Picula: Belgrade Needs To Seriously Consider EP Resolution on Serbia

Tonino Picula (BETAPHOTO/European Parliament/Fred MARVAUX)

European Parliament rapporteur for Serbia Croatian MEP Tonino Picula said on Oct. 23 that the authorities in Belgrade needed to seriously consider the European Parliament’s Resolution on Serbia, if they were speaking the truth when they said that, geostrategically, the EU was Serbia’s only path.

He stressed that there was now a stable majority of MEPs aware of the situation in Serbia. “They too (the MEPs) are ready to support everything that clearly reflects the situation in Serbia, what needs to be changed so that Serbia as a candidate state for membership can move forward and not stagnate or backslide,” Picula told N1 TV.

Commenting on the contradictory stances of the Serbian authorities before EU officials and the domestic public, Picula said that this was a schizophrenic situation which could not last long, because you could not have several narratives, and one that would, in the long-term, question Serbia’s main objective – progressing toward the EU.

The European Parliament, he said, has passed barbed resolutions before, but it is important to harmonize its stance with all of the EU’s institutions. The Resolution, he stressed, is not an attack on Serbia, but a criticism of the authorities, which does not have the goal of scandalizing the situation, but listing the things that need to change. He recalled that the student movement had been shortlisted for the Andrei Sakharov prize, which showed that underneath the EP’s roof “there is an increasingly fuller awareness of what needs to be subjected to sharp criticism, and what needs to, in some way, maybe accepted as an agent of change.”