Kovachev: EPP Opens Proceedings Against SNS
Andrej Kovachev, head of the Bulgarian delegation in the European People’s Party, said in Sofia that the EPP has opened proceedings against its associate member SNS.
The European People’s Party (EPP) has opened proceedings against the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Bulgarian MEP Andrej Kovachev has revealed. Kovachev, a member of the European Parliament since 2009 and head of the Bulgarian delegation within the EPP, made the comments on a panel at the “EU Meets the Balkans” forum, held on Friday, September 18, in Sofia.
SNS is an associate member of the EPP, the largest center right group in the European Parliament, and has long been regarded as one of the party’s most reliable allies in the Western Balkans. Kovachev, however, said that relationship has shifted, and that discontent with the ruling party in Belgrade is growing inside the group.
“They are an associate member of the EPP, but we have opened proceedings against them, and now the voices inside the EPP are very, very strong. Enough is enough, we waited far too long, and Aleksandar Vucic has spent a very long time playing both sides,” Kovachev told the panel in Sofia.
Kovachev is himself a party man: a member of Bulgaria’s opposition GERB party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, which also belongs to the EPP family. His role as head of the Bulgarian delegation gives him a view into the group’s closed door discussions, which lends his remarks weight beyond the usual back and forth of daily politics.
The Bulgarian MEP also addressed the broader European picture, criticizing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron for what he described as an insufficiently clear stance toward Belgrade.
“Unfortunately, you’ve seen that even European leaders like Merz and Macron aren’t entirely clear in their messaging, because, as I’ve already mentioned, we need Serbia. Serbia matters enormously, and they always hope that what Aleksandar tells them is true, but it isn’t,” Kovachev concluded.
His remarks are not an isolated case. Over the past several months, the EPP has repeatedly reacted sharply to moves by the authorities in Belgrade. The group previously condemned the presence of senior Serbian officials, along with military honors, at the funeral of Ratko Mladic, saying at the time that Serbia’s European future was in question over the glorification of war criminals. Similar criticism was voiced this week during a debate in the European Parliament by EPP representative Davor Ivo Stier.
Kovachev’s statement is therefore not a lone outburst from one lawmaker, but another sign in a growing pattern showing that the party leadership in Brussels is losing patience with the state of affairs in Serbia. For SNS, this is a sensitive issue: EPP membership has so far been one of the party’s few solid footholds on the European stage, while its relations with several other groups in the European Parliament are considerably colder.
According to what we’ve learned, this kind of procedure is usually handled discreetly in Brussels and rarely reaches the public before the party’s own bodies reach a final decision. That makes Kovachev’s statement all the more significant: this is the first time someone from the EPP leadership has publicly confirmed that formal proceedings against SNS are indeed underway, rather than simply unofficial grumbling from individual lawmakers.
The statement lands in the first week of campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections set for October 25. It was reported in Serbian media on Saturday, September 19, and the speed with which it spread shows how much the story resonated in an already heated election race.
It remains to be seen how the SNS leadership will respond to Kovachev’s remarks, and whether the EPP’s internal proceedings will produce any formal decision before October 25, or whether the matter will still be pending once the election has passed.
