Vucic: Croatia Wants Serbia on Its Knees, It Will Not Happen

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the decision to hold back the opening of Cluster 3 in the accession talks with the European Union was not made on Serbia’s merits but under pressure from a handful of member states. According to him, only two or three countries were firmly against, while others raised objections, yet the process was halted all the same. He made the remarks in recent days, at a moment when Belgrade remains formally blocked despite a recommendation from the European Commission.

Vucic reserved his sharpest words for Zagreb. He said Croatia “wants to see Serbia on its knees, just as they are now doing to Montenegro,” and vowed that this would not happen while he leads the country. With that, a bilateral dispute over the pace of European integration was once again pushed to the center, along a fault line that has strained relations between the two states for years.

Why Did Serbia Stay Blocked Despite the Commission’s Recommendation?

State Secretary Nemanja Starovic confirmed that Serbia is still standing still on Cluster 3, even though the European Commission issued a recommendation to open it. Cluster 3 covers chapters on competitiveness and economic growth, and its opening is seen as one of the key steps in a negotiating process that has effectively stalled.

Vucic specified that the Baltic, Scandinavian and Benelux countries point to Serbia’s failure to impose sanctions on Russia as their main grievance. The president’s message was unambiguous: Serbia does not change its foreign policy “because of blackmail.” It is a position Belgrade has defended since the start of the war in Ukraine, arguing that military neutrality and the refusal to sanction Russia are matters of sovereignty rather than bargaining chips in talks.

What gives this statement added weight is the way it links two seemingly separate issues. Vucic said that even if Serbia were to sanction Russia, the question of Kosovo and Metohija would then be reopened. In other words, the president argues that yielding on one condition would not clear the European path but would instead open a new front of pressure. Such reasoning frames outside pressure as an endless chain of conditions rather than a single obstacle.

Reactions and the Domestic Context

The president also criticized domestic actors who, as he put it, ask the European Union not to open clusters for Serbia. That part of the message is clearly aimed at a segment of the opposition and civil society, which the government accuses of working against the national interest in Brussels. The opposition, for its part, has argued for years that the government itself is responsible for the slow progress, citing the state of the rule of law, media freedom and the fight against corruption, the very areas Brussels insists on.

Zagreb had earlier sent messages that Belgrade reads as further conditioning. Vucic stressed that he would not respond to what he called “nonsense” from across the border, seeking to present the dispute as a matter of statesmanlike dignity rather than daily polemics. The fact remains that every block on a cluster, regardless of who initiates it, extends the period in which Serbia stays only halfway to membership.

Diplomatically, Serbia finds itself in a familiar position, caught between Brussels’ demands and its own policy toward Moscow and Pristina. The open question is whether this balance can be sustained indefinitely, or whether pressure over sanctions and Kosovo will eventually force Belgrade into a choice it has so far deferred. What do you think, can Serbia continue its European path without imposing sanctions on Russia?