Obstacles for Serbian Accession into the European Union

In 1950, Jean Monnet envisioned a united Europe and from that dream, he concocted the Schuman Plan which established the European Coal and Steel Community. His vision has not come true yet, but it's underway with new accessions into the European Union every couple of years. In the Balkans, there is an enclave of non-EU countries that have been pressing for accession and abiding to Copenhagen criteria. Serbia is a potential candidate country, but the European Union has called for its internal reform and meeting certain requirements. Other forces such as its fraternal ties to Russia and the dispute over Kosovo's independence will delay its potential accession into the European Union.

It is important to analyze Serbian history and the steps the country has made toward becoming "Europeanized" and how it has made the transition from a Third World country to a First World country. Since the late 1990s, the European Union had been having talks about admitting Serbia into the community, but its Yugoslav past and its dominance of the multinational nation has raised red flags about Serbia's aggressiveness. The negotiations reached a level of seriousness when Serbia showed signs of reform after the end of Milošević's reign in 2000.

The Stabilization and Association agreement is a program by the European Union for countries that have expressed interest in accession in return for trade, market, social, and political rights reformation in a country. As a reward, the country in question may receive tariff-free barriers with other European Union countries and other incentive of that nature. Association processes have to be verified and ratified by the state in question and all existing European Union member states.

Serbia's past has come back to haunt it now that it wants to join the European Union. Its record of ethnic cleansing and the Bosnian War still linger in the minds of EU politicians. The European Union ceased talks with Serbia because it had failed to imprison Ratko Mladić. Serbia refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, this impeded Serbian accession into the European Union.

But the chase did not cease here. In the summer of 2006, a government plan was devised to imprison Mladić after his location was found with the hopes of looking progressive in the eyes of the European Union. The next spring, the Serbian government decided on establishing a new government and placed the current president, Boris Tadić, as the head of the new "National Security Council" in order to prosecute war time criminals.

After about one week of the establishment of the Council, Serbian authorities arrested two very sought after war criminals. When the European Union saw this, in the summer of 2007 it decided to reinitiate negotiations with Serbia and the following summer of 2008, Radovan Karadzić was imprisoned. Progress has been being made, but this alone will not assure the accession of Serbia. It still has to deal with the recent separation of its province of Kosovo and the consequences it will have to face from Russia if it does accede and breaks away from its historical ally and being more like the West. As aforementioned, all historical events relating to the rise of Serbia being a potential candidate for the European Union are critical in predicting when it will enter the Community.