French President Emmanuel Macron is leaving political crisis-ridden France on Thursday and Friday for a two-day trip to Serbia, hoping to sell fighter jets to President Aleksandar Vučić’s regime despite Belgrade’s close ties to Russia.
Macron, embroiled in a political crisis at home, hopes to return from Serbia on Friday with good news. At the end of a meeting with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić, a contract worth 3 billion euros could be signed between Paris and Belgrade for the sale of 12 Rafale fighter jets, as the Serbian authorities have repeatedly requested in recent months.
“We hope for a successful conclusion to these talks,” the Élysée said on Wednesday (28 August), without however giving any details on the number of aircraft planned or the value of the contract.
“Serbia is making a strategic decision to cooperate with a European country (to modernize its army),” the president’s entourage added.
A successful sale would be another major success for Dassault Aviation in the Balkans, after twelve used Rafales were sold to Croatia for 1 billion euros in 2021.
However, this development has caused some surprise, as Serbia had no qualms about demonstrating its closeness to Moscow before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including through joint military exercises.
Serbia has been an official candidate for European integration since 2013, but in its 2023 report, the European Commission described Belgrade’s progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime as “limited” and noted that “cases of threats, intimidation, hate speech and violence against journalists remain a cause for concern”.
Despite these repeated attacks on press freedom, which have been denounced by all international organisations, Vučić, who has ruled the country unchallenged since 2012, has become an important ally of France in the Balkans.
Paris, for example, welcomes the “steps taken by Serbia in particular to implement the Ohrid Agreements,” which were theoretically concluded in February 2023 to “normalize” the country’s relations with neighboring Kosovo, but have never been implemented since then.
Belgrade has effectively regained the strategic centrality it had lost since the breakup of Yugoslavia.
While Serbia supported the March 2022 UN resolution condemning the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine, the Serbian regime has consistently refused to impose European sanctions against Moscow, performing a skillful balancing act with EU countries.
For this reason, people are reluctant to denounce the authoritarian excesses of the Serbian regime for fear that the country could fall into the arms of its “big brother” Russia.
The country has also welcomed several delegations from the Russian government and sent a delegation to Moscow in return. In addition, senior politicians, including Vucic, have made statements that can be interpreted as support, or at least a lack of opposition, to Russia’s foreign policy moves.
Above all, Serbia has strategic resources that will undoubtedly attract the interest of European capitals, such as large lithium deposits. Serbia is also very interested in northern Kosovo, where a Serbian majority population lives, and in the Trepca complex, Europe’s largest lead, zinc and silver ore mine.
On July 19, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the CEO of Mercedes were in Belgrade to attend the signing of a partnership agreement between Serbia and the EU. The partnership envisages the development of a process for adding value to the ore and the construction of an electric battery production plant in Serbia.
“Today, the EU and Germany have exchanged democracy, the rule of law and an EU perspective for the Balkans for lithium,” said Florian Bieber, a political scientist specialising in the Balkans, after the meeting at X.
For many years, Serbian citizens have been fighting against the opening of a mine in the Jadar Valley in the south-west of the country by the British-Australian giant Rio Tinto. According to Vučić, this mine could produce 58,000 tons of lithium per year, enough to cover “17% of the annual production of electric vehicles in Europe”.
Weakened by an unprecedented mobilization of Serbian civil society against the project, which opponents said would cause irreversible environmental damage, the Serbian government finally revoked Rio Tinto’s operating licenses in January 2022. However, last June it announced the resumption of the partnership after receiving “new guarantees” from the company.
In mid-summer, demonstrations resumed. In early August, tens of thousands of people gathered in Belgrade. The Association of Environmental Associations of Serbia is determined to continue the fight and sent an open letter to Macron on August 28, calling on him to support the environmentalists. “Europe must offer a more attractive partnership than the shameless exploitation that some advocate,” it added.
Apart from the fact that it is highly unlikely that Macron would risk angering his new business partner, the Elysée Palace has confirmed that it will not interfere in national affairs, stating that opening a lithium mine is “a decision that rests with Serbia”.
(Laurent Geslin | Euractiv.fr)