Von der Leyen is not coming to Serbia

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Lajen will not visit Serbia during the upcoming tour of the Western Balkans, it was announced from of the European Commission.

Her visit to the region will be held from September 30 to October 2, and Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia are on the agenda, Insider writes.

European Commission Deputy Spokesperson Ariana Podesta stated that Von der Leyen will visit Tirana, Pristina, Podgorica and Skopje, where she will talk with state and government officials and tour EU-funded projects. According to her, the President of the Commission plans to visit Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina at a later date, bearing in mind the upcoming parliamentary and general elections in those countries.

Thus, for the time being, the possibility that the omission of Belgrade is directly connected with the funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić has been ruled out, although this very circumstance was the subject of speculation in the previous weeks.

When asked about Mladić's funeral and the military honors shown to him in Belgrade, Podesta reminded that Von der Leyen had already stated her position publicly. The President of the European Commission previously assessed that the glorification of war criminals is incompatible with the values ​​of the European Union.

Von der Leyen previously described Mladic's funeral as "shocking", while she assessed the presence of certain high-ranking Serbian officials as deeply regrettable. She also stated that such actions point to the problem of dealing with the wars of the 1990s and that they contradict the values ​​on which Serbia's European path rests.

At the same time, the fact that Belgrade was left out of this visit has a very concrete political explanation given by the Commission itself: Serbia will be visited later due to the upcoming elections. That is why it cannot be concluded from the schedule itself that Mladic's funeral is the reason for the change of plan.

More interesting, however, is the fact that the two events overlap in time: the European Commission, precisely at the moment of increased pressure on Serbia due to its attitude towards war crimes, decides that Belgrade will not be part of the regular autumn tour of the President of the Commission, but at the same time explicitly cites the elections as a reason for postponing the visit.

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