, or embrace uncertainty — but with it, potential real progress.
Judging by the lack of response from Paris, Berlin, and the European Commission, the EU will try to sit on the fence for as long as it can.
But accelerating events on the ground might soon force the EU into taking a position.
At the close of a large protest in Belgrade on 28 June which drew over 100,000 people, speakers announced that the student movement was now a broader citizens’ movement and called for civil disobedience.
The protest gathering was followed by scuffles and violent police repression in Belgrade — and soon after, by traffic blockades throughout Serbia.
In the week since, police and apparent auxiliaries in police uniforms and masks (including, according to eyewitnesses, personnel from the Republika Srpska in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina) engaged in brutal beatings and sweeps of protesters, triggering popular outrage at the violence, amplified by the fact that Vučić proclaimed himself “satisfied” with the police.
Despite state violence, the blockades and protests show no sign of easing.
What began as a student protest against a corrupt system, sparked by the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16, has now evolved into a widespread grassroots movement.
Student delegations rode on bicycles to Strasbourg and ran in an ultramarathon to Brussels, in April and May, to press the EU to recalibrate its policy toward Serbia.
EU officials avoided the cyclists, while the commissioners for enlargement, Marta Kos, and youth and culture, Glen Micallef, met the runners in May.
Kos has made a rhetorical shift, recognizing the aims and values of the student-led movement for change in Serbia as being fully consonant with the EU’s own proclaimed values and the acquis’ requirements.
But this came off as weak to most Serbians and observers. The commissioners committed nothing — and EU policy remains unreconstructed.
Vučić defied public admonitions from senior EU officials not to attend Putin’s 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow.
His defiance was rewarded a few days later by a visit to Belgrade by European Council president Antonio Costa, soon followed by EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas.
Kallas, who called on Serbia to make a “strategic choice” on its geopolitical orientation, made her displeasure evident — but the two visits alone projected a power dynamic in which Brussels is the supplicant.
There have been, as of yet, no policy consequences for Vučić’s geopolitical arbitrage, and there is no evidence that the Commission is rethinking its policy towards Serbia, which is a conspicuous outlier among the Western Balkan EU aspirants with an alignment with the Common Foreign and Security Policy hovering around 50-60 percent.
In late June, following sharp public criticism from Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, of Serbia’s “betrayal” for arms sales via third countries to Ukraine, Vučić announced the suspension of foreign arms sales, including to Ukraine.
Adding to the pressure on Ukraine’s defence, US shipments of vital Patriot missiles and vital 155mm artillery shells (also produced in Serbia) were halted at the beginning of July.
It is worth considering the possibility that these moves were coordinated.
While Vučić attended the Ukraine-Southeast Europe summit in Odesa on 11 June, he refused to sign on to the declaration which denounced Russian aggression, afterward making great pains to state that he did not “betray Russia.” Yet the commission still praised his attendance.
Last week EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke bilaterally with Vučić for a half hour —a rarity.
The content of their meeting is unclear. But if it was meant to be a dressing down or admonition after the 28 June violence, it clearly made no impact. The longer the EU’s policy remains the same, the more Serbians will conclude that she effectively licensed Vučić’s crackdown.
The commission (with the apparent backing of most member states) appears to believe that transactionalism, with financial inducements and the sidelining of difficult values issues, can secure EU interests in Serbia — and by implication, the Western Balkans as a whole.
This inclination to consign its policy problem to a question of communications has become unsustainable and is accelerating the EU’s diminishing popularity among ordinary Serbians. This positions the Union as effectively working in concert with Vučić, who has aimed via media dominance to reduce the Union’s valence among Serbians (and increase Russia’s and China’s).
Even more damaging is the fact that the EU’s timid messaging has in fact encouraged Vučić to step up his repression. He unleashed violent thugs on the protesters and launched a relentless media campaign denouncing the students as “terrorists” paid by Serbia’s enemies (e.g. Western governments) to topple the government — a “colour revolution” aiming at “regime change.”
Vučić clearly reads EU indulgences as a license to maintain and even tighten his links to Moscow.
Vučić’s increasingly brutal repression ought to finally prompt a rethink of the EU’s policy on the basis of values. But even confined to transactionalism, there is a powerful rationale for policy change. If a “geopolitical Union” has demonstrated a willingness to link Serbia’s enlargement path to the delivery of near-term strategic and security benefits, then it logically ought to follow that Vučić’s active efforts to damage those interests ought to bring a correspondingly withering policy response.
Given the protracted EU institutional inertia, member states are the more plausible agents of change.
The Danish presidency should finally begin the long-overdue recalibration of the EU’s policy autopilot toward Serbia and the region to make it not only strategically sound but consonant with the Union’s democratic values.
This is only feasible if it develops a coalition among other member states. This would begin with clarity on what Denmark and other likeminded members expect of candidate governments, including not only foreign-policy alignment, but genuine commitment to the full Copenhagen suite of obligations. It is critical to demonstrate support for those in Serbia taking risks on behalf of the EU’s foundational values.
The risk for the EU — not just in Serbia, but in the entire Western Balkans — is serious.
Instead of gaining Serbia, the Union’s policy of staying close to Vučić may well lose it for another generation, whether the protests ultimately succeed or fail. Let’s be clear: the EU’s choosing “stability” in the current moment means de facto endorsement of violent repression in Serbia. The policy therefore betrays both the EU’s foundational democratic values and its interests, near and long-term, at a time when those are being challenged from east, west, and within.
To use a Trumpism, the EU has the cards. It needs to play some.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Kurt Bassuener and Toby Vogel are co-founders and senior associates of Democratization Policy Council, a think-tank based in Berlin.
Kurt Bassuener and Toby Vogel are co-founders and senior associates of Democratization Policy Council, a think-tank based in Berlin.