NIS between damage and disaster

Is Aleksandar Vučić determined to continue his anti-state energy policy and, by various means of rewarding Russian partners in NIS, increase the enormous damage he caused as prime minister in his first term?

It is true that Mirko Cvetković's government supplemented the bad energy agreement between Serbia and Russia, which linked NIS and South Stream, with even worse individual contracts, but Vučić's government turned it into a disaster when the South Stream project was suspended by a unilateral Russian decision in 2014.

Other countries immediately launched mechanisms to protect their interests and even made money from it. Vučić's government did none of this, even though it had the strongest trump card of all - it could have refused to allow TurkStream to pass through Serbia! Without a route through Serbia, TurkStream would not exist. Why didn't Vučić do that?

If he had acted responsibly, Vučić could have put Serbia in the strongest negotiating position it has ever had in the energy sector and could have drawn enormous political, economic and financial benefits from both Russia and the EU. Russia would have been forced to offer compensation to Serbia, as it did in the case of Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary.

And, most importantly at the moment, the Serbian government was then in a unique opportunity to seek a new contract on NIS and reduce Russia's share to a minority. Russia would have had no choice. Why didn't Vučić do it?

For whose benefit are models now being invented that will threaten the financial stability of the state, instead of using those applied by Germany in the same situation, and traced by the American OFAC? Why not take advantage of the ideal opportunity, which is by far the cheapest for Serbia?

A responsible government, which puts state interests above non-transparent, potentially corrupt agreements, would use the billions of euros saved in this way for gas procurement and energy diversification in cooperation with the European Union.