ANALYSIS: Serbia quandary as "Kosovo and EU" policy runs out of road

By Boris Babic Oct 14, 2011, 13:16 GMT

Belgrade - Serbian President Boris Tadic's ruling coalition has found itself in a quandry - with no more fuel left in its twin-pronged policy of both Kosovo and European Union, and deadlines looming from all sides.

While Tadic, unlike some of his allies (who have turned their back on the EU accession project), insists that Serbia will find its way into the Brussels club, European officials have become blunt in making it clear that the reality is different.

A European Commission report this week stated that for the EU policy on Serbia there is only one priority - its dialogue with Kosovo and better relations with it - as the EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said Friday in Belgrade.

The conflict between the two realities has become too much to ignore, an opinion column in the daily Danas said Friday. 'Serbian authorities ... owe its voters answers to a series of questions related to European conditions in the short and mid-term,' it said.

The European Commission said this week that Serbia should be recognized as a membership candidate in December - but only if it returns to the EU-brokered talks with Kosovo.

Serbia left those talks in September in protest at the efforts of Kosovo - which is backed by EU's law-enforcing mission and NATO peacekeepers - to assert its authority over the Serb enclave in the north of the mostly Albanian former province.

By returning to the table to discuss energy, telecommunications and Kosovo's participation in regional initiatives, Serbia would effectively concede the loss of influence over the Serb enclave.

That is exactly what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in August Serbia must do - stop meddling in northern Kosovo and allow EU, eventually also Pristina, to enforce the law there.

But even if Tadic manages to hold his coalition together long enough to return to the talks, under what he previously said were unacceptable circumstances, that may suffice only for the status membership candidate.

Some Balkan countries have been candidates for years and have not yet opened accession talks. Macedonia, for instance, has been waiting since 2005, and its wait is not yet over, due to lagging reforms, plus a row over its name with Greece, which has a province named Macedonia.

'The ball is in your court ... when there is progress, the European Commission will recommend a date for accession talks,' Fule told a press conference after meeting Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic.

Belgrade leaders have so far baulked, in public at least, at EU demands for the dismantling of structures of parallel authority in the Serb-dominated north.

But Tadic and his Democrats do not have much time on their hands - not only is the EU due to decide on Serbia's membership bid in December, but they also face elections in the spring 2012.

Some key coalition partners, such as the Socialist deputy premier, Ivica Dacic, are already clearly turning away from the pro-EU drive in favour of nationalist populism.

'When it comes to acquiring the date for the start of the (accession) talks, the conditions are even more bitter,' the Danas column said.

'Belgrade still refuses to admit to the public that for further progress in European integration, it will factually, though not formally, have to recognize Kosovo's independence,' it said.

Even if Tadic somehow manages to return to the negotiating table with Kosovo and win the membership candidacy, he will not go beyond that, but will take that bit of capital to the elections and leave the most bitter of the EU medicine to some future government.

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