Serbian Public Support For EU Bid Falls

According to the latest research from the Serbian government, 46 per cent of Serbians support the country's EU bid while 37 are against it. This is the lowest support since democratic changes in 2000.

Since 2003, when 72 per cent of the population supported the country's accession into the EU, support has been gradually falling with little ups and downs.

The support did not rise in June after Serbia arrested the Balkans' most wanted war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic on May 26. Serbian officials hailed his arrest saying that the country's key obstacle for further EU progress was removed.

A poll showed that 53 per cent of Serbians were in favour of the EU bid in June.

Bozidar Djelic, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of EU integration, said: "Every delaying of dialogue has two victims: the people in Kosovo and the European idea in Serbia... So I expect the support for the European idea in Serbia to fall even more in the weeks to come," Djelic told reporters.

Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia came to a head in late July when Kosovo police tried to seize control of the two border crossings at Jarinje and Brnjak, which NATO's peacekeeping troops had hitherto patrolled since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

This sparked short-term unrest resulting in the death of one police officer and several injuries, one border crossing being torched and a significant diplomatic effort to defuse the situation.

In the meantime, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Belgrade and outlined that of one of the requirements for Serbia to make progress on its EU path was to abandon its so-called "parallel institutions" in the predominantly Serb populated north of Kosovo. These include post offices, educational establishments and parallel municipalities.

The tensions rose again in September following an EU-mediated “customs agreement” between Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels on September 2 which then led to the deployment of Kosovo customs officers along with EULEX police on the border crossings.

Since then, local Serbs in the northern Kosovo have built 18 barricades blocking all the major roads.

Robert Cooper, EU facilitator for Kosovo dialogue, is scheduled to arrive in Belgrade on Thursday on a tough mission to try reconcile Serbia and its ex-province as the two can't agree on whether future talks should include the north.