Serbia's EU Odyssey

The Times, The Times December 23, 2009

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Jeremy Clarkson

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Serbia applied formally yesterday to join the EU. The application marks an incremental but important advance from a dark past. Serbia’s politics were convulsed in 2003 by the murder of Zoran Djindjic, a reforming Prime Minister who had sought closer ties with the West. Djindjic had led the demonstrations demanding the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic as President in 2000 after a peculiarly blatant case of ballot-rigging. The support within Serbia for EU membership vindicates Djindjic’s vision.

If the obligations of membership are acted on, the change will be more than symbolic. Symbols matter, though. Accession to the EU would signal that Serbia had shaken off the malign influence of the closest thing to a National Socialist regime seen in Europe since 1945. Milosevic’s irredentist, xenophobic and murderous pursuit of a “Greater Serbia” was a criminal enterprise that dismembered Bosnia and assaulted Kosovo.

When Boris Tadic, the Serb President, arrived in Stockholm yesterday to deliver the application for membership, he was given a cautious welcome by Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister of Sweden, which holds the EU presidency. The transition to membership would be demanding, said Mr Reinfeldt. So it will be. Serbia will have to hasten reform of its economy, legal system and constitution to qualify. The process will take years. But the most important step that Serbia’s Government could and must take is one for which it does not have popular support. It is to deliver General Ratko Mladic to justice.

Serbia won praise last year for the belated arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, who had gone into hiding under the guise of a quack doctor. Dr Karadzic now stands on trial at The Hague for war crimes. These include the genocide of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 — the biggest single massacre of civilians in Europe since the Holocaust.

General Mladic was commander of the Bosnian Serb forces that overran the “safe area” of Srebrenica. He lied brazenly to the UN and to his terrified captives. It is inconceivable that his whereabouts are now a mystery to everyone in Serbian public service. No country can be considered to approach European precepts of justice and the rule of law while harbouring such a man. For this reason above all, some EU states (notably the Netherlands) are wary of closer co-operation with Serbia now. Their scepticism is understandable. Serbia’s dilatoriness in bringing war criminals to account provoked the EU to block closer ties. There has been progress only recently, with a new trade agreement and a waiver of visa requirements for Serbs when visiting most EU countries. But Serbian membership, conditional on adopting the principles of the EU, should be pursued for Europe’s sake as well as Serbia’s.

There is a precedent. When the Federal Republic of Germany was born in 1949, its founders firmly aligned it with the liberal West. Within five years, Germany was invited to join Nato. The country’s barbarous recent history was not forgotten but it was superseded, in fact and in institutional form.

In a different way but on a similar principle, EU membership is not merely a prize: it is a means of cementing newly democratic states in a comity of nations. Serbia without Milosevic is no rough beast, and its hour will come round at last.

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