End of financing the deception

Vučić’s staging of a European path is now directly costing the citizens of Serbia.

The European Commission has suspended payments to Serbia from the Growth Plan due to a renewed backsliding in the judiciary. This is not an empty diplomatic message. It means less money for roads, railways, energy, schools, hospitals, local projects, digitalization, jobs, and development.

It means that instead of cheap European funding, Serbia will have to borrow at higher costs. It means greater pressure on the budget. It means the disappearance of quality investments.

For years, Vučić’s regime has been speaking about reforms in Brussels while doing the opposite in Serbia. Therefore, the suspension of payments is not a “punishment of the EU against Serbia.” It is the only possible consequence of Vučić’s decision to preserve a corrupt system instead of building a European state. EU taxpayers no longer want to finance Vučić’s transformation of Serbia into a private fiefdom of SNS kleptocracy.

We will face the consequences of Vučić’s policy of lying to Brussels and imitating a model of subservience to Russia:

When there is no independent judiciary, there is no legal certainty.When there is no legal certainty, there are no serious investments.When there are no serious investments, there are no stable jobs and livable wages.When there is no rule of law, there is no European funding.

This is an alarm for serious investors that Serbia is a space of legal arbitrariness.

Solidarnost tells Vučić: the European path means independent courts, free elections, politically impartial media, workers’ rights, legal security, and institutions that protect citizens.

A real European path is not loyalty to an organized criminal enterprise, but a state in which laws, knowledge, and work are respected.