Thijs Reuten, a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA) and a member of the European Parliament, recently assaulted reality together with Serbian news broadcaster N1.
“Autocrats demand a clear answer, not only diplomatic solutions and compromises, and Aleksandar Vučić is no exception. For too long, the EU has left Vučić room to continue destroying democracy in Serbia.”, Mr. Reuten said in his interview, while keeping a straight face.
When populists get voted into office by their idiotic electorate, they don’t tend to wait for approval from the European Union to undermine democracy.
Like, for example, Mr. Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, or his father before him, the previous president of Azerbaijan. But the EU gets the flak for his domestic actions none the same. The article “Europe accused of going soft on Azerbaijan to avoid buying Russian gas” by the BBC truly is a marvel of stupidity to behold.
The tweet above belongs to one of the protester groups that is telling the EU delegation in Serbia that they “should be ashamed that Milan Radojicic walks free”.
Everything is the EU’s fault. If only the EU wizards would cast the “Remove Autocrat” magic spell, but those dirty sellouts in Brussels ignore the pleas of The Astute Martyrs of Democracy.
Bashing the EU over a thing it has zero control over, like who’s in power in places that are not EU members, is fashionable and safe. The Brussels will not get their critics thrown out of the window or shot, or run over by a car, or whatever. But like Thijs here, and a throng of other courageous freedom fighters, you get to virtue signal how you’re speaking truth to power and defending democracy. And some of those calls to action are motivated by sheer cluelessness, like this post from the S&D Group of European parliamentarians, to which Mr. Reuten belongs.
“…The people of Serbia in their demand for justice and democracy…” are sporting a Russian flag on that image, representing the student and civic protests in Serbia.
Those who keep pushing the perverse narrative about the EU’s responsibility for Chinese-made canopies in Serbia that collapse on bystanders are doing a disservice to those of us here who are opposing both the government’s and the opposition’s alt-right popular fronts. When someone echoes their agitprop about Collective West’s responsibility for the sorry state of Serbia, how exactly do you think it advances the democratic processes, pluralism, the rule of law, or even the reality of planet Earth?
Let’s assume for a moment that the EU and/or its member states or other Western actors impose some token sanctions against the members of the Serbian government, like the ones imposed against Aleksandar Vulin, former Director of the Security Intelligence Agency, or Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska. Vučić and his associates would wear it like a badge of honor and use it as proof that the EU is attacking Serbia. The illiberal electorate here would love it.
Neither sticks nor carrots work with places like Serbia. This “Serbian sanctions against Russia in exchange for guarantees of EU accession” business just shows how out of whack Serbian political discourse is. People in this country have such a superiority complex that they are dead set on the notion that Serbia must be important to the rest of the world, that someone will be ready to give a rather exclusive membership to a place like this:
World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Serbia three places below Colombia. Isn’t that precious? Why would the EU import more problems, with all the headaches that come from Hungary and Slovakia?
Serbian politicians and the general public used to toss around similar ideas before. There was a school of thought that believed that the EU would fast-track Serbian membership in exchange for Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo.
Ivica Dačić, the Serbian Minister of the Interior, said how “They deceived us when we signed the Brussels agreement, the international community is the biggest culprit that the whole world depends on Kurti’s goodwill”.
Serbian narcissist parochial society does think that the world revolves around it, so the minutiae of Serbia-Kosovo relations must be something that the whole world depends on.
If someone deceived him, then Dačić and the rest shouldn’t hold any office because of their incompetence. But the Balkans loves its victimhood – this will bring more votes and power to Dačić and the likes of him, not less.
Vučić’s latest reaction, Beta and N1 report, was “that Serbia will not impose sanctions on Russia, saying, ‘We are not changing our policy—it is based on principles.’…We will continue with our principled policy as an independent, sovereign state.”
While independently, sovereignly taking the EU’s money, like from the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, worth EUR 2 billion in the form of grants and EUR 4 billion in soft loans, from which it has already started receiving some funds. All the while enjoying the benefits of free-trade agreements with the European countries.
Serbianism 