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The European Union, seeking to boost support for pro-EU political forces in Serbia’s May 11 parliamentary elections, planned to sign a pact on Tuesday that will put Serbia on the road to eventual EU membership.EU foreign ministers invited Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, to Luxembourg to sign the agreement in a last-minute attempt to tip the balance against Serbian nationalist parties exploiting voters’ anger at EU support for the secession of Kosovo.The announcement did not amount to a complete breakthrough in EU-Serbian relations, because it came with the all-important qualification that Serbia will receive no benefits from the pact until EU governments are satisfied that it is fully co-operating with the UN 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 military commander indicted for the 1995 massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim civilians at Srebrenica.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, formally known as a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), is a first step for non-EU countries towards gaining the status of EU candidate member, but it also offers immediate practical benefits in terms of increased trade and investment.Apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina, still plagued with tensions between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian 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 the healing of old rivalries such as that between France and Germany, can serve as an attractive alternative to the extreme nationalism that characterised Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic’s rule in the 1990s.“This is a great opportunity for Serbia. It’s a strong signal for Serbia to join us, to come to the EU,” said Dimitrij Rupel, foreign minister of Slovenia, the ex-Yugoslav republic that now holds the EU’s rotating presidency.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.Several nationalist politicians Tuesday condemned the agreement with the EU and indicated that, if they won the election, they would seek to annul it.But Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s pro-EU foreign minister, told reporters in Luxembourg that the signature of the EU pact was a big moment for Serbia. “This is not an empty shell. This is an important political statement that the doors of Europe are open for Serbia,” he said.As in the days of Noah...
