'We have a lot to do’: President Vučić insists Serbia’s EU membership remains crucial

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić reaffirmed Belgrade’s commitment to EU membership despite Serbia’s 13 years as a candidate country, telling Euronews in Belgrade on Monday he will keep the nation "very firmly on EU path" until he leaves office in mid-2027.

Addressing the ongoing demonstrations in the Western Balkan country, Vučić defended his government's handling of nine months of protests while offering repeated calls for dialogue that demonstrators have rejected, saying he remains committed to EU membership despite growing polarisation.

Vučić said he has made several offers for public debate with protest leaders, including proposing an open television discussion where demonstrators could choose the venue and bring multiple representatives. The protests, initially sparked by a deadly train station awning collapse in the northern regional capital of Novi Sad, have grown increasingly violent with attacks on ruling party offices and confrontations with police.

While saying he was open to snap elections, Vučić emphasised that continuous elections would slow down the progress, telling protesters "you have to work from time to time" rather than focusing solely on political campaigns.

Read the interview with Euronews’ Jane Witherspoon below, and watch it in its entirety in the player above.

Now, you have just called for dialogue with anti-government protesters following nine months of those protests and demonstrations. They've once again refused. Where do you see this going for now? How are you going to fix the situation?

Well, as a matter of fact, I was facing years of protests and demonstrations, starting from 2014, after we had to do fiscal consolidating measures, cutting pensions, and public wages. Yes, the last nine months are the best-organised protests and demonstrations. And in March, it was the biggest protests they have ever had. This was not my first call. Actually, it was my fifth or sixth call for a dialogue, for an open conversation. But what was the difference this time? I offered something that I saw because they reacted swiftly, but in a way, nervously. I don't know why. I offered them even an open TV debate. They can pick the premise, they can take the studio, I'm going to—I'll be able to go wherever they say, they can bring three, four people, but those people should be their representatives. And I was ready to discuss it publicly because I believe that talks, conversation, dialogue has no alternative at all. And saying this, I think that any kind of violence that we saw in the streets is not good for this country. If you see someone setting fire or throwing stones against the premises of the ruling party or attacking people who were sitting inside and discussing their own issues, this is not a good image. This is not a good situation for Serbia in order to attract new investments, in order to attract new tourists, to say, come on, we are one of the most secure and safest countries in Europe, come to our place. These are not good.

Where do you take it from now, then, if they've said...

I believe my offer will remain till they accept it, because one day they will have to speak to someone. I offered to all the deans, to the director of Belgrade University, to everybody to start a dialogue six months ago. It was February, late February, and even before that, in December, I offered that to the students. But they refused that, because almost the only aim, the only target they had—it was either myself, or the government, and that was it. They wanted to speak to everybody else apart from us. And I hope that is going to be changed.

How have those protests polarised and paralysed society here in Serbia? You know, we see almost no EU flags at those protests, which is a staggering difference from other protests in the region. How do you interpret that?

They would like to—it's a very strange and complicated situation in Serbia, speaking about this. You have many NGOs that will always say, okay, we are pro-EU oriented and give us an EU future. We cannot reach that future with Vučić, although we are in the very best economic situation compared to all times, compared to everything we have had so far. And we reached, at the end, a credit rating from Fitch, and we expect to get it from Standard & Poor and Moody's as well. For the first time, our public debt-to-GDP ratio is 44%; it's twice less than the average European Union public debt. This is what we did, and you could have seen throughout the city that this is actually a city of cranes. You can see it everywhere. It's becoming a more and more beautiful city, a more and more beautiful country. Not only public wages but altogether wages and salaries and pensions are rising. These are good results. When you mentioned polarisation—and here we have a polarised media situation—you have strongly anti-governmental and strongly pro-governmental, like in the United States of America, like in some other European countries. And this is what makes this kind of polarisation, which does not exist in actual life of people. When people were trying to say something against my offer for dialogue, they were saying, that's because he's desperate, that's because he has no alternative, that's because he is very much afraid of his political opponents. No. It's always a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness. I'm offering that in a very particular moment where you can see easily the real shift. People are going more and more against protesters. People are fed up with blockades. People are fed up with violence. That was happening in particular in the recent weeks. And I follow the polls. I see it in the polls easily. And at the same time, we need to offer a responsible and serious response to the social crisis which we face, and our role has to be much bigger and we have to be more accountable and more responsible, no doubt. That's why we are offering that.

There've been allegations of excessive use of force by the police. How would you respond to these accusations? How are you ensuring that accountability that you just mentioned there for human rights?

If I may say—and I would be much sharper speaking to someone else—but would be very pleased to say just a few words on this issue. Comparing the reaction of Serbian police to all the other big EU police forces, it's almost incomparable. Our police was quiet, silent, not responding almost to anything. They announced on 28th of June they were going to start with violent actions against police. They gave that—they called it a green light for their action. And they attacked police units and they wanted to attack their political opponents. And after that, they burned at least four premises of the ruling party. There were no examples vice versa. And the police was not even intervening in Niš, in Čačak, in many important cities in this country. Police was intervening actually after a month, using the least force they could have used. Are there some particular cases where excessive force was used by one or two or three police guys? No doubt. It always happens somewhere, particularly after nine months. But if you want to compare the scenes from Berlin, even Brussels or Paris, with the situation and scenes from Belgrade, it's really incomparable. And I need to tell you that I'm very proud of the behaviour and stances that were taken by our police and their patience. And I think that it's a miracle that we—having in mind the aggressiveness, the level of aggressiveness of protesters—we kept the situation in a way that there were no casualties, that there are no dead people in nine months. And we hope that we'll be an example of democratic and peaceful resolution of all these issues.

The protesters are blaming a corrupt system for part of their actions. Is Serbia corrupt? Is there corruption here?

No doubt. There is corruption everywhere, all over the world, in every single country. And that's the easiest topic that someone can pick, you know, saying, okay, there is corruption. And you always can find—when I speak to people, even people from the government and even people from business—those guys that have always been leaning towards corruption, they always speak about corruption. But ordinary people, they also speak about corruption because if they don't live well, it's not that Ukrainian war, it's that economic crisis in Europe, it's even not economic crisis in Serbia, but it's his neighbour or it's someone close to him that has to be guilty for his bad life or whatever. But putting that aside, of course there is a lot of corruption, and we need to fight it much stronger. And I am very much dedicated, very much devoted to lead that fight, to lead the struggle. And their problem—the problem of protesters here—is they can say whatever they want. But you know they know that Vučić has no bank accounts out of the country. I don't have any kind of accounts, any kind of apartments, villas, whatever out of the country. Everything that I have is declared according to the law here in Serbia and everybody knows that. But I am very ready to accept words of criticism on this issue, to change unimportant bills and to address it and to cope with this problem. But you need to know that it's always easy to scold and to scoff with the issues that are easy to be targeted like this one. But are there many things to be done? Yes! And we'll have to do many things in the future. On our EU path, this is one of the most important tasks for us, no doubt.

The protesters are now calling for a snap election. Is there going to be one? Is this something that you think could move things forward?

You see, Euronews was broadcasting at least two shows, in February and March this year, saying — and it was said even by Euronews hosts, not by your guests — it was said: if there are forces in Serbia that would accept Vučić's referendum or elections... it happened five months ago. They were saying those guys were going to be treated as real traitors, as guys that helped him the most. Let me just remind you, in December when they started with this — because I knew from the very beginning that it was like a big deception — we wanted to fulfil all their requirements, all their requests, all their demands. And I was referring to them, saying, okay, we are doing it, we're doing that, we did that. Are you happy with that? They were saying, no, we continue with this, now this is bigger than us, bigger than you. Okay. I said then, okay, you want to go for a referendum against myself, I'm ready to go within two days. They were saying, no, that's a treason, that is a betrayal. If someone accepts it, we don't go. We are not politicians. We don't need politics. After that, I was offering elections. They were also saying the same.

After six months, when we actually shifted ourselves into a more regular mode, trying to fulfil our targets — economic targets — trying to fulfil all our obligations regarding the organisation of Expo 2027 (we need to finish everything by December 2026), we have a lot to do, many things to do. And you know, you have to work from time to time, you know? It cannot be always elections and elections. And now they say the only thing we need is elections. And they didn’t want to speak to me previously, saying, well, you're not authorised, you have no competencies for that. I was saying, OK, I just wanted to speak to you, I have... and now I'm the only one who has competencies on calling for snap elections. But they still don't want to speak to me because they think that someone from outside will make a big pressure on me, calling for new elections, just fulfilling their wishes.

Is there a legitimate opposition? With no clear, galvanised opposition, are you the only person and option to lead the country?

Of course I'm not. I'm going to be the president for a year, year and a half — not more than that. There will be the new president, new leadership. I'm not going to change any kind of constitution to play these kinds of games. But the real issue is that people are... one of the reasons that we have these kinds of protests, apart from many other reasons, is the fact that people aren't happy with their opposition. They want to — they see myself... what is making problems to me, to tell you the truth. We did some focus groups with anti-Vučić guys — ruling parties’ guys. They were saying, you know, Vučić is like Mohamed Ali previously, like today that Ukrainian guy Usyk or whatever. He's too strong in that ring. We want to find someone who can compete with him. We wanted to have bigger control. We want to have more transparency. We want to see that and that. And that's one of the reasons why they don't see these kinds of guys in the opposition — why everybody is anti-something. Not improve something.

When you ask them about politics, they don't have politics. If you ask them about EU, they are not happy to support any bill that will help us in progressing on EU path. If you ask about anything else about EU — okay, we need your money, but we don't need you and your values. If you ask me, I can have thousands of remarks on EU because of territorial integrity of Serbia, because of some other issues. Until I leave the place, Serbia will remain very firmly on EU path, committed and dedicated to that path, conducting and implementing necessary reforms.

Recently we changed two media bills in accordance with EU acquis. Now we work together with ODIHR, OSCE, and EU on changing the bill on voting lists and voting registry. And at the end, it's an Agency for Electronic Media bill that we need to change, and we work very hard on this. These are, let's say, preconditions for opening the Cluster 3, which we hope we’ll do by the end of the year.

Let me ask you: you've been in that waiting room, as a candidate country, for 13 years now — quite a long time. There’s now a lot of focus in Brussels on speeding up Ukraine’s EU accession. How does that make you feel? Do you think there is an honest desire in the EU to enlarge to the Western Balkans?

I believe that there are some changes within EU, but of course the main focus will remain on Ukraine and Moldova, because people in Brussels believe that they should stop, in a way, Russia's interest flowing further into European soil. And that's why they are very focused on Ukraine — and in particular because of all the problems Ukraine is facing, and the battlefield they have with Russians — and then Moldova, and then Western Balkans. In Western Balkans, I'm not sure that everybody's interested in a way that big countries are, and I'm happy to see this kind of change. I spoke very recently to Meloni and to President Macron, and I think that they're very much interested in — not only Serbia’s progress to EU, but the entire Western Balkans’ progress to EU. But I'm not sure about all the other countries. And now you know that you need a consensus. But what we need — we need to change ourselves for ourselves and because of ourselves. But there are some other things that we can do together, which is a unique market, which is a region without real frontiers, without real borders, without any obstacles for trading or flowing capital, people, whatever. This is something that we need to accomplish before we get closer to EU. There are a lot of things to be done for us and I'm very much aware of that. But if you ask people in Serbia, you can go wherever you want — to, let's see, our opposition camp — you're going to hear the same: we are a bit fed up about it, and we expected to get much faster to the European Union.

How is your dialogue with President Putin at the moment? Do you believe peace is possible under Trump? And is Putin really interested in it?

I believe that everybody is interested in peace. I cannot say everything that people in Brussels might like to hear always, because I can tell you: for three and a half years, I was saying that it was not going to be easy beating Russia, and they were — some of them — very loud in saying: it’s just a matter of time, we go now, beat them out, expel them from Ukrainian soil and everything else. And I was saying, well, that was not realistic. And nobody wanted to hear these kinds of voices. There were some talks with President Putin — I believe open and sincere talks that I had — that he didn’t like, and some of the parts that I didn’t. But I’m not going to speak about it publicly.

Are you keeping those conversations going behind the scenes with him?

I have never had anything behind the scenes. Some people from Europe have these kinds of conversations behind the scenes. I don’t have it. I always do it in a very transparent way. I did it only once in the last three and a half years. And I believe that entire Europe was watching it. You know, like everybody was having his or her own remarks on that — but not on themselves when they were speaking, not in that transparent way. But I don’t know. I believe that this initiative is very important, and we still didn’t reach a tipping point or a point of no return to the bigger clashes. But I believe within two, three, four months we can reach that point.