For Serbia’s Vučić, road to EU runs through Balkans

Aleksandar Vučić: ‘Tito was a very smart guy’

Serbia’s president-elect on his critics, Merkel and the outlook for the region.

http://www.politico.eu/article/q-and-a-with-aleksandar-vucic-serbia-prime-minister-president-election/

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić sat down with POLITICO on Wednesday for his first extensive interview since winning his country’s presidential election in a landslide.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU leaders regard Vučić, 47,  as the guarantor of stability in an unstable region. But Vučić’s detractors say the conservative president-elect has consolidated power to the detriment of Serbian democracy. In the interview, he responded to those criticisms, discussed his admiration for Tito and the outlook for the western Balkans

What follows is an edited transcript.

You won Sunday’s election with 55 percent of the vote. Everyone expected you to win, but were you surprised by how commanding your victory was in the end?

It went a bit better than I expected. There is always analysis that needs to be done to see whether we could do it better or not. But all in all it went well. It was really a clear victory because there were no objections to the election process. They (the other campaigns) signed all the minutes.

There have been some reports of irregularities. What do you make of them?

There were only two real objections from two polling stations, which means nothing. It’s not a big issue. They all know it. It was the calmest day so far in Serbia on an election day. That’s why some people are so nervous.

Are you referring to this week’s protests over the elections in Belgrade and other cities?

Yes. There were 4,700 yesterday (Tuesday) in Belgrade. There are always people not satisfied with election results. It’s a democratic process. Nobody intervened, we allowed them to protest. It’s … a real sign of democracy and when you have all your rights to protest against someone without any kind of disturbance and interruption that it is a sign of democracy. I’m very proud of that.

And yet, opposition to you here remains quite emotional and intense. Critics say you are concentrating too much power in your hands.

If you carefully read all the remarks against me you will see that it’s more or less personal hatred. Can they say something about our economic growth, about first slowing and then changing the trajectory of our public debt? They can’t. We cut unemployment from 25.9 percent to 13 percent. If that’s not good enough, then tell me what’s good enough. I’m still not satisfied. I’m always craving to do something better and they just don’t get it.

On the economic front, you’ve spoken of the need for more cooperation within the region. The EU supports your idea for a free-trade area in the western Balkans. Given your aspirations to join the EU, why is this a priority?

We need to live before we enter the EU. We need to stay firmly on the EU path, but at the same time we need to do something to boost regional cooperation … I’ll give you a very practical example. We have a dairy plant, let’s say. They export yoghurt, milk and cheeses to Bosnia. Their trucks have to wait for no less than 36 hours at a border between Bosnia and Serbia for all the inspections and we don’t know why. All of our companies and others would save at least 7 percent of all operational costs if we agree on this.

So far, the plan hasn’t gotten much traction. Will that change now that you will be president?

If all the others will agree on it, we’ll become a market of 20 million people. That’s quite a significant market. We will be able to attract many more investors than we were able to do so far. That’s something I think the others understand.

Are you trying to recreate Yugoslavia?

It’s the old Yugoslavia, plus Albania. It’s a political idea but without jeopardizing their sovereignty. It will boost our economies. We need growth rates of 4 percent to 5 percent on an annual basis, not 3 percent. That’s not enough.

Given the tensions in the region, what makes you think your neighbors will accept this sort of cooperation?

Tito did it. He was a communist dictator, but a very smart guy. A locksmith, can you imagine? But he was very smart. He knew how to connect the people…That’s what we need. We need to connect people.

There’s been a lot of discussion in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe recently about the risk of renewed conflict in the western Balkans. Where do you see the greatest danger?

Whatever might happen in Kosovo, it’s always between Serbs and Albanians. If you have at least one side that’s reasonable, you’ll avoid most of the problems. But in Bosnia, there are three sides and it’s not easy to deal with that. Not at all…It’s Bosnia that’s a real barrel of gunpowder.

Are you worried the Bosnian Serbs will hold a referendum to secede?

There won’t be any referendums on secession. That’s what I heard from (Bosnian Serb leader Milorad) Dodik two days ago in Mostar where we had a dinner with prime ministers from the region. There will be some new jeopardy — the Croatian-Bosniak relationship. That could spark some other issues.

Is it not a good sign that all of Bosnia’s leaders are sitting down and eating dinner together?

They were kind to each other, decent and polite. But I didn’t see that they got along on important issues. I saw more rifts… Two good sentences from all of them and when you go into details you see that there are no possible arrangements on the horizon…They all fight for their territories, their rights.

You were just in Berlin to confer with Angela Merkel. What is her view of the situation here and how important is her role in keeping the peace?

She and her advisers know everything about the tiniest detail in the western Balkans. She is worried, and I’m profoundly grateful to her. She takes care of the region. Without her support and presence here … we’d be lost in space. We’d have more very huge problems.

Today’s the 25th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war, which left more than 100,000 dead and displaced more than one million. You were a young Serb nationalist then. What lessons do you take from that experience?

I learned all the lessons. I’m a Serb, a very proud Serb and will always be with my people, but I learned to put myself in the shoes of all the others and see what they feel, what they think. We need to respect their views as well. We can’t see only ourselves.

Authors: Matthew Karnitschnig

For Serbia’s Vučić, road to EU runs through Balkans

Newly-elected president tells POLITICO how he intends to balance relations with the West and Moscow. By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG

http://www.politico.eu/article/for-serbias-vucic-road-to-eu-runs-through-balkans/

Matthew Karnitschnig

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Karnitschnig

Karnitschnig machte seinen Bachelor vom Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia und seinen Master an der Columbia University. Seine journalistische Tätigkeit begann bei der Kinston Free Press in North Carolina. Danach war er Reporter und Redakteur für Bloomberg, Reuters und Business Week. Danach wechselte er zum Wall Street Journal, wo er Chief M & A Reporter war. Am 27. Juli 2009 wurde Matthew Karnitschnig zum deutschen Bürochef für das Wall Street Journal mit Sitz in Berlin ernannt. Mit dem Start von Politico.eu im April 2015 wurde er Chef des Deutschland-Büros von Politico

MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG

http://www.politico.eu/staff/matthew-karnitschnig/

 Matthew Karnitschnig is POLITICO’s chief Europe correspondent, based in Berlin. He joined the publication in 2015 from the Wall Street Journal, where he spent 15 years in a variety of positions as a reporter and editor in the U.S. and Europe. In a career spanning two decades, Karnitschnig has been on the front lines of some of the defining political and economic stories of our time. In 2008, he covered the fall of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis that ensued. He was part of a team of Journal reporters that won a Gerald Loeb award and was named a Pulitzer finalist for National Reporting in 2009. He subsequently spearheaded the WSJ’s coverage of the eurozone debt crisis as the paper’s Germany bureau chief and European economics editor. He led the team that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 2011 and won an Overseas Press Club award in 2012. Karnitschnig previously worked as a journalist for BusinessWeek, Reuters and Bloomberg. The son of an Austrian father and American mother, he grew up in Arizona, where he got his start reporting as a stringer for the Phoenix Gazette during high school.

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