If our president were to meet Émile Zola in Paris, Zola would surely exclaim “J’accuse!” However, President Macron most likely said to him, “I advise,” says Jelica Minić of the European Movement in Serbia when commenting on the Serbian president’s visit to France. In an interview for Nova.rs, she assesses whether the French president could take on the role of Vučić’s protector within the European Union. She notes that no significant international actor trusts Vučić anymore, but also explains why, despite that, the European Union has not given up on Serbia.
“For me, the most interesting news coming from President Aleksandar Vučić’s visit to President Macron is the admission that Serbia ‘has money’ and that ‘it doesn’t need money, but a system.’ In other words, this was a visit through which Serbia is giving France more money for: a supercomputer by the company Bullsas, ‘one of the most advanced in the world and the only one of its kind to be in Southeast Europe’; the signing of a commercial contract with the French company Alstom for the construction of the first line of the Belgrade metro (a deal that has been a monumental fiction for years); an initiative involving H125 and H145 helicopters; and almost certainly, French engagement in solving Serbia’s long-term energy crisis through their advanced nuclear power plant technology.
Everything is a long-term deal, except the money. And everything was, as usual, presented only as a partial information, since neither the Government, nor the Parliament, nor the wider public have ever received transparent reports on the direct deals the president made with his hand-picked partners.
I assume the issue of the French company ‘Egis’, which served as the supervising authority for architecture (monitoring works and keeping construction logs during the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station) was handled at lower levels in order to protect the reputation of the French partner.
The only question is whether ‘Egis’ will remain one of the three key companies engaged in the Belgrade metro project, responsible for construction studies and design, which should worry citizens in Serbia.”
What does Serbia get from this encounter?
“Large arrangements for very expensive money? A toned-down French participation in the harshest condemnation so far from the European Parliament, European Commission, and many EU member states of Serbia’s authorities? The fascination of loyal SNS (ruling party)voters back home? An esoteric fantasy of unseen prosperity and important international influence – a
fantasy sold to the people of a small country surviving on enormous internal and external corruption, comparable to the corruption that sustained European overseas colonies nearly a century ago.
Archibald Reiss warned us in time, but we didn’t listen. Nothing has changed, only he’s no longer here.
Perhaps there is a new, unexpected young generation that could change everything? Maybe it’s possible?”
Is Vučić now seeking a new European protector in the French president, after the EP resolution and the sharply critical European Commission report seemed to signal that his former close partners from the EPP, especially the German governing coalition, have “turned their backs” on him?
“By all accounts, there is no longer a single significant international stakeholder who trusts President Vučić. This was brutally demonstrated just days ago by Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who publicly accused Serbia’s president of pursuing a double-faced policy. His mysterious visit to Florida, accompanied by an identity-altering disguise just to buy his way into the Republican convention he was legally forbidden to attend, fared no better.
The consequences of this cannot be patched up even if the entire administrative center of Belgrade were offered to the Trump family to tear down and rebuild with their towers and hotels. That makes the General Staff building case even more absurd, grotesque, and shameful for the Serbian authorities, aside from the fact that it embodies lawlessness at a time when such cases symbolize the erosion of European values and the disrespect of conditions the EU sets for candidate countries. Legalizing the illegal. The executive and legislative branches simply ignored ongoing lawsuit for forgery of documentation in this case within the judiciary. It is hard to believe that this poses absolutely no problem for American partners.
The EU has already stated its position in thoroughly documented resolution and report, with the notable participation of an increasing number of European People’s Party members.
The visible bill from the Chinese side is yet to come – actually, it is already being paid, but the authorities pretend not to see it, as it takes the form of mining and environmental devastation of the part of Serbia, frightening labor force arrangements, and the actions of Chinese police on the territory of “sovereign” Serbia.
Soon, Serbia’s rapidly growing debt for so-called Chinese ‘investments’ (in reality, loans for infrastructure construction) will have to be added up. One should also mention the Chinese companies’ contribution to the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station which, like the French one, disappeared into the darkness of Serbian judiciary and the exclusive jurisdiction of Chinese courts over all disputes.”
After the ’sound cannon’ incident (during the immense peaceful protests in Belgrade, in March), Macron was rather lenient toward the Serbian president, which many linked to
various strategic business deals. Can we expect Macron to now be Vučić’s “last line of defense” in the EU?
“I don’t believe President Emmanuel Macron would accept such a highly demanding role in the EU. Still, good business is good business (within certain limits). But when it becomes clear that a signed arrangement is unworkable even with the best intentions, or that drastic deterioration of political, legal, and institutional conditions threatens its implementation, then ‘strategic partners,’ ‘Orthodox brotherhoods,’ and ‘iron friendships’ very easily retreat and break.”
Serbia’s balancing act between the West and Russia appears to be collapsing. The Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) is under U.S. sanctions due to Russian ownership, and Moscow has recently been openly expressing dissatisfaction with Vučić’s policies. What can Serbia do now?
“Too much time has been lost to find a solution acceptable to all those suffering losses from U.S. sanctions, which includes not only Russia, but primarily Serbia, Hungary, and Croatia (due to its transit role). Meanwhile, Serbia has made no serious shift in almost four years toward finding alternative sources of oil and gas supply and remains entirely dependent on Russia. ‘Elektroprivreda Srbije’ is being systematically devastated, turning Serbia from an electricity exporter into an importer… so Serbia’s glorified seesaw has completely fallen apart.
This topic certainly had its place in the meeting between the two presidents.”
Serbia received very serious criticism from Brussels in the latest annual enlargement report. In your view, how threatened is our EU accession path?
“We’ve been completely stuck on that path for four years now. Someone in the EU administration may be willing to throw Serbia a life jacket, but doing so would involve huge risk, because it would undermine the credibility of the entire enlargement procedure for all other candidates.”
Could Brussels give up on us? Has that perhaps already happened without us realizing it?
“They will not give up on us, primarily for geopolitical reasons. For those same reasons, Montenegro and Albania received a major boost to accelerate their accession processes, in which both governments and citizens are strongly aligned. The Adriatic Sea is being encircled. The rest of the Western Balkans, particularly those without access to the sea, are currently secondary priority.
But Serbia is, even within these small regional dynamics, big enough to create major problemsm especially if the nearly one-party system were to collapse violently.”
