Vuciq clashes with rapporteur for Serbia in European Parliament

The rapporteur for Serbia at the European Parliament, Vladimir Bilčik, has countered Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq, who said Bilčik has no right to determine with whom Serbia should participate in military exercises.

The Serbian president declared as well, after Bilčik said 13 June that Serbia's joint military exercise with Belarus and Russia does not help progress on the European road.

“I am a politician, just like Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq”, Bilčik said, adding that he believes it is important to have open and honest conversations on topics that can sometimes be difficult.

“Let me say that I have full respect for the decisions Serbia makes, including the issue with which Serbia holds military exercises, this is not the subject”, Bilčik told Radio Free Europe, adding that his comment was that it should have been seen from context and time.

My statement was that while we are talking about an important interstate conference that will be held on June 22nd, holding a military exercise at the time with Russian special forces and Belarusian forces in Russia is a signal that a number of member states will not see thee positively”, Bilčick said.

He said he is only trying to openly convey the situation in Brussels on that issue. My “task as a rapporteur in the European Parliament for Serbia is to work openly and constructively, in relations between Belgrade and Brussels, between Serbia and the institutions of the European Union. My comment was given as a friendly message that underscored that this is an important issue. I would never question what Serbia decides to do, because it is a sovereign and free choice of Serbia”, Bilčik said.

He added it is important to stress that some of these elections can have consequences when it comes to what he considers, and what the Serbian government also considers a strategic decision, and that is EU accession and membership. In that sense, he says the foreign policy issue and its harmonisation with the EU is something member states take into account when making decisions.

The EU's “enlargement and membership, after all, have to do with adjusting a country to EU activities. Of course, we know that, when we talk about foreign and security policy, Serbia's regulation was a challenging task”, Bilčik said.

He stressed that Serbia is a country that is developing relations with other countries outside the EU. “We also have member states in the EU that are (militaryly) neutral, but no EU member state conducts military exercises with Russia or Belarus”, said Blčik, adding that this is the area where some red lines should be established.

The EU recently declared that relations with Moscow are at a very low level and that relations between Brussels and Belarus are quite frozen.