Dragan Velikić on Serbia's tactics on its way into the EU

The European Council will decide once again on Serbia's EU candidacy on March 1 and 2. If it wants the vote to go in its favour the Serb government must stop bowing to the internal political pressure of a corrupt minority, the author and former ambassador to Vienna Dragan Velikić warns in the liberal-conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "In Serbia a shadow economy holds sway. There are too many who have a vested interest in the country standing before the closed doors of the EU rather than being admitted, in maintaining the status quo. Four years ago the pro-European politicians won both the presidential and the parliamentary elections. In the meantime President Tadić has launched the slogan 'Both Kosovo and the EU', with which it wants to remind the voters of the priorities of the Serb government. This is more a strategy than a carefully planned policy. The only concrete policy of the Serb government consists in meeting the conditions of the EU only to the extent that the situation in the country allows. Everything else is not based on a long-term strategy and exists only from one day to the next. In the event that Serbia's candidacy fails once more in March the above-mentioned slogan could backfire on Tadić and turn into 'Neither Kosovo nor the EU'."

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