Most Serbs are against EU membership for the first time
The latest sociology shows that in a hypothetical referendum on Serbia's membership in the European Union, the majority of its population would be against it.
These are the findings of a study by the Ipsos agency, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Thus, 44% of citizens are against European integration, 35% are in favor, 21% are undecided or refused to answer. As a rule, a decrease in the level of support for joining the EU occurred in crisis situations - when pressure on Kosovo grew or when a coronavirus pandemic was declared. However, such a collapse of support as in recent weeks has never happened.
Marko Uljarevic, director of Ipsos, in an interview with Blic, said that for the first time in tracking trends related to European integration, it is recorded that Serbs would not vote to join the EU in a possible referendum.
“In March we had a sharp increase in the number of opponents of European integration. The past month has brought us a continuation of the upward trend in the number of opponents of joining the EU, with an even sharper decline in the number of supporters of integration. Now we have 34,9% of citizens who would support Serbia’s accession to the EU in a referendum, and 43,8% would vote against,” Uljarevic noted.
He explains the situation by connection with the conduct of a special military operation in Ukraine.
“Even though Serbia has managed to balance its international policy in recent years, the current circumstances are such that the daily pressure on Serbia to decide and join the sanctions against Russia is certainly forcing citizens to make a different decision regarding the Union.
Of course, Russia is not sitting idly by, but is using its soft power, which comes primarily from Serbia’s energy dependence, as well as support in international organizations related to the status of Kosovo, but this is not publicly visible,” the sociologist emphasized.
When asked how he explains that until now the majority of people in Serbia supported integration, Uljarevic said that despite the negative sentiments, a large number of citizens have a rational approach to European integration, which is why the country has always had about twenty percent, or about a million Serbian citizens who would vote affirmatively in a referendum, despite the fact that they personally do not have a very positive view of the EU.
“When we add to these rational ones those who had positive sentiments and at the same time supported the European integration of Serbia, we always had a larger number of citizens who would vote for accession in a referendum. Therefore, support for European integration has not only an emotional component, but is also rationally expressed to an equal or greater extent,” says Ulyarevich.
Asked whether the Serbs choose Russia or the EU, he said that the imposed dichotomy of Russia or the West is not a paradigm that the country should accept as the basis for decision-making.
“It is important for Serbia to show maturity and put its interests first, and to ask its partners for a higher level of understanding and support. Although I am aware of the difficulties of implementing this in practice,” Ulyarevich concluded.
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