Rosenkranz: Mandic Condolences to Mladic Sparked Outrage

Austrian National Council president Walter Rosenkranz told Montenegrin parliament speaker Andrija Mandic that his condolences to the family of Ratko Mladic had angered Austrian lawmakers. Rosenkranz raised the issue during their meeting in Vienna on September 10, according to a statement the Austrian parliament released the same day. The episode matters beyond Vienna: part of the Montenegrin and regional public criticized Mandic’s condolences, while many Serbs read the gesture as a basic human and civilizational courtesy toward the family of a man who had died, so each new reaction from Vienna reshapes how that divide is read across the region.

The Vienna meeting came after the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) parliamentary group pulled out of a lunch organized for Mandic on September 9. Lawmaker Markus Tschank had arranged the lunch as part of the bilateral Austria, Serbia, Montenegro parliamentary group. SPO parliamentary group director Marion Knapp informed Alma Becic of the Montenegrin parliament’s protocol office about the withdrawal. The reason was a condolence letter Mandic sent, on his own behalf and on behalf of his party, to Darko Mladic, Ratko Mladic’s son, after his father’s death.

Explaining its decision, the SPO noted that the Hague tribunal convicted Mladic of genocide in Srebrenica in 2017, and said a shared lunch was not the right setting to air disagreement. Knapp said:

We believe a joint lunch is not the appropriate setting to express our lack of understanding for the conduct of parliament speaker Andrija Mandic and our criticism of that conduct. For that reason, we wish to cancel our attendance at next Wednesday’s lunch.

SPO lawmakers stayed away from the lunch after that.

At the meeting with Rosenkranz, held the day after the canceled lunch, Mandic was told the condolences had irritated Austrian lawmakers. Rosenkranz also recalled the National Council’s 2022 resolution stressing the importance of marking and remembering the Srebrenica genocide, and welcomed the fact that Mandic had since expressed regret. The Austrian parliament’s statement did not say when, before whom, or in what words Mandic did so, nor did it publish a direct quote from him, leaving open whether the Montenegrin official actually changed his position on the condolences or whether the Austrian side simply interpreted his explanation that way during the talks. It is also notable that the Montenegrin parliament’s own statement on Mandic’s visit to Austria, published a day earlier, made no mention that the two speakers had discussed the matter at all, so the public in Podgorica learned of that part of the meeting only from Vienna.

Mandic and Rosenkranz also discussed bilateral relations between the two countries, Montenegro’s European Union accession process, and possible cooperation in the economy and education. Both sides described relations as excellent, and Rosenkranz said Austria supports Montenegro’s path to membership and that Podgorica has made progress along the way. Mandic thanked Austria for its support, stressed that Montenegrin citizens are committed to EU membership, and pointed to results in the fight against corruption and organized crime.

What happens next in Podgorica?

The condolences to the Mladic family have since turned into a question of whether Mandic keeps his post as parliament speaker in Podgorica. A motion to remove him, put forward by the Democratic Party of Socialists and signed by 35 lawmakers, is already before parliament, with a session to debate it scheduled for September 24. Counts so far show Mandic’s opponents are three votes short of removing him, so the outcome remains open after the Vienna meeting.