{"id":133451,"date":"2026-09-08T17:02:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/133451\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T17:02:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:02:43","slug":"eu-leaders-condemn-serbias-funeral-honors-for-ratko-mladic-raising-doubts-over-membership-bid-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/133451\/","title":{"rendered":"EU leaders condemn Serbia’s funeral honors for Ratko Mladic, raising doubts over membership bid | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS (AP) \u2014 Top European Union officials on Tuesday expressed shock after Serbia gave a hero\u2019s funeral<\/a> to Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general who died while serving a life sentence for war crimes, and questioned Serbia\u2019s fitness to join their bloc.<\/p>\n

Mladic was buried in Belgrade on Monday with military honors. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, led the funeral service and Serbian army soldiers carried Mladic\u2019s flag-draped coffin at the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Several Serbian government ministers attended the service for the man known as the \u201cButcher of Bosnia\u201d and found guilty of committing the continent\u2019s first genocide<\/a> since World War II. Mladic is still considered a hero by many Serbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe images from Ratko Mladic\u2019s funeral yesterday in Belgrade were shocking,\u201d European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa said in posts on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable,\u201d von der Leyen and Costa said. \u201cThey demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe\u2019s recent history and contradict the values underpinning Serbia\u2019s path towards the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serbian officials play down the funeral\u2019s significance<\/p>\n

Populist President Aleksandar Vucic<\/a> did not go to the funeral but his son, Danilo, did. Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and the Russian ambassador in Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko<\/a>, were among those present.<\/p>\n

Vucic, a former extreme nationalist who supported Serbia\u2019s expansionist policies during the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, described the funeral as an \u201cemotional outpouring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serbia\u2019s Justice Minister Nenad Vujic attended and stood with Mladic\u2019s family. He said the authorities helped keep order at the funeral to make sure it passed in a \u201cdignified\u201d manner but that the family was in charge.<\/p>\n

Vucic has been walking a political tightrope. He\u2019s trying to rally supporters \u2014 many of them Mladic admirers \u2014 ahead of an early parliamentary election that could be held in late October without alienating the EU, which Serbia says it wants to join.<\/p>\n

The funeral was a test for Serbia\u2019s EU membership<\/p>\n

Last week, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos warned that the funeral would be \u201ca test\u201d for Belgrade. She canceled an upcoming visit<\/a> to Serbia, arguing that \u201cthe glorification\u201d of Mladic\u2019s death would be incompatible with EU values.<\/p>\n

The EU traditionally hands down its annual enlargement report in late October or early November, laying out the progress that each of the candidate countries, including Serbia, is making toward membership and highlighting deficiencies.<\/p>\n

Von der Leyen is scheduled to tour the Western Balkans region just before the report is published. She usually visits each country, but no dates have been set for the visit, nor has any agenda been made public.<\/p>\n

Asked what the consequences might be for Serbia\u2019s EU membership, von der Leyen\u2019s spokesperson said only: \u201cwe are looking into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mladic\u2019s funeral is unlikely to help Serbia\u2019s cause. Its membership prospects were already damaged over democratic backsliding. In April, Kos warned Belgrade that it could lose access<\/a> to around 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in EU funds as concern mounted about municipal election irregularities.<\/p>\n

EU politics will also play a role<\/p>\n

In Serbia\u2019s favor, Vucic\u2019s nationalist-populist SNS party has close ties to the EU\u2019s biggest political grouping, the European People\u2019s Party, which unites center-right political parties from across Europe. The EPP has been accused of protecting Vucic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is high time for the EPP to stop acting as a safe haven for the SNS party, which openly celebrates convicted war criminals and rolls out the red carpet for the \u2018Butcher of Bosnia\u2019,\u201d Slovenian Green member of the European Parliament Vladimir Prebilic said last week.<\/p>\n

Von der Leyen is a senior member of the EPP, as are half of her team of policy commissioners and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Von der Leyen in particular has refrained from criticizing Vucic publicly.<\/p>\n

For many years, the EPP staunchly supported former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s stridently nationalist Fidesz party, hoping to keep him within Europe\u2019s political mainstream. But the EPP eventually suspended Fidesz in 2019 over concerns about democracy and the rule of law<\/a> in Hungary. Fidesz quit the group in 2021.<\/p>\n

AP writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS (AP) \u2014 Top European Union officials on Tuesday expressed shock after Serbia gave a hero\u2019s funeral to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,39,65051,40,60328,309,46,2059,314],"class_list":["post-133451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-elections","tag-eu","tag-eu-serbia-mladic-funeral-membership-leyen-genocide","tag-european-union","tag-funerals-and-memorial-services","tag-general-news","tag-politics","tag-war-crimes","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}