The rapporteur of the European Parliament for Serbia Vladimír Bilčík said today that the pace of Serbia’s accession to the European Union will be set by its full alignment with the foreign, security and defense policies of the European Union, which includes imposing sanctions on Russia, as well as the normalization “of the relations between Serbia and Kosovo”.

Bilčík wrote this on his Twitter account, reacting to the Serbian Minister of Internal Affairs Aleksandar Vulin’s visit to Moscow, and, without explicitly naming Vulin, stated that, as he claimed “when a member of the Serbian government sends anti-European Union messages during an official visit to Moscow, everybody in Europe sees it”.

“Any progress on Serbia’s European path can only be based in sincere and consistent commitment to European principles, values and policies,” said Bilčík.

He added that this included the alignment of the foreign and security policies of Serbia with the policies of the European Union “in a progressive manner and with a sincere interest in making political decisions that reflect future alignment”.

Bilčík claimed that the alignment of Serbia with the joint foreign and security policies of the European Union “was and still is the lowest in the region”.

He added that “the full alignment with the foreign, security and defense policies of the European Union, including sanctions to Russia, as well as a normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, will set the pace of the accession to the European Union”.

Bilčík stressed that this was something that the European Parliament has been repeatedly saying, and that it was included in its report on Serbia for 2021, which has been adopted in its majority last month in Strasbourg.

During his visit to Moscow yesterday, Vulin met with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials, reported Tanjug.