SERBIA: EU Foreign Policy Alignment & more – 1st Oct 2024

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 1st of October twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

Last week, the International and Security Affairs Center, or ISAC Fund, published a report on Serbia’s current progress in aligning its foreign policy with the EU’s. In the first half of the year, the EU issued around sixty foreign policy declarations, so that candidate countries would align with them. Serbia performed less than ideally, as by the end of June twenty twenty-four it aligned with only twenty-seven.

The policies the country aligned with include restrictive measures concerning Al-Qaeda, terrorism, and human rights issues in Syria and Myanmar. However, the ones Serbia avoided were related to the war in Ukraine, the EU’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, cyber terrorism, among others. The analysis stated that the country’s alignment rate was below fifty percent for the first half of the year - which is one of the lowest rates among the EU candidate countries. The only country with a worse alignment rate was Georgia, with around forty percent.

Serbia is, however, still working on its alignment rate - particularly on reducing its dependence on Russia. To diversify its energy supplies, Serbia signed a contract with Azerbaijan that will guarantee one million cubic meters of gas per day from the 1st of November twenty twenty-four until the 1st of April twenty twenty-five. This comes one year after the countries signed a gas contract that obliged Azerbaijan to deliver around 400 million cubic meters a year from twenty twenty-four to twenty twenty-six. This amount of gas represents only fifteen percent of Serbia’s domestic needs per year, but energy experts said that it significantly helps the country diversify its energy sources.

In other news, on Friday the 27th, the opposition party Zajedno organized an hour-long road blockade near the western city of Sabac, protesting against lithium mining. Nebojsa Zelenovic, the co-president of Zajedno, said that the protest aims to show the public’s view on lithium extraction in the country. He highlighted that the government is trying to suppress and silence the topic of lithium mining so that the protests can die down.

Environmental protests demanding the ban on lithium extraction began in twenty twenty-one, after which the government revoked mining giant Rio Tinto’s license to exploit lithium in the western area of Jadar. Recall that in July this year, the Constitutional Court annulled this decision, intensifying the number of protests. The activists' main concern is the mining's environmental impact, including irreversible land and water pollution.

Next, Milos Vucevic, Serbia’s Prime Minister, announced on Sunday the 29th that the recruitment process for the mandatory military service should begin in September of next year. Vucevic said that the idea is to max out the capacity of barracks throughout the country so that around 20,000 recruits can serve in the military annually. He also confirmed that conscripts would have to serve seventy-five days on active duty.

On Saturday the 28th, Pride Info Center, one of the largest centers dedicated to providing resources and a safe space for LGBT+ citizens, announced its closure due to a lack of financial and institutional support. In an Instagram post, Pride Info Center broke down the news and explained that, while the center itself is closing, they will still organize yearly Belgrade Pride's activities. They wrote that the center served as a symbol of resistance and hope in a country with mostly conservative views. The institution said that they had experienced threats and taunts on the daily, with over twenty attacks on the staff ensuing since twenty eighteen, none of which the government addressed or sanctioned.

The Institute for Development and Innovation published a study titled Labor Mobility in Serbia, analyzing the influx of foreign workers and the outflow of domestic workers. The results showed that more than 25,000 people permanently left the country annually in the past ten years. On the other hand, the influx of foreign workers is steadily increasing, as the country issued around 50,000 work permits to foreigners in the first half of twenty twenty-four. Most of the foreign workers come from China, Russia, and Turkey, and they mostly work in construction.

Speaking of workers, the Ministry of Education has recently requested all schools in Serbia to submit reports on the number of staff unqualified to teach due to the lack of required education. The latest data available on unqualified teachers is from twenty eighteen, when they amounted to around 1,000, over all primary and secondary schools in Serbia. Most of them taught math, physics, and computer science.

The Serbian Principals’ Association thinks the main reason behind this teacher shortage is that fewer people pick teaching majors in university, due to low salaries and a growing number of violence against teachers (from both students and their parents).

On the other side of the classroom, students across Serbia took their initial tests to evaluate children's general level of skills in math, reading, and writing. The results showed that only three percent of the students achieved satisfactory knowledge.

Compared to twenty twenty-three, this year’s initial test results were worse by five percent. The representatives at the Belgrade Teachers’ Association emphasized that more and more children rely on rote memorization for grades, instead of actually learning the material. They attributed this issue to an overloaded curriculum, adding that an overwhelming amount of information causes students to selectively choose what to remember - resulting in less overall knowledge.

On that note about children, on Sunday the 30th the National Parliament passed the Amendments to the Law on Financial Support to Families with Children, which aims to increase the parental allowance for children born in twenty twenty-four or later.

The new allowance for the first child will now amount to 500,000 dinars, or which is around 4,700 dollars, representing an increase of around thirty percent, and will be a one-time payment. As for the second child, this allowance increased by eighty percent and will amount to 600,000 dinars, or around 5,600 dollars. The government will pay out this allowance sum in twenty-four monthly installments.

Additionally, parents who are getting an allowance for the second or third child will also receive a one-time aid of 135,000 dinars, or around 1,300 dollars - which is an increase of seven percent. The lump-sum payment for purchasing child equipment also surged by seven percent and will amount to 7,500 dinars, or seventy dollars.

Now for some health updates. Last week, the National Association of Parents of Children with Cancer marked Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in Belgrade. The association highlighted that in twenty twenty-four, more than 300 children have been diagnosed with cancer, all of them under nineteen. Medical experts noted that the leading pediatric cancers are leukemia, brain tumors, and lymphomas and that the survival rate for these malignancies is around sixty percent.

Treatment conditions also vary from hospital to hospital, as some have older equipment and lower-skilled staff than others. However, the Association announced the launch of the Child-Friendly Hospital campaign, which aims to ensure equal treatment for all children in Serbia’s hospitals. They also said they plan on funding the upgrade of two critical pediatric oncology departments – one in Vojvodina and another at the Children’s Hospital in Belgrade - to ensure high-quality equipment.

And before we go, some news about culture. The city of Novi Sad will be hosting the Serbian version of Oktoberfest, the world's largest Volksfest originating in Germany. The event will take place on the plateau in front of the Promenade on the 4th and the 5th of October. Aside from a wide selection of food and beverages, the event will feature a number of famous Serbian music bands, such as the Orthodox Celts, Goblins, and Pero Deformero. The tickets range from 1,200 to 3,000 dinars, which is around twelve to thirty dollars, and are available online or at various sale points across Serbia.

For more information, check out the link in the show notes!

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!