Picula and Brnabic Clash Over Mladic Funeral
European Parliament rapporteur Tonino Picula warned that Serbian officials attending Ratko Mladic's funeral would signal identification with his crimes. Ana Brnabic replied, citing a Vukovar rally.
The European Parliament’s rapporteur for Serbia, Tonino Picula, posted on X on Sunday, August 30, about the announced funeral of Ratko Mladic. Serbia’s National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic answered him the same morning, pointing to a rally held in Vukovar the previous evening.
Picula said the participation of Serbian officials in the funeral of the Hague convict was not a minor matter, since it would show how far Belgrade identifies with his crimes. He argued that attacks on the Hague Tribunal’s verdict reflect a stance in Belgrade that treats Mladic as an innocent victim of international criminal justice, and he called those attacks toxic.
“The European Union’s response must be adequate,” Picula said, adding that the consequences of the Greater Serbia aggression against Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo in the 1990s have still not been absorbed.
Brnabic answered him sharply, and not on the subject of the funeral but on what she said was happening in Croatia.
“In Croatia, the genocide committed against Serbs by the Ustasha regime is being celebrated completely openly, and we are being promised that it will happen again. Last night in Vukovar, ‘Za dom spremni’ was said more often than ‘good evening,’ and ‘our hand will reach you in Serbia too’ was sung by children as young as 7 and people as old as 70.”
The Assembly Speaker added that Brussels stays silent on that, while Picula, as she put it, lectures someone else.
“Brussels stays silent on that, and Picula lectures someone, while his Croatia remains the only country in the world that is not ashamed of its Nazi past but celebrates it and builds its future on it.”
The exchange comes as the question of Mladic’s funeral has already occupied both Belgrade and Brussels for a week. Justice Minister Nenad Vujic earlier announced that Mladic would be buried with full state and military honors, while his family decides on the location. This portal has already reported on that announcement and on Brussels’ first reaction.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic addressed the topic on August 28 in Osecina, at the opening of the Plum Fair. He said the state had received no information from The Hague about the handover of the body, but that if the family requested it, the state would help ensure a dignified funeral in Serbia.
“If the family wants him buried in Serbia, we will help make that happen in a dignified and decent way, because we are civilized and decent people,” Vucic said.
He also specified what Serbia had done so far on the logistics side.
“We sent teams to The Hague to help with logistical matters like transport. I cannot say anything more, because we have received nothing from The Hague,” Vucic said.
That same day, Sandro Gozi, Secretary General of the European Democratic Party and a member of the European Parliament, said a funeral with full state honors would cross a line that a European Union candidate country must not cross. That turned the dispute over funeral protocol into a formal European issue, beyond individual posts on social media.
The funeral itself still has no date. A judge at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has opened an investigation in The Hague into the circumstances of Mladic’s death, and the funeral is being delayed until that investigation concludes. While its outcome is awaited, the exchange between Zagreb, Belgrade, and Brussels continues to play out publicly, sentence by sentence, on X.
It remains an open question whether the European Union, which both Picula and Brnabic invoke in this exchange, will formally react at all before it is known when and where the funeral will be held.
