Vučić secretly demonstrates optimism along with the desire to join the EU
The agenda of the visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz included the expected topics: Kosovo, European integration, the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
However, the press conference was held with some piquant details, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The biggest surprise was that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic noted an earlier statement by Olaf Scholz from Pristina when he said that unrecognized countries cannot become EU members.
“Today for the first time we heard from Europe that the EU is seeking mutual recognition from us”, said Vucic.
“This is a lesson for Vucic that this status should also be discussed. This formula of mutual recognition is present in all conversations and speeches of representatives of EU countries who advocate recognition of Kosovo. I can only interpret this “surprise” on Vučić’s part as an evasion by the Serbian authorities of the fact that Kosovo has become fully sovereign in the last ten years,” Dusan Janjic of the Forum for Interethnic Relations told DW.
Pro-Western diplomat Ognjen Pribicevic, a former Serbian ambassador to Germany, does not consider Olaf Scholz's statement a big surprise, since something similar was often heard from Washington, and indirectly from some other European countries.
“All this was expected, because Chancellor Scholz himself is under serious internal and external pressure when it comes to the war in Ukraine, and therefore one could expect that he would sharpen some messages in Belgrade,” Pribičević said.
However, according to the diplomat, Scholz did not focus his attention when it came to the expansion of the European Union.
“The Chancellor mentioned Germany's commitment to the accession process. I expected more concrete statements when it comes to Serbia’s future membership in the EU,” he said.
However, it can be said that after negotiations with the German Chancellor, the Serbian President showed a little more optimism on the issue of European integration than he should have.
As Dusan Janjic notes, in recent weeks Aleksandar Vučić has been fiercely advocating Serbia’s European path, but Belgrade is taking virtually no concrete steps towards this.
“Nothing has been done in the last seven or eight years, it’s time for Serbia to appoint a negotiator who will deal with this and start working more on the topics mentioned by Vucic,” he added.
Ognjen Pribicevic believes that the Serbian side has some optimism, since the German Chancellor voiced a different position in Belgrade than the French one, where Macron opposes EU expansion.
“I think this is where the moderate optimism on the Serbian side that we heard after these negotiations comes from,” Pribicevic says.
According to the Serbian President, the German Chancellor “clearly and sharply” stated that Serbia must impose sanctions against Russia, and Scholz himself confirmed these demands to journalists.
Dusan Janjic believes that the EU will not “tolerate” this position of Serbia for long.
“We can discuss which sanctions Serbia will join, given that it is not a member of the EU. But Serbia cannot avoid this issue indefinitely and try to play naivety towards other parties with frivolous excuses,” Janjic said.
Ognjen Pribičević views this situation “as a circle of disappointments and broken promises.”
“I think it is extremely important that the EU has not had the strength to develop a serious strategy when it comes to the Western Balkans and, above all, Serbia as the largest country in the region. Serbia should have become a member of the EU a long time ago,” he says indignantly.
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