Back by unpopular demand
When (and if) elections take place in Serbia, Vučić plans to stage a comeback as prime minister.
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Back by unpopular demand
Many anticipated it; now he has said it himself. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić told the Financial Times he plans to return as prime minister after early elections later this year.
THAT’S IT. He announced his resignation (which still has not happened) at the end of June. He has already completed two terms — the maximum allowed by the Constitution.
OVERBLOWN. In theory, the presidency in Serbia should be largely ceremonial. In practice, Vučić has centralised power around himself as he moved from one role to another.
TELL ME. The latest example is the new platform Ko si ti bre? (loosely: “Who even are you?”).
It allows citizens to report corrupt public officials directly to the Office of the President of the Republic of Serbia.
UNDER WHICH AUTHORITY? None. “The president has no jurisdiction regarding the investigation of corruption crimes,” Nemanja Nenadić of Transparency Serbia told RSE.
MAYBE… The sale of Russia’s majority stake in Serbia’s NIS oil company has dragged on for so long that people are starting to wonder whether Moscow will really go through with it.
YES BUT. During a visit to Kyiv, Vučić said Serbia would send Ukraine more humanitarian aid. He did not sign on to a regional call to maintain security support and increase pressure on Russia.
Airplanes for vaccines
Romania’s air traffic agency risks losing a lot of money in charges collected from airlines flying to its territory, and it is all because of Covid vaccines.
WHAT? If you are wondering how the two are connected, you are not alone; it took us several readings of the article to untangle it. Here is the short version.
DON’T NEED THOSE. In 2022, Romania and Poland refused to accept all Covid-19 vaccine doses allocated to them under the EU’s joint procurement scheme as demand waned.
CASH. As a result, they did not want to pay for undelivered doses. Pfizer took both countries to court and won in April, when a Belgian court ordered them to pay.
DO IT. To force payment, Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental body that coordinates air traffic management across Europe, is set to withhold transfers to the two countries’ national air traffic agencies.
REMEMBER. The case is very similar to the Viadukt dispute in BiH (we wrote about it here), which was finally resolved after the intervention of former High Representative Christian Schmidt.
SECURITATE. A new exhibition in Bucharest revisits the repression of Communist Romania’s secret services, the Securitate, by showing previously unseen interrogation tapes of three people investigated in the final months of Ceaușescu’s rule.
An EU Super Tuesday
The EU described it as a “Super Tuesday” for enlargement.
MOVING FORWARD. On 14 July, several EU hopefuls – Albania, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine – took steps forward.
Montenegro and Albania closed two and three negotiating chapters respectively, meaning they further aligned their laws with EU requirements.
Montenegro hopes to join the EU by 2028, and the government is pushing hard to achieve that goal.
Moldova opened negotiations on two additional chapters with the EU, though that was fewer than the country had hoped for.
MEANWHILE. Some countries – in particular Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo – remain stuck and are making no progress.
IN OTHER NEWS.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu appointed Vasile Tofan as the country’s new prime minister. He is set to replace Alexandru Munteanu, who resigned in early July. Munteanu did not give a clear reason for stepping down, but his resignation came amid a major scandal over the management of the state-owned company MoldATSA.
The Croatian parliament approved a symbolic resolution calling for the establishment of a separate electoral constituency for Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, arguing that their political rights are being violated. Similar declarations have been made in the past and have mostly served domestic political purposes.
Police in Greece arrested four people for attacking the homes of politicians from the centre-right New Democracy Party with firebombs two weeks ago.
A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES. “Exodus 1945” has become a sensation in cinemas across Slovenia.
The film is set at the end of World War II and focuses on the flight of civilians and Nazi collaborators seeking to avoid retaliation from communist partisans.
Historians have called it an attempt at historical revisionism.
A podcast with Dua Lipa and Lea Ypi discussing life in Albania under communism? Bring it on.
GETTING READY FOR NOLAN’S “ODYSSEY”? The New York Times recently wrote that in ancient Greece, Odysseus was more than the hero of an epic poem – he was, in fact, an object of popular worship.
AND FINALLY. Croatia is trying to restore the Galeb, a ship once owned by Yugoslav marshal Josip Broz Tito.
But the restoration work is progressing slowly and becoming increasingly expensive.
And that’s a wrap for this week! As always, if you spot a mistake, want to add something, or just say hi, you know the drill – just reply to this email or leave a comment on this issue on Substack. We’re always happy to hear from you.
If you’d like to know more about how we work, we wrote about it in this special issue last year.
AI was used to polish the text.
Until next week, take care.
BB
Wow, I didn't know that Tito occupied Carinthia including Klagenfurt in 1945 and claimed it for Yugoslavia, leading to a confrontation with the British. Very interesting. Thanks B.B.