28/06/2013
Writer. PhD in European Studies
The foreign ministers of the 27 member countries of the European Union have announced that June 28 is the official date which will mark the commencement of accession talks for Serbia to become a member of the European Union. There are two aspects that draw attention to this fact: the date chosen for the statement and the disclosure of the EU's requirements to allow Serbia's membership.
Among the political, economic and legal obligations, we can highlight the demand regarding Kosovo. The recent Brussels Agreement, signed between the representatives of the Governments of Serbia and Kosovo and sponsored by the infinite patience of Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was the last requirement that Serbia had to meet. According to this agreement, Serbia does not recognise Kosovo's independence formally, but renounces sovereignty over the territory. It also promises not to oppose Kosovo's entry applications to any international organisation it may wish to access. Serb representatives, Ivica Dacic and Aleksandar Vucic, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively, signed the Agreement of Brussels for two reasons: 1) because the Government can say that it has done literally everything possible to keep Kosovo within Serbia's borders, all the more so as it was their party, –the Socialist Party headed by Slobodan Milosevic--, which led Serbia to the wars of the 90s. It was them, as well as the current Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic (formerly a member of the Nationalist Serbian Radical Party) who lost the war of Kosovo. Therefore, it is them who have to suffer now the consequences of this historic defeat, regardless of whether the intervention of the international community was fair or not, or whether Kosovo's independence is legal under international law. 2) The second reason is that the government knows that the future of Serbia is in Europe. The signing of the Agreement, in spite of being the result of diplomatic impotence, reflects historical responsibility.
Setting the official EU statement on June 28 is no coincidence at all. It aims to create a new tradition: to symbolise the break with the past and the entry into a better future. It tries to add a new meaning to such an important date for the Serbs: on June 28, 1389 the Serbs lost the battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans but, in their collective imagination, they turned the defeat into a moral victory. On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in retaliation against the annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina in 1908 by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And on June 28, 1989, during the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic promised "to defend the Serbs in Kosovo". Serbia has already lost many battles. It must win the one on June 28, 2013.