Ana Brnabic and Johannes Hahn (Photo: Beta / Milos Miskov)
Former European Union enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn was among the participants of a recent meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, which raises the question of how private his visit to a head of state can be, seeing as Hahn is now the president of the General Council of the Austrian National Bank, says Austrian weekly Profil.
In an article published on Sept. 10, the liberal weekly says that Vucic posted online a photograph, taken in Sombor on Sept. 6, which shows him sitting at a table with some 20 men and one woman. Vucic, with Hahn sitting on one side of him and former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz on the other, said he had met with "about 20 [of my] friends from Austria and Germany."
In answer to a question from Profil about the visit, the Austrian central bank said that it was "a private meeting that has nothing to do" with Hahn's position of president of the bank's General Council.
"The question is: To what extent can the president of the General Council of the Austrian National Bank be a private person when meeting with the president of a state? The Austrian Parliament should seek an answer to that from Hahn," Profil said.
"Another familiar face" was seated next to former chancellor Kurz - Siegfried Wolf, former head of car supplier Magna, "who is perfectly networked and maintains the best contacts with Moscow," Profil added.
The timing of the meeting "was bizarre, to say the least" - because an election campaign is under way in Serbia and because it took place in the midst of tensions between Belgrade and the European Union, "since the state-directed funeral of Ratko Mladic was not well received in Brussels," the Austrian weekly underlined and recalled that said funeral is the reason why European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos canceled a previously planned visit to Serbia.
"Vucic obviously deals better with her pre-predecessor Hahn. Does private person Hahn wish to invest in Serbia? Or is he vacationing in Sombor and accidentally ran into some company? Or is this again about tying Vucic to Europe through friendly persuasion, so that the Western Balkans do not fall into Russia's hands? That is how the Austrian People's Party has for years been justifying its mild tone regarding that Serbian nationalist," Profil said.
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