Serbia’s Candidacy for the European Union: Is There a Future Ahead?

Serbia's Bid Under Pressure

On November 3, the European Commission presented its annual report on the progress of negotiations for accession to the European Union for the nine candidate countries in question: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine, not counting Kosovo whose application submitted on December 15, 2022, has not yet been accepted by the 27 Member States. Serbia has been subject to a higher level of scrutiny and to more explicit detailed criticism than other countries from the Commission.

For a year, the country has been in turmoil. A violent standoff between a powerful student and social movement and Aleksandar Vučić’s presidency. Far from being a mere technical exercise on the country’s assimilation of the EU acquis, the Commission’s annual report is therefore also a political act.

Following in the footsteps of the European Parliament, is the Commission now permanently toughening its tone on public freedoms, good governance, and Serbia's strategic orientations? Are Europeans determined that by implementing a more offensive strategy they will achieve more reforms and political reorientation from the Vučić presidency? Or will they revert to their traditional embarrassed benevolence after frowning at fleeting warnings?

Part 1: Protests change the Situation... in Brussels too

Since his accession to President of Serbia 2017, Aleksandar Vučić has become a master in using democratic levers and institutions to his advantage. He has succeeded in building a pyramid-shaped, "illiberal" power system in the media, parliament, and the judiciary.

The invasion of Ukraine and a succession of social upheavals in his country in recent years, sometimes dramatic, now cast a harsh light on Serbia's candidacy to become a member of the European Union. The European institutions are measuring the risks and are no longer holding back from sending firm messages to President Vučić.

Gen Z plays a decisive role in this European awakening. Indeed, Serbia has experienced a wave of protests, first student-led then social, since the death of 16 people in the collapse of a barely constructed canopy at Novi Sad train station on November 1, 2024.

This catastrophe highlighted the authorities' disregard for the rules of good governance. They refused to give a transparent explanation of the causes of the tragedy and delayed designating those responsible. The president's response, fluctuating between evasive and threatening, only strengthened the students' determination. It took the Prime Minister, two government members, and a further dozen individuals to resign to attempt to slow the movement down. But no concrete answer to the initial questions was given, no condemnation was pronounced. On the contrary, the authorities reacted with sincreasingly repressive and arbitrary measure, including attempts to muzzle the press.

How could European institutions, champions of the Rule of Law, not take the measure of this reality and adopt a discourse more in line with citizens whose country has been committed for nearly ten years to becoming a member of the EU? How can they ensure the adoption of the values of our acquis communautaire, grouped in the "fundamentals" cluster, by a government that moves further away from them day by day?

Part 2: Vučić's Europeanisation in Measured Steps

The integration of the Western Balkans into the European Union is very slow in general; preparations for negotiations for some of these six countries began more than twenty years ago. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the unanimous reaction of the European Union to assure Ukrainians of their European destiny has reignited the Balkan dynamics. Having remained candidates for years, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, North Macedonia, and Montenegro were gripped by fear of being overtaken in the accession queue by Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia.

However, Serbia has opened only 22 chapters out of the 35 in the accession process. It has closed only two. In other words, it has only managed to ‘absorb’ a limited part of the acquis communautaire, organized into 35 "packages". Yet the president and government members proclaim that accession to the European Union is the country's strategic priority. The contrast is striking between this enthusiastic official mantra and the reality of a stagnant accession process. Indeed, accession negotiations with Serbia have been virtually put on halt since February 2022, due in particular to a lack of a political decision to open the third stage or "cluster" of negotiations.

How to explain that this country of 6.6 million inhabitants, with a GDP of 83 billion in 2024, heir to a tumultuous history and a still traumatic accession to independence, possessing a structured administration, refuses to consider accession to the European Union as a means of solidifying elements of its sovereignty through its full participation in the European Union?

President Vucic's party has been carefully cultivating the obsession with "national interest". The president's entourage would undoubtedly lose out in the event of a strict application of EU good governance rules in Serbia. This is certainly the element that best explains the decisions of the current Serbian power, its geopolitical positioning, and the delays in the accession process. Whether it be the refusal to be associated with the 19 sanction packages adopted by the EU against Russia or the development of extensive trade relations with China (which represents 10% of exchange and investments) or the multiplication of free trade agreements that will have to come to a close once accession is achieved, Serbia's foreign policy is currently in explicit tension with the major axes of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In its annual report on Serbia’s candidacy, the Commission notes slight progress this year: it estimates the compatibility rate of Serbia's foreign policy at 63%, an improvement compared to 59% in 2024. In contrast, all other Balkan states are in full solidarity (more than 90%) with the 27 Member States.

The same exclusive priority given to "national interest" applies to the normalization of relations with Kosovo, a stumbling block with Brussels. The European Union has been directly involved in this bilateral dispute with the appointment in 2020 of a "Special Representative of the European Union for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue and other regional issues in the Western Balkans." An agreement on the path to normalization between the two countries was "verbally" obtained in Ohrid in February 2023. From the beginning of 2025 onward, Peter Sørensen is tasked with relaunching the stalled exchanges, especially since a series of initiatives or worse, skirmishes, on both sides of the border, have further discouraged the European institutions in fragile political contexts.

It should be added that not all EU Member States favor a resolution of the situation since five of them still refuse to recognize the existence of Kosovo. This double-talk at the European Council level in no way facilitates the normalization of relations.

Historical and energy affinities with Russia, sustained military, commercial, and financial exchanges with the People's Republic of China, political stalemate over Kosovo, and declining good governance-the obstacles on the road leading Serbia to accession are accumulating. But for how much longer can the Serbian bid for the EU be deferred?

Part 3: Indictment Against the Vučić Presidency in Brussels

It took a year for the European institutions to acknowledge the student movement and its violent repression. The silence of the Member States and institutions had become a danger for EU popularity in Serbian public opinion and for the regional dynamic of integration. How can one want to join a Union that allows such actions to take place without reacting? A recent poll indicated that 59.2% of Serbians believed that Serbia would never join the EU and 9.3% that it would not happen before 2050...

During the presentation of the annual report on enlargement, she intensified criticism directed at the Serbian authorities. She was more direct and explicit than Ursula von der Leyen who, during her tour in the Balkans, in the presence of President Vučić in Belgrade on October 15, had declared "we are for freedom, not for repression, including the right to peaceful assembly."

Marta Kos emphasized on November 3 that Serbia had regressed this year in areas such as the rule of law and media freedom. She also considered that the EU "could no longer tolerate" Serbia's lack of solidarity regarding sanctions against Russia.

The progress report questions the functioning of the Serbian parliament for "the low frequency of sessions, the absence of genuine political debates and the absence of an annual work program, whose agenda is entirely controlled by the government."

The European Parliament Resolution voted on October 22, 2025, on "polarization and increased repression in Serbia, one year after the Novi Sad tragedy" had already formulated the main criticisms precisely described in the Commission's report, adding more political elements.

Part 4: Serbia, Eternal Candidate, to its Advantage?

Officially, the Serbian government's objective is to conclude negotiations with the EU by the end of 2026. This is a visibly unrealistic and purely declarative project. The country seems permanently becalmed in an in-between status (one foot in the EU, one foot out), which, paradoxically, is not without its advantages for President Vucic.

Serbia can remain in candidate status for a long time and see its relations with the EU permanently governed by the Stabilization and Association Agreement which entered into force in 2013. As such, it benefits from IPA funds. Thus, between 2021 and 2024, the European Union allocated 872 million euros in financial and technical aid in this context, enabling the construction of infrastructure, energy investments, rural development measures, but also the improvement of the functioning of justice, the construction of sanitary structures, the modernization of public administration, and the recruitment of civil servants in particular.

Furthermore, Serbia can benefit from a series of regional cooperation initiatives, starting with the Berlin Process, a diplomatic initiative launched by Germany at the conference of Western Balkan states, held in Berlin in 2014 with a view to accelerating the process of accession to the European Union for the countries of the region. One can also mention the Common Regional Market, the Regional Cooperation Council, or the Energy Community which offer Serbia ways to develop its economy and assert its weight over smaller countries.

Finally, the EU's Growth Plan for the Western Balkans promises to inject 1.5 billion euros into Serbia alone from 2021 to 2027, in tranches, depending on the reforms carried out, according to an agenda developed by the Serbian government based on four orientations determined by the Commission. Once approved, the objective is to mitigate the divergence between the community funds received by Union members and the funds allocated to candidate countries.

Conclusion: What Progress is Possible for Serbian Candidacy?

Between Serbia and the European Union, possible advances are still vague. President Vučić is unlikely to be the one best positioned to carry them out in the last two years of his term.

The organization of early parliamentary elections was not initially one of the Serbian students’ demands. But it has become one for the last 6 months. Their holding would first require a series of improvements demanded by the EU and the OSCE: precise verification of the voter list, identical access to media for all lists, control of polling stations, transparency of campaign financing, etc., to ensure an impartial ballot.

Similarly, the stumbling blocks over Kosovo seem to be permanently in the way of the country's European trajectory. The European Commission, has committed since 2011 to facilitate dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, has frequently encountered reciprocal or successive blockages from one or the other, amplified by electoral sequences often sources of waiting periods.

But it is certainly the continuously renewed commercial arrangements that put Serbia in a situation of total energy dependence (oil and gas), especially since its national operator NIS belongs to Gazprom. Under pressure from the latest American sanctions, the gas supply has not been ensured since the beginning of October, leaving President Vučić without a real substitute solution in the medium term.

Permanently placed in the EU's antechamber, in other words in the status of a candidate country, Serbia can and must be just as permanently subjected to explicit pressure from the EU and Member States to advance its candidacy. This is essential for the preservation of the rule of law domestically, the integration of its economy into the common market, and the influence of the EU in the Balkans.

Copyright image : Andrej ISAKOVIC / AFP
Aleksandar Vucic and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Belgrade on October 15, 2025.