The European Union (EU) has made increasingly tough demands on Serbia and has not made any progress on its membership. In return, Belgrade will “explore” the alternative of joining BRICS, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin said.
Serbia applied to join the European Union in 2009 and has been an EU candidate country since 2012. In the following years, the EU added conditions for Serbia to normalize relations with Kosovo by recognizing the independence of the breakaway province, while demanding that Serbia cut ties and impose sanctions on Russia.
"The EU just needs to say that it doesn't want us. We see the EU as a partner, but we're not absolutely sure that the EU sees us as a partner. Why do you keep setting conditions that we can't meet?" Deputy Prime Minister Vulin told the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung in an interview published on October 13.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has never forced Serbia to choose between Brussels and Moscow, or threatened to cut ties if Belgrade starts EU accession talks, Vulin added.
“Meanwhile, EU negotiators tell us: If you don’t cut ties with Russia, you won’t join the EU. Are we partners or not? Or do we not have our own interests?” Vulin asked.
Serbia will attend the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan at the end of October, with the aim of joining the group of developing economies.
“It would be irresponsible for us not to explore all possibilities, including BRICS membership. If BRICS is attractive to other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia or Turkey, why should it be different for Serbia? There is no doubt that BRICS has become a real alternative to the EU,” Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister stressed.
BRICS has overtaken the US-led G7 in global GDP share, has its own development bank and has expanded from four members in 2006 - Brazil, Russia, India and China - to five including South Africa in 2011.
In early 2024, four countries - Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the UAE - officially became members of the group, and Saudi Arabia is completing the accession process.
In September, Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov confirmed that Türkiye had formally applied to join BRICS, becoming the first NATO country to do so.
Dozens of other countries, including Azerbaijan, Algeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait, Senegal and Bolivia, have also expressed interest in joining BRICS.
