EU signs deal on ties with Serbia

EU signs deal on ties with Serbia

By Tony Barber in Luxembourg

Published: April 29 2008 14:42 | Last updated: April 29 2008 14:42

Serbia and the European Union signed a pact on Tuesday that will put Belgrade on the road to eventual membership of the bloc.

The move provides a boost to pro-EU political forces ahead of Serbian parliamentary elections on May 11.

In an attempt to tip the balance against Serbian nationalist parties exploiting voters’ anger at EU support for Kosovo’s secession, officials signed the agreement at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg.

But the deal ran into immediate difficulties when Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s nationalist-leaning prime minister, condemned it, saying that if he and other EU critics won the election, they would annul the pact.

The step did not in any case amount to a breakthrough in EU-Serbian relations, because it came with the qualification that the Balkan state will receive no benefits from the pact until EU governments are satisfied that it is fully co-operating with the United Nations war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.

This condition, on which the Belgian and Dutch governments insisted, is generally taken to mean the arrest and handover for trial of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander indicted for the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians at Srebrenica in 1995.

In addition, the extent of Serbian co-operation with the UN tribunal is likely to influence the speed with which the EU’s 27 member states ratify the pact in their national parliaments.

The accord, known as a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), is a first step for non-EU countries towards gaining candidate member status, but it also offers benefits in terms of increased trade and investment.

Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, said that Belgrade “would like to become an official candidate by the end of the year”.

Apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina – which is still plagued by tensions between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims more than 12 years after the end of the 1992-95 war – Serbia is the only country to have emerged from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia without an EU association pact.

Some European governments are keen to bring Serbia close to the EU as soon as possible, because they foresee a long-term role for it as the strongest and most stable country in a notoriously volatile region.

They also hope that the EU, which prides itself on having contributed to healing old rivalries such as that between France and Germany, can serve as an attractive alternative to the extreme nationalism that characterised Serbia under the rule of the late president Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s.

However, Kosovo’s secession – recognised so far by 18 of the EU’s 27 countries – has placed moderate, pro-EU Serbian politicians in a difficult position in the election campaign, because it risks associating them with the loss of a province strongly identified with Serbia’s history and culture.

Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s pro-EU foreign minister, told reporters in Luxembourg that the signature of the pact was a big moment for Serbia. “This is an important political statement that the doors of Europe are open for Serbia,” he said.

● EU foreign ministers failed on Tuesday to agree on a mandate to launch talks on a new partnership accord with Russia because of objections from Lithuania.