EU leaders condemn Serbia's funeral honors for Ratko Mladic, raising doubts over membership bid

BRUSSELS (AP) — Top European Union officials on Tuesday expressed shock after Serbia gave a hero’s funeral to Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general who died while serving a life sentence for war crimes, and questioned Serbia’s fitness to join their bloc.

Mladic was buried in Belgrade on Monday with military honors. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, led the funeral service and Serbian army soldiers carried Mladic’s flag-draped coffin at the cemetery.

Several Serbian government ministers attended the service for the man known as the “Butcher of Bosnia” and found guilty of committing the continent’s first genocide since World War II. Mladic is still considered a hero by many Serbs.

“The images from Ratko Mladic’s funeral yesterday in Belgrade were shocking,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa said in posts on social media.

“The elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable,” von der Leyen and Costa said. “They demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe’s recent history and contradict the values underpinning Serbia’s path towards the European Union.”

Populist President Aleksandar Vucic did not go to the funeral but his son, Danilo, did. Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and the Russian ambassador in Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko , were among those present.

Vucic, a former extreme nationalist who supported Serbia’s expansionist policies during the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, described the funeral as an “emotional outpouring.”

Serbia’s Justice Minister Nenad Vujic attended and stood with Mladic's family. He said the authorities helped keep order at the funeral to make sure it passed in a “dignified” manner but that the family was in charge.

Vucic has been walking a political tightrope. He’s trying to rally supporters — many of them Mladic admirers — ahead of an early parliamentary election that could within months without alienating the EU, which Serbia says it wants to join.

Last week, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos warned that the funeral would be “a test” for Belgrade. She canceled an upcoming visit to Serbia, arguing that “the glorification” of Mladic’s death would be incompatible with EU values.

The EU traditionally hands down its annual enlargement report in late October or early November, laying out the progress that each of the candidate countries, including Serbia, are making toward membership and highlighting deficiencies.

Von der Leyen is scheduled to tour the Western Balkans region just before the report is published. She usually visits each country, but no dates have been set for the visit, nor has any agenda been made public.

Asked what the consequences might be for Serbia's EU membership, von der Leyen's spokesperson said only: “we are looking into it.”

Mladic's funeral is unlikely to help Serbia's cause. It's membership prospects were already damaged over democratic backsliding. In April, Kos warned Belgrade that it could lose access to around 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in EU funds as concern mounted about municipal election irregularities.

In Serbia's favor, Vucic's nationalist-populist SNS party has close ties to the EU's biggest political grouping, the European People's Party, which unites center-right political parties from across Europe. The EPP has been accused of protecting Vucic.

"It is high time for the EPP to stop acting as a safe haven for the SNS party, which openly celebrates convicted war criminals and rolls out the red carpet for the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’,” Slovenian Green member of the European Parliament Vladimir Prebilic said last week.

Von der Leyen is a senior member of the EPP, as is half of her team of policy commissioners and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Von der Leyen in particular has refrained from criticizing Vucic publicly.

For many years, the EPP staunchly supported Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's stridently nationalist Fidesz party, hoping to keep him within Europe's political mainstream. But the EPP eventually suspended Fidesz in 2019 over concerns about democracy and the rule of law in Hungary. Fidesz quit the group in 2021.

AP writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia contributed to this report.