A year into office, Aleksandar Vucic says ‘no turning back’ on EU membership bid

BELGRADE— Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s 45-year-old prime minister, has a reputation for combining brawn with brains.

A law student as the former Yugoslavia began to unravel a quarter century ago, Mr. Vucic, then a fervent Serb nationalist, studied hard during the week, notching up top scores in school. On weekends, he would follow his beloved soccer team, Red Star Belgrade, across the country, brawling with fans from top Croatian, Bosnian and other non-Serb teams.

Mr. Vucic admits to spending a few nights of his youth in custody in Zagreb, Split and Sarajevo but insists he is a principled fighter.

“I have never kicked the ass of a simple guy when he was sitting down,” he said in an interview this week, ahead of his first trip next month to Washington as prime minister. “I always wanted to participate in very fair fights.”

A year after taking office, Mr. Vucic is locked in battles of another kind. In an effort to inch his country toward a place in the European Union, he has launched an austerity program at a time of economic stress, pledged sweeping economic and political reforms and played a key role in advancing one of Brussels’ top demands: that Serbia gradually normalize ties with Kosovo, a former province whose 2008 independence Belgrade vows not to recognize

If it succeeds, Mr. Vucic’s mission could shape Serbia for decades. But his past has raised questions among foreign governments and domestic skeptics alike. As a senior figure in Serbia’s Radical party, an ultranationalist, anti-Western grouping, he was a minister under former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. He faces criticism that his old authoritarian instincts remain intact and that he is seeking to stifle political and media opposition.

In Washington, he will meet Vice President Joe Biden and other senior figures, seeing the trip as a chance to push Washington to help Serbia in its EU bid. Keeping balance, Serbia’s President Tomislav Nikolic is scheduled to be in Moscow on Friday to join Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military parade to mark 70 years since Germany’s World War II surrender. Serbian troops are due to join the march.

Mr. Vucic, quietly intense and rarely smiling during an hour-long sit down, said his past mistakes and change of heart are part of what won him broad support among his countrymen. Many voters, he believes, identified with his long political journey from the fringes.

He said Serbia’s experiences in the 1990s had hammered home a lesson: that the conflicts and killing of the past, which left more than 100,000 dead in the former Yugoslavia, ended with Serbia weakened, unstable and isolated.

“I saw the consequences” of that path. “I know how that kind of mind can function. I know myself from 20 years ago,” he said. “We have to preserve the peace. Another mistake will mean that we are going to lose everything.”

Already the power broker in the previous government elected in mid-2012, Mr. Vucic set eventual EU membership as his top priority when he took office in April 2014 after a landslide win for his Serbian Progressive Party.

The EU formally opened accession talks with Serbia in January 2014, a reward for the previous year’s agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, which sought to normalize the position of the Serbian minority in Kosovo’s north.

But EU progress has been slow. With Germany cautious, the bloc is yet to open a single one of the 35 negotiating areas Serbia must tackle to join the club. Mr. Vucic says he hopes that will change by September, but EU officials warn that appears ambitious.

Mr. Vucic says that after slashing the deficit by delivering painful budget cuts, including reducing state salaries and pensions, securing a new International Monetary Fund program, liberalizing labor laws and improving Belgrade’s ties with its neighbors including Kosovo, Serbia deserves a reward. But he insists “I am not going to weep” if it doesn’t happen.

“There is no turning back,” he said of Serbia’s EU bid. “I have my disappointments personal and political… regarding the EU… But my job is to take care of the strategically important issues of this country.”

It is a message that Mr. Vucic has delivered not only to Western officials. When Mr. Putin visited Belgrade last October, Mr. Vucic told a news conference with the Russian leader that Serbia will “not give up” its EU membership bid.

“I do not lie to anyone,” Mr. Vucic said this week. “I don’t have different messages in Moscow, Washington and Brussels.”

On Kosovo, Mr. Vucic bristled at what he called “joke” proposals by the Pristina government to give local Serb minority communities only perfunctory powers. But he signaled what could be a significant shift by Belgrade, saying he is considering constitutional changes by end-2017 which could include removing wording that states Kosovo is a part of Serbia.

“We need to be very honest with our people” about the different options, he said. “And the people of Serbia should say their final word.”

Mr. Vucic faces questions about delivery. The government has held off restructuring loss-making or inefficient state enterprises. Corruption and political interference in the judiciary remain rife, diplomats say.

Yet the biggest worries are what some see as Mr. Vucic’s moves to stifle opposition. Independent journalists say the government treats critics as state enemies, using friends in the tabloid press to mount scurrilous campaigns against opponents.

“We are slowly, slowly sliding toward illiberal democratic practices,” said Jadranka Jelincic, director of the Open Society Foundation in Serbia.

Mr. Vucic says he is a soft target because of a repressive anti-media law he passed—and later apologized for—under Mr. Milosevic and that his government comes under daily fire from the press.

Mr. Vucic says he has no intention of spending long years at the top of Serbian politics, unlike other leaders in the region. He doubts he will be holding high office in the early 2020s, when he hopes Serbia’s EU bid will have succeeded.

He rejects the charge of a volatile streak that brooks no argument. “I can accept every single word of criticism,” he said.