Belgrade 08-22-2022

PUBLIC STATEMENT

SERBIA MUST NOT GIVE UP ON BRUSSELS

Forum for Security and Democracy assesses and warns that the current erosion, disregard, and incitement to withdraw from the Brussels agreement between Belgrade and Pristina are directed toward the annulment of Serbia’s EU identity as a candidate for membership in the European Union that has, over the course of the past ten years, achieved its greatest and most noteworthy foreign policy success with the signing of the Brussels agreement. This is why Serbia must persevere in its insistence on the Brussels agreement because withdrawing from it would mean that Serbia is giving up on the EU.

FSD especially underscores that the abandonment of the Brussels agreement is not in the interest of any of the signatory parties, nor is it in the interest of the European Union itself, which is why we expect from it even more agile support to the dialogue as well as the maintenance and consistent implementation of the Brussels agreement.

FSD is also equally concerned by the silence and the lack of agility of pro-European parties and organizations in Serbia unwilling to look past their narrow particular interests and grasp the wide and far-reaching impact of the long-term dire consequences that the failure to stop the collapse of the dialogue in Brussels and the withdrawing from the Brussels agreement lead to.

FSD points out that such conduct concurrently demonstrates unawareness of their historical responsibility and ineptitude to boldly confront the political challenges bolstered by Russia’s aggression on Ukraine; as well as their yielding and backing down before the increasingly uncurbed pressures coming from internal and external opponents to Serbia’s membership in the EU who seek to destabilize the political situation in the Western Balkans and who falsely represent themselves as the guarantor of Serbia’s national interests, and the interest of Serbs in Kosovo in particular.

FSD in that context especially underlines the responsibility of political parties that “delivered” the Brussels agreement. They should above all others be well aware of the ruinous consequences of its collapse and the dangers that lead to the unraveling of the entire architecture and the results of their current policies on the road toward the EU, which is important for the future of Serbs wherever they may be and which earned them the trust of their citizens, foreign partners, and the EU alike.

It is for this reason that FSD again underlines that the choice of the future Prime minister and members of Serbia’s new government needs to reflect the country’s resolve to continue its integration into the EU and make this commitment even more apparent and unambiguous.

FSD emphasizes that this will, at the same time, alleviate the danger of Serbia drifting away and finding itself on the other side of a new iron curtain, which is visibly reestablishing itself over the remnants of the former Stalinist-state world, where it never belonged.