by Vladimir Međak

Vice President,

European Movement in Serbia

Op-ed, source: www.beta.rs, date of publishing: 17.09.2025.

In the European Union’s next wave of enlargement, the Political Criterion (the rule of law) and foreign policy (geopolitics) will be the key elements of the evaluation of a candidate country’s readiness, and the sine qua non for member states of the Union to consider a new member.

Serbia began accession negotiations with the EU in 2014. At that time, the country was prepared for successful and efficient negotiations. The government was citing Max Weber and promoted the Protestant work ethics, the administration was ready, as everyone knew what had to be done. A roadmap was drawn up to prepare Serbia for membership by the end of 2018. Today, in 2025, Serbia’s government is not oriented towards the EU at all.

During the 13 years of Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party’s (SNS) rule, Serbia has declined across all global indices tracking democracy, corruption, and freedom of expression – the very elements of the Political Criterion for EU membership.

When negotiations began, Serbia was considered:

• a free state with a semi-consolidated democracy (according to reports by the Freedom House),
• ranked 54th globally in terms of freedom of expression, just about to move from a “problematic” to “satisfactory” status (Reporters Without Borders),
• ranked 78th out of 180 countries included in the global corruption index (Transparency International),
• a “liberal democracy” (V-Dem Institute).

By 2025 Serbia will:

• lose the status of a free country (now “partly free”), sliding from a semi-consolidated democracy into a “hybrid regime”, according to the Freedom House,
• fall to the 96th place worldwide in terms of freedom of expression, dropping from the “problematic” to the “difficult” category (Reporters Without Borders),
• share the 105th place with Ukraine on Transparency International’s corruption index, with only Turkey (107), Bosnia and Herzegovina (114), Belarus (114), and Russia (154) being behind it in Europe,
• be classified as an “electoral autocracy” by V-Dem and ranked one of the world’s ten countries with the steepest autocratization between 2011 and 2021.

This decline was documented in every report except in the European Commission’s annual reports from 2015 to 2024. In 2015 the Commission gave Serbia a score of 2.2 (on a 1–5 scale) for the Political Criterion (covering judicial independence, combat against corruption and organized crime, freedom of expression, and the reform of public administration. By October 2024 the score had risen slightly to 2.4, and the Commission noted progress in the fight against corruption, just days before the railway station canopy in Novi Sad collapsed, killing 16 people.

To clarify the state of play, Serbia needs to be compared with other candidates across core elements of the Political Criterion. Serbia’s score is 2.25 (placing it 4th), closer to Ukraine (2.125) and Moldova (2.0) than to the frontrunner – Montenegro (2.75) and second-placed Albania (2.625).

On the new parameter introduced in 2024 – “functioning of democratic institutions” (the parameter the Commission introduced to gauge the operation of parliaments and independent bodies accountable to parliaments) – Serbia fared worst in the group of the five states assessed. Montenegro was rated “satisfactory,” North Macedonia and Moldova “mostly satisfactory,” Albania “partially satisfactory,” and Serbia as “mixed.” Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kosovo were not evaluated against this parameter.

The conclusion is clearly that all the problems in Serbia’s EU accession are tied to the political elite governing the country.

Complementary political elites constitute the foundation of any integration. Until now, the Serbian Progressive party (SNS) has been complementary only to China’s Communist Party, which it openly admires, and to Russia – SNS officials say in unison that their “heart and soul are in Russia,” while their brains (or rather wallets) stay in the West. Even contacts with Iran and Venezuela are quite frequent and warm, while members of the European Parliament are labeled “scum.”

This makes it very clear that the political elite, or rather, the SNS, does not want to take Serbia to the EU. We believe they have never wanted to, not even at the time when Weber was quoted or the Protestant ethics glorified, and when political leaders swore to support European values prescribed by the EU Treaty and Serbia’s own constitution.

After 13 years of running Serbia, it is now absolutely clear that Serbia cannot join the EU while the SNS are in power. Several members of the European Parliament have already made this very clear during a Sept. 9 debate on Serbia, namely, the Social Democrats and Liberals, who hold a majority in the European Parliament, and the Greens, who are supporting the Commission even though not being part of the ruling majority.

The central question is whether the EU’s stance toward Vucic and his regime has changed.

It depends on the EU political actor in question. The European Parliament has been using the harshest rhetoric against Vucic, requesting in EP resolutions a more decisive action against Vucic than other EU institutions, the Commission in the first place. Here, too, differences occur, depending on the political group. While the Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens, and the Left have been criticizing Vucic for quite some time, saying openly that Serbia cannot join the EU under the SNS, the European People’s Party (EPP) continues to shield its affiliate, the SNS, against the consequences of its actions.

EU member states have been refusing to open the accession Cluster 3 for Serbia for four years, but the Commission repeatedly signals it could happen in a matter of months, helping the Serbian ruling party conceal that negotiations are effectively frozen. Since 2014, the Baltic states have also blocked Chapter 31 (Common Foreign and Security Policy) over Serbia’s refusal to align with the Union’s sanctions against Russia.

The European Commission is actually the key element protecting the status quo regarding Vucic, once branded a “factor of stability” in the Balkans. The appointment of Marta Kos as the enlargement commissioner halted the unjustified praise of Vucic by the European Commission that lasted until December 2024. She has openly said recently that the EU “has a problem in Belgrade.” Her words are evidence that change is happening.

Yet stronger actions by the European Commission and a shift in its politics are missing, as such the transition is entirely in the hands of the president of the Commission, an EPP member. As long as the EPP stays on the same course, no stronger reaction by the Commission should be expected, and, as a result, no consequences for Vucic and his party.

It is important to note that this is not about a lack of information or knowledge about what’s going on in Serbia, but it is rather a political choice. The above listed international reports make it clear that Serbia’s change of course did not happen overnight, documenting over quite a long period of time that Serbia was pulling away from the Union. Yet it was possible to hide it all behind various (geo)political goas, and what made this even easier was that only EPP politicians and members of Hungary’s Fides party (during Oliver Varhelyi’s term) dealt with Serbia on behalf of the EU in the European Commission and the European Parliament from 2014 to 2024.

The actual change happened after the concrete canopy at Novi Sad’s central trains station killed 16 people, triggering massive protests against corruption, which, in turn, triggered repression against peaceful protesters against corruption, and more tangibly, only after the Liberal Marta Kos and Social Democrat Tonino Picula focused on Serbia in 2024. Kos was the first to state that the demands voiced during the protests overlapped with the EU’s, legitimizing them at the level of the Union and, by extension, placing the entire pressure squarely on the EPP.

At this point, it is unclear if the EPP will actually do something. Vucic disregarded their warning not to travel to Moscow on May 9 and decided to go, but no reaction followed. Where the red lines which, when crossed, will cost the Vucic’s party the EPP support, are – is anyone’s guess.

Serbia stands at a historic crossroads. Slobodan Milosevic’s refusal in 1990 to support Yugoslavia’s entry into the European Economic Community shaped Serbia’s fate for the next thirty years. It is in this same way that Serbia’s position until 2050 is being decided today. If this enlargement ship is missed, it is not likely that there will be another one for Serbia, thereby sealing the country’s peripheral status in Europe, maintained since 1991. The only thing to prevent that scenario is if the SNS step down promptly, to be replaced with the authorities with a clear pro-EU orientation and resolve to address all the issues the SNS have created, corruption in the first place, and to rebuild democracy, the rule of law, and institutions.

For a pro-EU policy after Vucic, the Union must act swiftly, openly backing demands by the citizens who have been defending European values against the authoritarian rule. It would be impossible as long as the EPP maintains its 13-year-long policy towards the Vucic’s SNS Party, and eventually place European, democratic values above others interests. Any EPP politician who continues to back Vucic after all this, puts their own integrity at stake and assumes responsibility for an ever deeper crisis in Serbia.

*** Vladimir Medjak, lawyer with a PhD in political science, has over 20 years of experience in Serbia’s EU integration, of which he worked for the Government of Serbia for 14. He was a chief lawyer in the Government’s EU accession negotiation team between 2015 and 2017. He was a chief lawyer in the Government’s negotiation team during the negotiations of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) between 2005 and 2008. Medjak was also an assistant director of the Government’s EU Integration Office (2010–2016) responsible for overall coordination of EU accession negotiations, implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU and harmonisation of legislation with EU law, where he worked from its founding in 2004 until resigning in 2016.

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