Dutch MEP: Vucic Using EU Like Personal ATM

Aleksandar Vucic (BETAPHOTO/DIMITRIJE GOLL)

On March 3, Thijs Reuten, a social democrat MEP from the Netherlands, issued a Twitter statement calling on the European Commission to explain its “senseless policy” toward Serbia and claiming that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has been using the EU like a personal banking machine.

In his tweet, Reuten asked the EC to explain what steps it will take to encourage Serbia to sign the EU plan for Kosovo. The MEP also wanted to know whether payments to Serbia as per the Economic and Investment Plan for the Western Balkans would be suspended until the country’s president “signs and demonstrates credible commitment to implementing the EU proposal.”

“Vucic uses the EU as his personal ATM, then turns around and refuses to sign an EU-mediated agreement with Kosovo,” Reuten wrote, also posting the full text of his question to the EC – for which he demands a written response.

The Dutch MEP recalled that European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi presented Serbia with a EUR2.2.-billion financial aid package on Feb. 28 – EUR600 million of which are grants – and lauded the occasion as “special” and “very symbolic.” Reuten blasted the event as adding insult to injury. Not only was the EC providing Serbia with the largest grant the country has received to date, the MEP wrote, but Varhelyi called the increasingly authoritarian state “a friend.”

“That same evening, the Serbian president appeared on national TV and said he didn’t want to sign the EU-mediated agreement for normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia – which had been allegedly agreed upon the day before and which the Kosovo prime minister was ready to sign,” Reuten concluded in his open letter to the Commission.