EP Sees No Progress in Serbia’s EU Accession Negotiations

Serbia, Eu flags (BETAPHOTO/European Commission/Etienne Ansotte/MO)

Members of the European Parliament called on the EU on April 26 to review the scope of financial assistance it is providing to Serbia, if it continued to support anti-democratic regimes.

At the same time, they called on the European Commission to make sure that all the Union’s expenditures were in full accordance with the EU’s strategic interests and goals. In the report, adopted by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), MEPs declared that the EU’s pre-accession negotiations with Serbia should advance only if that country harmonized with the EU’s sanctions against Russia and made significant progress in EU-related reforms.

MEPs declared that Serbia’s accession process should be determined by progress in the rule of law and fundamental rights, functioning of democratic institutions, commitment to the sharing of European values and normalization of relations with Kosovo.

In that context, according to the statement of the European Parliament, MEP stressed the importance of harmonizing with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU, especially regarding Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. They declared that, since the European Commission’s Report on Serbia in 2020, status evaluations in 33 negotiation chapters had not improved and that, in the Report for 2022, there was no “good progress” in any of the chapters.