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Serbia’s leadership are lucky that international law does not prescribe liability for political malpractice. If it did, they would find themselves in the dock.
As if Serbia had other viable options and acting with brazen contempt for the vital interests of the country, they have rudely turned down the Russian President’s courteous invitation to attend the forthcoming BRICS conference in Kazan on 22 October, reaffirming vocally instead their commitment to the “European path.” Ironically, at approximately the same time a revealing report ordered by the European Commission and authored by former EU commissioner Mario Draghi was published, with less than glowing conclusions about the Union’s competitive future. The report was redacted in insufferably tedious bureaucratic prose and it may have been unintelligible to Serbian officials. But even without Draghi’s hints, there is plenty of compelling evidence that the European Union is experiencing a deep structural crisis affecting its political, economic, and ideological dimensions. The question asked by savvy Europeans is not whether it is competitive, but whether it has a future. Hence, the stiff-necked refusal of official Serbia to even consider reasonable alternatives that could benefit their country is as breath-taking a demonstration of political malpractice, or malfeasance to put it more accurately, as has ever been witnessed, anywhere.
Public opinion poll data confirm the existence of a deep discrepancy between the servile pro-European Union rhetoric of the ruling Serbian nomenklatura and the views of the ordinary citizens of Serbia. A public opinion survey conducted in mid-May 2024 by the Russia Today news organisation on a representative sample of the Serbian public has yielded results that, had it been mindful of the opinions of those it governs, should have led the government to urgently recalibrate its political course. A minority of 45,4% of Serbian respondents are currently in favour of joining the European Union. But if joining were predicated on Serbia’s recognition of the secession and “independence” of Kosovo, an overwhelming majority of 80% of the Serbian public would be opposed. European Union officials have repeatedly stressed that without that condition being met Serbia would be barred from joining, so it would seem evident that “No, thank you” is the actual response to EU membership of four-fifths of the Serbian people.
Interestingly, surveys conducted by collective West entities such as Voice of America have yielded very similar results. VOA finds that only 40% of Serbs would be prepared to vote in favour of entering the EU, roughly matching RT’s data. We do not know how VOA respondents would have reacted if admission to the EU were conditioned on the recognition of Kosovo because that option was not included in the published version of the results. But given the public’s mood, one can easily extrapolate what the response would most likely have been.
Curiously, RT and Voice of America poll results are in broad concordance on other issues as well. RT has found that 84,6% of surveyed Serbs oppose sanctions against Russia and that 76.1% hold the collective West and its Kiev proxy responsible for the conflict in Ukraine. As for the aforementioned Voice of America survey, it found that only 10% of the Serbian public support an “unequivocally pro-European Union and pro-Western course” and that a “majority of the Serbs indicated they want Serbia either to maintain ties to Russia or pursue a pro-Russian foreign policy.” Claiming that “the pro-Western trend in the region is strong,” Paul McCarthy, the International Republican Institute’s director for Europe, is quoted as telling Voice of America that ”Serbia goes against the grain of the other five countries in the region; it is more pro-Russian, blames the West for the conflict in Ukraine, has very low approval ratings for joining the European Union.” And, to add insult to injury, only 3% of Serbs would favour joining NATO.
