Despite the fact that the media close to the authorities in Serbia are trying to make the recent announcement of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, that the Road Map for a united, stronger and democratic European Union will be launched at the beginning of next year, and that there will be a place for Serbia and Montenegro in it. They are burning so that the "countries of the Western Balkans" could enter the EU as a group sometime around 2025 - they portray Serbia as a certain diplomatic success (allegedly with the direct support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel), it seems to me that there has once again been a disappointing postponement of some kind of real turning point in the geopolitical situation of Serbia in the 21st century. This reticence to clearly express a negative assessment of Junker's map from the highest level of government in Belgrade, even after the hasty attempt of European Commissioner Han to personally explain to President Vučić and Serbia that we can enter the EU sooner or later, "depending on the quality". negotiations and ongoing reforms, points to the conclusion that the domestic political elite is somehow relieved that Serbia's entry into the EU is actually being postponed again, so the "painful decisions" necessary for that historic move can be postponed. After all, I have the impression that here in most of the political opposition, Junker's road map is perceived more as a new concession by the West to Vučić and his coalition than as an occasion for fundamental criticism of the proclaimed "pro-European policy" of the Government of Serbia.
How "pro-European" this policy really is can be easily concluded from the fact that the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic practically constantly mocks the European Union with various jokes, so he has allegedly now declared that the EU may collapse before accepting us as a member. If we were to understand these remarks as his warning that no one knows what the European Union will look like in eight years, considering that even its most powerful members are constantly talking about the need for it to be thoroughly reformed, then we would have to admit that in Dacic's statements there is a grain of salt, as they say. The problem is that at the same time we do not hear his warning that we cannot even be sure that on the other side of our "neutrality", in the Russian Federation, in eight years everything will be the same as today and yesterday.
Serbia is moving very slowly towards Brussels, although this "road map" has been its official policy for 17 years. After October 5, 2000 and the fall of Milošević, it took us more than five years for the European Union to identify Serbia as an independent country with which negotiations can be made. Then, the negotiations for the conclusion of the Agreement on the Stabilization and Accession of Serbia to the European Union lasted for more than two and a half years, so that the SAA was signed in the spring of 2008. So again, I think, about eight years had to pass before the official process of negotiations on Serbia's entry into the EU was opened. Now they promise us to wait about eight years for the EU to approach the issue of our entry into its framework. Well, who lives.
He is of the opinion that the blame for such "historical slowness" lies exclusively on the side of Serbia due to the mentioned pro-Russian "policy of neutrality", then due to hard-line positions regarding the independence of Kosovo, then due to the slow reformation of society and the economy, that is, due to an unindependent judiciary and unfree media, great corruption , etc. However, when Juncker and the EU do not separate Serbia and Montenegro in the announced Road Map, then it can be seen that geopolitical alignment or non-alignment does not seem to matter in Brussels, since Montenegro has radically changed its foreign policy, while Serbia has done almost nothing in this field. . Because of this, the attitude of domestic Eurosceptics that only "stability" of any geopolitical color is important to Europe in the Balkans is gaining strength, and the advocates of Serbia's entry into the EU now only have in their hands rather faded phrases about European values and European money.
And finally, to put it extremely simply, it turns out that Junker sent a message to the existing authorities in Belgrade and Podgorica that Serbia and Montenegro will be brought into the EU by some teams that will rule in 2025, so those who rule today are expected to until then, they are working on pro-European reforms with all their energy.
(New magazine)
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