za "Time" from Bonn
It was the summer of 2021 when the president Aleksandar Vučić, hastening to an event, took Walter Mayer, an old journalistic wolf, reporter of the German "Spiegel" into the helicopter. In the reportage, Mayer described how Vučić flips through a dictionary in the middle of the flight German because he promised Chancellor Merkel that he would learn the language while she was in office.
That scene may have seemed condescending and embarrassing to German readers, but it obviously seemed like a good idea to Vučić. He, the best European student of the great German chancellor.
He did not fulfill his promise - Angela Dorothea Merkel went into political retirement in December 2021, to write memoirs and defend her image, and Vučić has not yet learned German.
Those were the last days of Vučić's comfortable relations with Berlin. On the balcony of the chancellor's office, before the elections in Serbia, romanticized photos were created, the silhouettes of two statesmen, Vučić and Merkel, while the Alexanderplatz tower can be seen behind at dusk. He could, Vučić claimed, call the chancellor at any time of the day or night.
And today? Vučić was left empty-handed before Berlin.
WHAT A BLACK STABILITY
In the Chancellor's office sits businessman-conservative Friedrich Mertz, party archenemy of Angela Merkel, but also a pragmatic man with whom one could talk. But what should Vučić offer him?
Because, in the last year of the student and popular uprising, it seems that he has lost his final trump card - the supposed stability that he guarantees. The ugly coin "stabilocracy" was coined to describe people like Vučić and has long been associated with Angela Merkel - she was the one who thought it was worth trading democracy in exchange for stability.
But how can stabilocracy in the Balkans be guaranteed by a man who has no stability even at home, recently asked the author of a comment published in the local newspaper "Rheinpfalz":
"Until now, Serbia has lost its majority in favor of joining the EU because, according to polls, Serbs - and not without reason - believe that Europe has forgotten them. Vučić has no idea, for him the West, especially Germany, is still a welcome economic partner. Democracy according to the European model is not in the interest of his power politics."
Admittedly, one could not expect more from the conservative Merz government than general posts - they monitor the situation in Serbia, demand freedom of the press, call all sides to renounce violence. But how far the matter has come is illustrated by the fact that the Bavarian conservative Manfred Weber (CSU), head of the European People's Party, raised the question of whether the Serbian Progressive Party should be excluded from that family of parties.
The chances are slim - the conservatives looked down on even bigger autocrats than Vučić, and it will be that in the West they look more and more like Balkan populists. But the news is that the issue is being raised at all.
CRITICISM IN THE PRESS
It's no wonder, considering that in the era of world whirlwinds - Ukraine, Gaza, Trump - enough space was found in the German press for mass protests in Serbia. The background of those writings is mostly devastating for Vučić. "The autocrat shows his true face", commented the German public service ARD when, during the summer, the Serbian police started beating students.
This is the third time that Serbia is in the focus of the German press during Vučić's time. It was in the spotlight for the first time in 2018, when Vučić launched a test bubble about the "delimitation" or "division of Kosovo" in a game show with his Kosovar colleague Hashim Thaci. The writings were ambivalent at the time.
The second time, Vučić reaped praises - in the midst of the pandemic, when Serbia procured vaccines on an express basis. Vučić is celebrated as a pragmatist, and he also pulled off an ingenious marketing move - inviting anyone who wants to be vaccinated to come to Serbia. Many a German reporter did that.
But now the sharp pens of the press report that lithium, infrastructure jobs, and the sale of fighter jets stand in the way of democracy in Serbia for Brussels, Berlin or Paris. And above all, the aforementioned feigned stability.
This does not change the fact of the mentioned empty hands. Because, what cards did Vučić play in winning the favor of Angela Merkel early on?
First, there was the neoliberal labor law, which turned Serbia into a screwdriver factory for mostly German companies. Then cooperation in Kosovo - today there are only schools and hospitals left from Serbian statehood, and that won't be for a long time, and Vučić has nothing more to offer. Then there was complete cooperation on the refugee issue and pragmatism regarding Ukraine - Belgrade did not impose sanctions on Russia, but generously armed Kiev.
All those topics were exhausted. Sanctions against the Serbian oil industry are the new, most difficult test of sitting on more than one chair.
WRITINGS AND ELABORATE
It stands even worse with Vučić's biggest trump card - lithium. In the summer of last year, the chancellor at the time, Social Democrat Olaf Solz, came to Belgrade to expropriate lithium. Scholz is already forgotten, the least liked chancellor in history. And it seems that the lithium idea is also buried.
"At this moment, it is ruled out that any government in Belgrade - any - could politically survive the initiation of lithium exploitation. The resistance in the country is too great", recently wrote the "Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) on the subject.
Even before the fall of the canopy, Vučić had the courage to - out of political calculation or paranoia - call out Berlin for working on his head. In December 2023, after election gimmicks and opposition protests, he accused Germany of interfering in the Serbian elections and announced that he would send a "writing" and then an "elaboration" about it. He never sent it.
In the latest wave of protests, Vučić openly says that German foundations are supposedly paying for the protests. In a recent interview with FAZ, he relativized it - they are not demolishing it directly, but they are financing some in Serbia who are demolishing it. "I never said that everything is organized from the outside. But it is well financed from abroad, because these people do not have enough money to pay for it themselves. For example: those students who blocked the universities still have to eat three times a day," said Vučić.
Although he claims that he did not want to "tighten up" in order not to spoil relations with Berlin, his balls routinely hit Germany. Last week, the President of the Assembly, Ana Brnabić, addressed ZLF MP Radomir Lazović like this: "I quote the honorable MP: 'We wrote to the German Chancellor. We were all really afraid of the German Chancellor here in the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia."
WHO INSTEAD OF VUCIĆ?
Merc, on the other hand, did not pay much attention to Serbia. The press has already called him the "foreign chancellor" because he deals with major world issues, but he is not doing great at home. From before, Merc, who was only nonchalantly familiar with the Balkans, advocated "economic integration" with the EU, a kind of light membership, lumping Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia into the same basket.
His head of foreign affairs and confidant Johan Wadeful recently, at the meeting of the Berlin Process in Belfast dedicated to the Western Balkans, repeated old platitudes - concrete steps are needed so that EU accession is not an eternal process and so that Russia and China do not take over the primacy...
Criticisms of German MPs, mostly from the Greens and Social Democrats, are in that direction, and in the same breath they accuse Vučić of destroying democracy and colluding with Putin. He is defended only by the extreme right - and increasingly powerful - Alternative for Germany, which supports the theses of a "colored revolution".
With today's ruling party in Berlin, Vučić will be able to sell himself as a factor of stability for some time to come, because they are not too interested in the region, as long as there is no shooting. Mertz thus comes to him as an updated version of Merkel, only less interested.
After all, with regard to Serbia, the European capitals are reconsidering. In the close case of Macedonia, it was easier - if Gruevski leaves, Zaev will come, a clearly pro-European politician, whatever that means today. In Serbia, the unknown is too great to turn one's back on Vučić (yet).
