Belgrade – Around 2,000 kilometres separate Belgrade from Tbilisi. Yet they have something in common when it comes to their relationship with Brussels. At different speeds, Georgia and Serbia are both drifting away from the EU amid a state capture by their respective ruling parties. However, Georgia’s unfortunate experience can still serve as a lesson for the EU on the costs of responding too late to democratic backsliding – a scenario that could still be avoided in Serbia – as a crucial vote approaches in Belgrade, as was the case in Tbilisi exactly two years ago.
“The key lesson is the importance of acting in time,” argue Bojana Zorić, policy analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), and Tefta Kelmendi, associate fellow at Jacques Delors Institute, in an interview with The New Union Post discussing their latest report, recently published by EUISS. “The European Union should not wait until democratic backsliding develops into a deep institutional crisis before using the instruments at its disposal.”
Although the report does not suggest that the Georgian scenario is an inevitable future for Serbia — “mostly because differences remain and Serbia has not yet reached the same degree of institutional closure” — it highlights similarities between the two political and societal contexts that show “how quickly the scope to prevent such an outcome can narrow,” the two analysts warn.
How to prevent further serious backsliding
One of the most important parallels is “the way democratic backsliding unfolds in these countries,” Zorić explains. “In neither case is it a single dramatic event” that happens all of a sudden without early warnings, but rather “a gradual weakening of institutions, concentration of political power, and an increasingly pronounced blurring of state and party interests.”
Particularly concerning are the similarities in political pressure on the judiciary, the misuse of state resources, the weakening of parliamentary oversight, and pressure on independent media and civil society. As the EUISS policy analyst notes, “another common feature is the attempt to delegitimise political opponents, including through narratives about so-called colour revolutions,” which portray domestic discontent as the result of foreign interference.
In drawing these parallels, the report also emphasises that Georgia has progressed “considerably further” in the concentration of power and state capture, especially since the 2024 rigged parliamentary elections. “Serbia, on the other hand, still has much stronger economic ties with the EU, which in a way constrain the authorities’ room for manoeuvre,” Zorić adds.
This is also why, in the case of Serbia, one of the main concerns for Brussels is how to balance the need to keep Belgrade on its EU path with maintaining a degree of cooperation in order to retain some leverage. “The fear of cutting ties and pushing Serbia further away has been driving EU policy and its approach for too many years now and, unfortunately, it has not led to any positive results,” warns Kelmendi. This “cautious approach” has meant that Brussels has refrained from openly condemning “some of the very serious violations,” including the authorities’ response to the protests, restrictions on media freedom and the spread of Russian propaganda.
The response from Brussels “has either come too late or been too soft,” reflecting the approach adopted towards Georgia “for some time” in the recent past. Before 2024, engagement with the Georgian Dream party continued “despite evidence of democratic backsliding,” while a more forceful ‘stick’ approach was set aside to prevent the country from drifting further away from the EU. “But what it did in practice was the opposite”, Kelmendi stresses: “By granting Georgia candidate status, it lost the last piece of leverage it had – and the strongest one.” That was when the country moved “even further away and took a drastically different direction.”
In other words, Georgia’s experience shows that “the scope for external influence from the EU diminishes significantly once the authorities establish firmer control over institutions, the media environment, and political competition;” Zorić confirms. There is now an opportunity in Serbia to establish a more consistent link between democratic progress and the benefits of European integration. “This means not only rewarding reforms, but also being prepared to withdraw certain benefits.”
Concrete measures could include increasing certain forms of financial assistance, given that the EU is Belgrade’s most important economic partner. Zorić adds that “the EU should be firmer with those individuals who are actually in power and who are doing everything to capture the state.” If the situation moves towards the Georgian scenario, suspending preferential trade treatment could be Brussels’ last resort, “at least through coordination of national measures among member states, if action at EU level is not possible.”
At the same time, as the two analysts underline, these measures should also be “proportionate and directed at those who are responsible, rather than at citizens.” The aim is to increase the political cost of democratic backsliding and create incentives to respect democratic rules – something that has been lacking in both cases. “Basically, there is no political cost if a country backslides on democratic standards,” they warn.
The impact of elections
With Serbia’s next crucial parliamentary elections approaching, comparisons with what happened in Georgia on 26 October 2024 are inevitable. As before that vote, the EU has not openly expressed support for the student movement, in order to avoid interfering in a third country’s internal affairs. However, “this is about trying to create the conditions for fair elections and political competition, which is relevant to both Serbia and Georgia”, Kelmendi argues.
It is true that the level of public support for EU integration differs “quite significantly” between the two countries – still very high in Georgia but falling below 50% in Serbia. This can be explained by a range of factors, including foreign interference, the legacy of the wars of the 1990s and the bombing of Belgrade, the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and ties with Russia that extend beyond the highest levels of politics. “All this is combined with an extremely slow accession process and the democratic backsliding” under Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), “which delayed a process that had already lost political momentum before 2022.”
Another factor to consider is that the Student List’s main focus during this election campaign is not relations with the EU or its foreign policy priorities, but Serbia itself. “Basically, to clean up the country and build healthy foundations all over again.” At the same time, as their goal is to fight corruption and build strong institutions that protect people’s rights and freedoms, “any political opposition that emerges from this movement has a greater chance of bringing the country where it needs to be, if it is to continue on its accession path,” Kelmendi adds.
The state of EU–Serbia relations
Serbia submitted its application for EU membership in 2009. Candidate status was granted in March 2012, and accession negotiations began in 2014.
To date, 21 chapters – plus an additional one on the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo – are open, but only two are provisionally closed: Chapter 25 (Science and Research) in December 2016 and Chapter 26 (Education and Culture) in February 2017.
Relations between Brussels and Belgrade have cooled over the past year, especially following the violent crackdown on the protests by the national authorities and President Vučić’s decision not to attend the 2025 EU–Western Balkans Summit. Currently, around €1.5 billion allocated under the Growth Plan could be frozen over controversial judicial reforms and attacks on media independence.
The mass protests that have been taking place since November 2024 “reflect citizens’ disappointment, inter alia, over corruption and the perceived lack of accountability and transparency,” the European Commission’s 2025 report on Serbia recognised, identifying the slowdown in reforms and the lack of alignment with the EU – particularly in foreign policy – as the most worrying issues.
The state of EU–Georgia relations
Just one week after the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, on 3 March 2022, Georgia submitted its application for EU membership, alongside Moldova and Ukraine. On 14 December 2023, the European Council endorsed the European Commission’s recommendation to grant Tbilisi candidate status.
However, as demonstrated by a vast legislative agenda over recent years, Georgia’s slide towards authoritarianism has accelerated, leading to a freeze in its EU accession path. According to Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos, Tbilisi’s candidate status “exists only on paper.”
One month after the controversial elections of 26 October 2024, marred by electoral fraud, Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that his government would not put the opening of accession negotiations with the EU on the agenda “before the end of 2028.” The decision sparked a wave of strong protests from citizens, who are overwhelmingly pro-EU.
Meanwhile, the institutional crisis deepened. Georgian Dream nominated Mikheil Kavelashvili – a former footballer and leader of the far-right party People’s Power – as the new de facto President of the Republic on 14 December 2024. President Salomé Zourabichvili told The New Union Post that she would remain in office until new elections are held and a “legitimate successor” is appointed. Protests continued across the country, while violence and repression have been targeting members of opposition parties as well as ordinary citizens since then.
On the legislative side, among the most alarming measures are amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences, which introduced anti-demonstration laws severely restricting freedom of assembly and expression; the Foreign Agents Law enacted in April 2024; the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) passed in April 2025, targeting individuals deemed “foreign agents”; and legislation from May 2025 that streamlines the banning of political parties.
