Serbia’s EU Progress ‘Not Dependent on Djindjic Case’

Despite statements from the Belgrade government that resolving the killing of the former premier would be a condition laid down in the rule-of-law section of Serbia’s EU accession negotiations, the European Commission said on Wednesday that individual cases will not be used as benchmarks.

“Shedding light on PM Djindjic’s assassination would be an element of positive assessment,” Peter Stano, spokesperson for the EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele, told BIRN in an email.

But he said that the negotiations “do not directly focus on individual cases, as emblematic they may be, as benchmarks, but rather on the capacity of the system (eg. the judiciary) to resolve those cases in a fair and efficient way”.

The European Commission is putting “a strong emphasis on the rule of law, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security” in the negotiations with Serbia, Stano continued.

“The capacity of the Serbian judiciary to elucidate such cases, and in particular the most emblematic ones, will be duly taken into account for our evaluation,” he said.

Djindjic, who played a pivotal role in the arrest and extradition of former leader Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to face war crimes charges, was killed in front of the government building in Belgrade in March 2003.

Milorad Ulemek, alias Legija, the former commander of the interior ministry’s Special Operations Unit, was found guilty of organising the group that conspired to kill him. However, the political background to the killing remains unclear.

Serbian media has quoted the head of Serbia’s EU accession talks team, Tanja Miscevic, who said that revealing who was behind the assassination was a precondition within negotiations over Chapter 23 of the body of...