Ponoš: The government went from “both Kosovo and the EU” to “neither Kosovo nor the EU”

Zdravko Ponoš, president of the Srbija centar (SRCE) party and one of the bearers of the “Evropska Srbija” list, said last night on Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) that public support for Serbia’s membership in the European Union was much greater before this government started “saying one thing and doing another”, as Nova.rs reports.

According to Nova.rs, Ponoš stressed that since 2000 no one has won elections in Serbia without promoting EU membership. Officially the policy was pro-European, but in practice, he said, Serbia was led “down a dead end away from the EU”: four countries will receive very precise deadlines for accelerated membership, and Serbia is not among them. As he put it, it was not said that Serbia cannot, but that this government in Serbia does not want to.

Ponoš assessed that Serbia’s foreign policy has been “privatized” over the last 14 years and that the “four chairs” orientation ended in fiasco, Nova.rs reports. In his words, this government managed to move from the policy of “both Kosovo and the EU” to “neither Kosovo nor the EU”. He also recalled that with the Ohrid Agreement, Kosovo’s statehood was formally tied “like a stone around the neck”, becoming a burden on Serbia’s European path.

Speaking about Kosovo, Ponoš claimed that this government has signed 31 agreements on Kosovo, but it is not known what President Aleksandar Vučić has committed to and what he has accepted that is not in written form. “The first thing that must be done is a revision, to know where Vučić has put us, what he has obligated us to, and where there is no way back”, Nova.rs quoted Ponoš as saying.

On the life of the Serb community in Kosovo, he said that talks and agreement must be held with the authorities in Pristina, whoever they may be, because that is for the good of the Serbian people, Nova.rs writes.