Opposition Party Official: Government Against Serbia’s EU Accession

Borko Stefanovic (BetaPhoto/Milan Obradovic)

A deputy to the president of the Freedom and Justice Party, Borko Stefanovic, who also chairs the Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that “a failure to introduce at least some package of sanctions against Russia will cement the isolation of Serbia,” and that “with the government it has, Serbia does not go to Europe.”

“We are opposed to sanctions as such, and we don’t believe in them as a desirable instrument in international relations, but in this we need to look after our own interests. Just like any other state in the world would,” Stefanovic said in an interview with the Nova newspaper, published on May 3.

When asked about the prevailing view within the Committee, supposed to discuss the matter, Stefanovic said that it seemed to him that the Serbian Progressive Party and the Socialist Party of Serbia were “effectively opposed to Serbia’s accession to the European Union (EU).” “Their speeches before the Committee and their decision not to vote on a draft resolution on the alignment of Serbian foreign policy with the Union’s deepen the gap between Serbia and Europe,” Stefanovic has cautioned.

As he put it, “we have nowhere else to go but home, to Europe.” “The regime does not want to see it, just like it refused to see it before, in the 1920s. They are gambling with the interests of the nation,” Stefanovic said in the interview.