Serbia's EU Path Fractures as War Criminal's Funeral Exposes Democratic Backsliding

On Monday, Ratko Mladic was buried in Belgrade with military honors. The man convicted by a UN court of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes received a state-facilitated funeral attended by government representatives. President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend, but he defended and enabled the public mourning. The images that emerged—soldiers in dress uniform, officials present, the ceremonial weight of it all—landed in Brussels like a test that Serbia had failed.

For years, Belgrade has formally pursued European Union membership. The accession process has been the stated goal, the diplomatic language, the official posture. But the funeral exposed what many in Europe had come to suspect: that Serbia's commitment to joining the bloc has hollowed out, that the political will to meet European standards has evaporated, and that the country is moving in a direction fundamentally at odds with the values the EU demands of its members.

The European response was unusually sharp. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, called the images shocking. Antonio Costa, the European Council president, condemned the glorification of war criminals. Marta Kos, the enlargement commissioner, canceled a planned visit to Serbia. These were not routine diplomatic statements. They were signals of frustration, of a threshold being crossed.

But experts who study Serbia's relationship with Europe say the EU's reaction, while forceful, came too late and does not go far enough. Engjellushe Morina of the European Council on Foreign Relations told Deutsche Welle that Brussels has treated Serbia as a normal candidate country for too long, despite years of backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. Naim Leo Besiri, who directs Serbia's Institute for European Affairs, is more direct: the ruling majority in Serbia has delivered nothing on the reform agenda it promised five years ago. Democratic standards have deteriorated under Vucic's nationalist leadership. Serbia has refused to join EU sanctions against Russia. Relations with Kosovo remain unresolved. The country is drifting away from Europe even as it claims to seek membership.

The deeper question is whether the EU itself has enabled this drift. Besiri argues that Serbian civil society has warned Brussels for years about attacks on media freedom, the rule of law, and democratic institutions. The EU largely ignored those warnings. The bloc is Serbia's largest trading partner, its biggest investor, its primary source of financial aid. Those economic ties are real and substantial. But politically, Serbia has cultivated a close partnership with Moscow. The calculation in Brussels has been that isolating Serbia would be dangerous—that pressure might push the country further toward Russia or China. So the EU has accommodated, has kept the door theoretically open, has continued to claim that Serbia remains anchored to the West even as the evidence suggests otherwise.

Morina accepts that complete isolation would be counterproductive, but she sees a middle path the EU has not pursued. Brussels should remain engaged with Serbian civil society while forcing Vucic to make clear political choices—to choose between Europe and Russia, not to have both. Besiri is skeptical that financial pressure alone will work. The EU has already withheld further payments under the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans over concerns about judicial independence. But broad funding cuts hurt ordinary Serbians more than the political elite. What is needed, Besiri argues, are targeted measures against those responsible for the country's democratic decline.

An early parliamentary election scheduled for October 25 may test Vucic's model. After twelve years as president, he intends to remain Serbia's dominant political figure by becoming prime minister. But Besiri notes that Serbia's political opposition is fragile and that winning democratically in undemocratic elections is extremely difficult. Neither expert expects one election to repair Serbia's institutions or to fundamentally change the country's relationship with the EU. Reconciliation in the region appears even more distant. Serbia would first have to acknowledge its role in the wars of the 1990s and accept established facts about the crimes committed. Instead, narratives portraying Serbs exclusively as victims remain deeply embedded in Serbian politics, education, and media. Mladic's funeral did not cause this development, Morina emphasizes. It simply revealed, once again, how far Serbia currently remains from both regional reconciliation and EU membership.