EU Leaders Denounce Serbia’s Funeral Tribute to Mladic, Membership Prospects at Risk

European Union leaders voiced outrage on Tuesday after Serbia held a hero’s funeral for Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general convicted of genocide, and questioned whether Belgrade is fit to join the bloc.

Mladic was laid to rest in Belgrade on Monday with full military honors. Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officiated the service, while Serbian army soldiers carried his flag-draped coffin to the cemetery.

Several Serbian government ministers attended the ceremony for the man known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” who was convicted of orchestrating Europe’s first genocide since World War II. Mladic remains a hero to many Serbs.

“The images from Ratko Mladic’s funeral in Belgrade yesterday were shocking,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa said in social media posts.

“The presence of senior Serbian officials and elements of official support at the funeral are deeply regrettable,” von der Leyen and Costa said. “They reveal a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe’s recent history and contradict the values that underpin Serbia’s path toward EU membership.”

Populist President Aleksandar Vucic did not attend the funeral, but his son Danilo did. Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and Russian Ambassador Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko were among those present.

Vucic, a former extreme nationalist who supported Serbia’s expansionist policies during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, described the funeral as an “emotional outpouring.”

Serbia’s Justice Minister Nenad Vujic attended and stood with Mladic’s family. He said authorities helped maintain order to ensure the ceremony was conducted in a “dignified” manner, though the family was in charge.

Vucic has been walking a political tightrope, seeking to rally supporters—many of whom admire Mladic—ahead of an early parliamentary election that could be held in late October, without alienating the EU, which Serbia says it wishes to join.

Last week, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos warned that the funeral would be “a test” for Belgrade. She canceled an upcoming visit to Serbia, arguing that “the glorification” of Mladic’s death would be incompatible with EU values.

The EU traditionally releases its annual enlargement report in late October or early November, assessing progress each candidate country, including Serbia, is making toward membership and highlighting deficiencies.

Von der Leyen is scheduled to tour the Western Balkans just before the report is published. She usually visits each candidate country, but no dates have been set for the trip, and no agenda has been made public.

Asked about potential consequences for Serbia’s EU membership, von der Leyen’s spokesperson said only: “We are looking into it.”

Mladic’s funeral is unlikely to help Serbia’s cause. Its membership prospects were already damaged by democratic backsliding. In April, Kos warned Belgrade that it could lose access to around 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in EU funds amid concerns about municipal election irregularities.

On Serbia’s side, Vucic’s nationalist-populist SNS party maintains close ties with the European People’s Party (EPP), the EU’s largest political grouping of center-right parties. The EPP has been accused of shielding Vucic.

“It is high time for the EPP to stop acting as a safe haven for the SNS party, which openly celebrates convicted war criminals and rolls out the red carpet for the ‘Butcher of Bosnia,'” Slovenian Green MEP Vladimir Prebilic said last week.

Von der Leyen is a senior EPP member, as is half of her team of policy commissioners and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Von der Leyen in particular has refrained from publicly criticizing Vucic.

For many years, the EPP staunchly supported former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, hoping to keep him within Europe’s political mainstream. But the EPP eventually suspended Fidesz in 2019 over democracy and rule-of-law concerns in Hungary. Fidesz quit the group in 2021.

AP writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade contributed to this report.

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