Honourable Members of the Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.<\/b><\/p>\n
Serbia today stands at a decisive point in its modern history.<\/b><\/p>\n
The country that once symbolised democratic transition in the Western Balkans has become a warning sign of how quickly institutions can erode.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The <\/span>V-Dem Institute<\/b>, in its 2024 Democracy Report, classifies Serbia as an <\/span>\u201celectoral autocracy.\u201d Freedom House<\/b> calls it a hybrid regime. <\/span>Transparency International<\/b> shows that Serbia\u2019s Corruption Perceptions Index has been falling for eight consecutive years. According to Reporters Without Borders, Serbia has fallen steadily in press freedom rankings and now stands around the 100th place globally,\u00a0 comparable to countries struggling with entrenched media capture.<\/span><\/p>\n For more than a decade, the governing Serbian Progressive Party has merged the state with the party, as confirmed in the <\/span>ODIHR report on the December 2023 elections. <\/b>With captured media and weakened institutions, what once was presented as stability has hardened into a <\/span>system of political control.<\/b><\/p>\n Officially, Serbia\u2019s leadership insists that \u201cour strategic choice is the European path.\u201d Something I am sure you will hear from the Speaker Brnabi\u0107 later today. <\/span>In practice, it does the opposite. <\/span>President Vu\u010di\u0107 has <\/span>stood at military parades in Moscow and Beijing<\/b>, praising the leadership of Russia and China while accusing Brussels of interference.<\/span> President Vu\u010di\u0107 has repeatedly portrayed Serbia\u2019s civic movement as a foreign plot,\u00a0 and <\/span>Germany has been placed at the centre of that narrative.<\/b> <\/p>\n Over the past year, the public mood in Serbia has changed profoundly. <\/span>Most citizens now believe the country is moving in the wrong direction. <\/span>Corruption has become the defining problem of daily life, the single word that explains how power is gained, used, and protected.<\/span><\/p>\n The protests that began last November have not faded; they have become a <\/span>moral referendum on Serbia\u2019s future. <\/b>Almost six in ten citizens say they support the demonstrations, and nearly two-thirds believe that <\/span>early elections<\/b> are the only democratic way out of the crisis,\u00a0 the only way to bring politics back into institutions instead of streets.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet Serbia is divided between two completely different worlds. <\/span>Among supporters of the ruling party, barely <\/span>five percent<\/b> see EU membership as a way to protect Serbia\u2019s interests, while <\/span>more than a third<\/b> prefer alignment with <\/span>Russia and China. <\/b>On the other side are the students and citizens who fill the squares, among them, <\/span>over forty percent<\/b> want Serbia firmly anchored in the European Union.<\/span><\/p>\n This divide is not natural; it has been manufactured. <\/span>It is the result of <\/span>a decade of government propaganda<\/b> that normalised anti-European rhetoric and glorified authoritarian partners.<\/span><\/p>\n CRTA\u2019s latest <\/span>media monitoring<\/b> shows how. <\/span>In the first half of 2025, the <\/span>EU faced by far the most negative coverage<\/b> of any international actor in Serbian media. <\/span>Of all television reports mentioning the EU, <\/span>77 percent were negative<\/b>. <\/span>By contrast, <\/span>Russia was portrayed positively in roughly three quarters of all mentions<\/b>, and <\/span>China in more than nine out of ten. <\/b>China and Russia are routinely depicted as Serbia\u2019s \u201ctrue friends,\u201d while the EU and its member states are presented as sources of pressure, division, or threat. <\/span>In such an environment, anti-European sentiment does not arise naturally,\u00a0 it is the <\/span>product of systematic, state-controlled propaganda.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Serbia\u2019s internal decline has become a <\/span>regional and European concern. <\/b>The \u201cSerbian World\u201d narrative echoes the Kremlin\u2019s language of spheres of influence. <\/span>The European Parliament has already identified Serbia as a <\/span>destabilising actor<\/b>, spreading disinformation across the Western Balkans.<\/span><\/p>\n There are credible reports that individuals <\/span>trained in Serbia<\/b> were arrested in <\/span>Moldova<\/b> shortly before that country\u2019s elections,\u00a0 suspected of preparing unrest to discredit pro-European forces. <\/span>This is part of a recognisable pattern: training, disinformation, hybrid operations, and deniability.<\/span><\/p>\n At the same time, reports by investigative journalists from <\/span>KRIK<\/b> and <\/span>Va\u017ene pri\u010de<\/b> revealed that <\/span>204 Russian nationals<\/b>,\u00a0 including figures linked to the <\/span>FSB<\/b>, war profiteers from Ukraine, and oligarchs under EU sanctions,\u00a0 were <\/span>granted Serbian citizenship by special decree<\/b>, each described as being \u201cin the national interest.\u201d <\/span>These decisions allow sanctioned individuals to bypass EU restrictions, turning Serbia into a <\/span>gateway for evading European sanctions.<\/b><\/p>\n Regionally, the <\/span>Banjska attack<\/b> of 2023,\u00a0 in which a heavily armed group killed a Kosovo police officer,\u00a0 remains unresolved. <\/span>Figures connected to that incident now appear as <\/span>SNS enforcers<\/b>, visible in the <\/span>party camp in front of the Presidency and Parliament<\/b>, and in <\/span>sports arenas<\/b>, where they silence chants against the government.<\/span><\/p>\n This combination,\u00a0 authoritarian politics, regional interference, and cooperation with convicted felons and war criminals,\u00a0 poses risks not only for Serbia\u2019s democracy but for <\/span>Europe\u2019s security architecture.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Serbia\u2019s situation is more than a national crisis; it is a <\/span>test for the European project. <\/b>It asks whether enlargement remains a process of democratic transformation, or has become an exercise in short-term pragmatism.<\/span><\/p>\n For too long, European institutions viewed <\/span>Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107<\/b> as a stabilising partner. <\/span>Today, it is clear that <\/span>the citizens of Serbia<\/b>, students, journalists, civic organisations,\u00a0 are the true carriers of European values. <\/span>They still believe in Europe, even when their government undermines it.<\/span><\/p>\n When young people in Belgrade march for accountability, they are not rejecting Europe; they are asking Europe to stand by its own principles. <\/span>Some of them quite literally <\/span>ran and cycled toward those principles<\/b>,\u00a0 from Belgrade to Brussels, from Belgrade to Strasbourg, not as a demand for charity, but as a reminder of shared values. <\/span>Germany<\/b>, as a cornerstone of the European Union and a long-time advocate of enlargement based on the rule of law, has a special responsibility to keep that standard intact.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Serbia is not an ordinary candidate country. <\/span>It is a <\/span>fragile democracy at a point of fracture<\/b>, where the independence of institutions and the media is gravely weakened. <\/span>Hollowed-out institutions now serve political interests rather than the public good. <\/span>In such an environment, the potential for further <\/span>escalation of violence is real<\/b>,\u00a0 not because citizens are radicalised, but because the mechanisms meant to ensure justice and accountability no longer function.<\/span><\/p>\n Europe needs <\/span>consistency,\u00a0 and the confidence that defending democracy is never interference. <\/b>Support for Serbia\u2019s citizens is not interference; it is a <\/span>shared obligation<\/b> to uphold the principles that bind the Union together.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Democracy rarely collapses in a single moment. <\/span>It weakens when truth yields to propaganda, when fear replaces trust, and when convenience replaces accountability. <\/span>That is what has happened in Serbia,\u00a0 and that is why Serbia matters to Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n No one should fear elections. <\/span>Elections are not a risk; they are the <\/span>only legitimate path to renewal<\/b>,\u00a0 the way civic energy moves from the streets into the political arena, where public confidence can be restored and democratic life can begin again.<\/span><\/p>\n If Serbia\u2019s partners, including Germany, help ensure that this process is <\/span>free, fair, and transparent<\/b>, they will strengthen not only Serbia\u2019s renewal but also the <\/span>credibility of the European Union itself.<\/b><\/p>\n Democracy is repaired by citizens who vote, by institutions that protect them, and by partners who stand beside them. <\/span>That is our common task, in Belgrade, in Berlin, and across Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Honourable Members of the Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. Serbia today stands at a decisive point in its modern history. The country that once symbolised democratic transition in the Western Balkans has become a warning sign of how quickly institutions can erode. From stagnation to duplicity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-en","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFrom stagnation to duplicity<\/b><\/h2>\n
\n<\/span>For international audiences, the message is reform; at home, it is <\/span>accusation,\u00a0 a narrative in which the West is the source of every Serbian problem.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/b>In July, on national television, he claimed that Serbia was facing a \u201ccolour revolution, paid for and organised from abroad,\u201d questioning how many workshops Deutsche Welle had held in Serbia in recent months. <\/span>
\n<\/span>Shortly afterwards, in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he suggested that student protest leaders had been supported through German state scholarships, adding that he had \u201cno evidence,\u201d only \u201csuspicions.\u201d <\/span>These and similar statements serve to portray <\/span>Germany and the European Union as the cause of Serbia\u2019s unrest<\/b>, and to discredit citizens who still see their country\u2019s future in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\nThe domestic picture<\/b><\/h2>\n
Regional and external consequences<\/b><\/h2>\n
Europe\u2019s responsibility<\/b><\/h2>\n
Restoring democratic confidence<\/b><\/h2>\n
Closing reflection<\/b><\/h2>\n