Today in Supreme Court History: July 6, 1835

BRUSSELS, The European Commission’s bid to advance Serbia’s EU membership application is set to fall short of the backing needed from member countries, exposing a growing rift over how countries should earn their way into the bloc.

The Commission will ask EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to approve opening a new accession negotiations “cluster”, a group of reforms candidate countries must complete before joining the bloc. However, several governments are skeptical of the move and the Netherlands is prepared to veto it, five diplomats and officials told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive closed-door talks.

The disagreement reflects a broader debate over the purpose of EU enlargement. The Commission has increasingly framed expansion as a geopolitical tool to encourage countries in the bloc’s neighborhood to pursue closer ties with Europe and steer away from rival powers, according to two of the officials. Yet some member countries fear candidates could be rewarded before making sufficient progress on democratic and judicial reforms.

Opening the third cluster would launch negotiations on aligning Serbia’s rules on cross-border services with the EU single market, including the recognition of professional qualifications and measures to ease doing business across borders.

“The opening of Cluster 3 in Serbia’s EU accession negotiations is long overdue,” said Nemanja Starović, Serbia’s minister for EU integration. “Serbia has been effectively stalled at this exact point for nearly five years. It would be difficult to argue that the cumulative reforms carried out by the Serbian state administration since 2022 do not merit such a modest advance in the process.”

Postponing the decision again, he said, would miss a chance to incentivize future reforms and “be the best possible gift to anti-European political forces, both in Serbia and across the continent.”

The Commission largely agrees with that assessment. Officials in Brussels have long recommended the opening of the cluster, but the decision requires unanimity from all 27 member countries, and progress has ground to a halt over concerns about Serbia’s domestic human rights record.

The Netherlands, however, will continue to oppose extending new enlargement opportunities to Serbia on its current trajectory, with diplomats from a further two EU member countries saying the push to open a `new cluster was unlikely to move forward any time soon. Advancing the membership bid of a country that maintains close relations with Russia, one said, would send the wrong message when Ukraine and Moldova are still yet to open all their formal negotiating clusters.

The move to make enlargement a “geopolitical tool” to keep Serbia engaged, said one diplomat critical of the plan, only works “until they’re actually in and then it becomes a headache of geopolitical magnitude.”

Conflicting assessments

Belgrade’s parliament last month voted through a series of amendments relaxing controversial laws passed at the start of the year by the governing party, which legal experts said would undermine the independence of the judiciary and the fight against corruption. On top of that, officials point to almost two dozen legislative changes that have been passed to comply with EU rules, including strengthening the management of EU funds and aligning with the bloc’s internal market.

Yet the Commission’s own assessments appear to point in different directions. In an internal briefing paper circulated amongst ambassadors ahead of Wednesday’s meeting and seen by POLITICO, the Commission said that “Serbia has recently implemented substantial elements of the commitments” it has made to Brussels. In summary, “following these actions the Commission assesses that Serbia has remedied the backsliding which occurred” when the laws were first introduced in January and its application should move forward.

However, just weeks earlier, in a confidential report on Serbia obtained by POLITICO, the Commission reported significant human rights concerns, warning that “pressure on civil society organisations and journalists intensified, including smear campaigns against individuals and organisations advocating for the rule of law and the fight against corruption.”

The analysis found that “there has been no progress in a number of large-scale corruption cases,” including in investigations around the collapse of a concrete railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people and triggered a protest movement across the country.

Without a decision to open the cluster, the Commission will instead turn to other ways to reward Belgrade for the legal changes, two of the officials said. Officials are drawing up a list of options, although it is unlikely to be presented before nationwide elections expected in the coming months after President Aleksandar Vučić’s surprise announcement he would stand down. He is expected to campaign to be prime minister.

“We remain fully committed to pursuing further reforms and would be encouraged to see these efforts acknowledged through a merit-based decision,” Marko Đurić, Serbia’s foreign minister, told POLITICO. “In the case of Serbia enlargement is very obviously mutually beneficial, it is an act of strategic foresight. It is enough to take a look at the map.”

“Most recently, we have taken significant legislative and institutional steps to strengthen the rule of law, responding directly to the European Commission’s recommendations,” he said.