There is likely to be a bit of a farewell or even end-time atmosphere at the US base in Ramstein today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will chair the Ukraine Contact Group meeting there for the last time before Donald Trump and his team take office on Jan. 20. It will probably also be Boris Pistorius’ last appearance among the 50 or so countries that support Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has announced his attendance, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas are also expected.
It is undisputed that Ukraine would not have survived the almost three years since the start of the Russian war of aggression as a sovereign state without the 25 meetings in the so-called Ramstein format. According to US figures, the allies have provided or promised military aid worth a total of USD 126 billion during this time.
Now the future of the format is uncertain. Donald Trump is laying claim to Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. The borders and sovereignty of neighboring states are apparently generally up for discussion. In any case, Vladimir Putin can hope to do business with the new POTUS on Ukraine soon.
Host Austin will repeat like a mantra in Ramstein that a militarily strong Ukraine will also have a better position at the negotiating table. The American will try to persuade the allies to provide long-term support until 2027. Under no circumstances should the impression be created that the Contact Group will be wound up with the end of the Biden era. The Europeans want to discuss how they can compensate for the potential decline in US aid. However, hopes are not high.
Have a nice day.
X owner Elon Musk is getting heavily involved in the German election campaign – with his election recommendation for the far-right AfD and now also with his public talk with AfD top candidate Alice Weidel. Is he allowed to do this? First of all, the EU Commission says yes. Everyone, including Mr. Musk, naturally has the right to express their opinion, writes the Commission in a reply to CDU MEPs Daniel Caspary and Andreas Schwab.
However, the Digital Services Act (DSA) in Europe “regulates the responsibility of online platforms for amplifying individual views through the design of their services and algorithmic systems“. It is well known that the DSA regulates this. But what is the Commission doing to enforce the rules? Are they even sufficient? On Friday, Green MEPs want to submit another question to the Commission on what it is actually doing to protect the Bundestag elections. And the S&D Group has announced that it will request a plenary debate on the topic of “Elon Musk and the abuse of social media – threats to European democracy”.
Like Caspary and Schwab, the Greens’ new question to the Commission is about the extent to which Musk artificially increases the reach of his own X account and thus pushes his own opinions and those of his peers beyond measure. Researchers observed this in the US election campaign – with negative consequences for the integrity of the debate space. After all, not all sides can make themselves heard in this way.
“Musk’s personal involvement in the German parliamentary election campaign, his soon-to-be key position in the US government, and his power to influence the political agenda in Germany via algorithm control on Platform X” poses a systemic risk to public discourse and elections, according to the undersigned MEPs (Article 34 DSA). This requires urgent interim measures by the Commission to protect the Bundestag elections.
“The European Commission’s silence in the face of Elon Musk’s political influence via algorithms and Meta’s intention to align Facebook with Trump’s ideology is alarming,” says Green MEP Alexandra Geese. If Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has priced in ongoing proceedings under the DSA as a bargaining chip for talks with Trump – for example on tariffs – this would be a fatal signal of weakness and an attack on pluralism in Europe.
In fact, official investigations are already underway against X – also with regard to the transparency of algorithmic recommendation systems. However, the Commission does not want to escalate this any further at present, as Europe.Table reported back in December. “Of course, it would be good if it were possible to bring the proceedings that have already been initiated to a decision before the election. But the procedure must be successful in accordance with the law,” says Schwab.
Damien Boeselager (Volt) sees an ethical and a legal dimension. “Personally, I find it hard to bear that Musk is using his astronomical economic and now political power to selectively promote extreme voices in Europe.” But it is his right to share his opinions and perspectives here too. It only becomes critical “when he systematically amplifies his statements with the help of algorithms without making this transparent”.
Julian Jaursch, project director at the think tank Interface, doubts that there is already a systemic risk in the sense of the DSA when an individual interferes in an election campaign. Even if it is a person of the standing of Elon Musk – future advisor to the US government, richest person in the world, with 200 million followers. “Is that a systemic risk? I’m personally very cautious,” says Jaursch. He also advises focusing more on technical issues relating to the algorithm in terms of transparency and the display of content.
The problem here is that analyzing how the algorithm works is also a challenge for the Commission. It simply takes longer, a spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The Lobbycontrol association considers the upcoming Musk-Weidel meeting to be problematic from a different perspective: “Musk clearly formulates the goal of strengthening the AfD. He is also using the resources of his platform to achieve this. The interview will certainly be played out much more widely than posts by normal users,” says Aurel Eschmann from Lobbycontrol. “In this respect, we can definitely speak of political advertising here, because platform X normally sells this kind of reach for a lot of money.”
The question is whether this is a party donation. The Political Parties Act was reformed at the beginning of 2024. It stipulates that third parties must report election advertising to the relevant party, in this case the AfD, in good time. If the party does not prohibit the election advertising, the value of the advertising is counted as a party donation. This is problematic because X is based in the USA. “Then it would be illegal,” says Eschmann. Donations from non-EU countries to political parties are prohibited in Germany.
However, it is currently still unclear how the new third-party campaign regulation will be interpreted by the Bundestag administration. “In any case, a party donation cap is urgently needed in Germany to prevent the super-rich from exerting as much influence on politics as they do in the USA,” says Eschmann.
While France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot is already calling on the Commission to apply the laws to protect democracy with the utmost determination or to consider “returning the power to do so to the member states of the European Union, to France“, the German government is keeping a low profile.
When asked, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Digital Affairs explained that it was first important to observe the effectiveness of the current legal framework, in particular the DSA, in practice “before we think about tightening it up”. The proceedings against TikTok for possible election manipulation in Romania are an important test case for the enforceability of the DSA. “Only then can we make a well-founded assessment of whether and where improvements are necessary.” If necessary, adjustments should be made at European level.
As Digital Services Coordinator, the Federal Network Agency has invited the Commission and the relevant national authorities to a roundtable in the context of the upcoming federal elections. In addition to relevant very large social media platforms, representatives of research and civil society organizations have also been invited to the meeting on Jan. 24, according to the agency. In order to protect the integrity of the elections in Germany, this date seems a little late.
Billions are at stake. Automotive companies and US tech giants are affected, and yet the issue is not making any progress in Brussels. In April 2023, the EU Commission made a proposal on standard essential patents (SEPs). But according to diplomats, the Council has not dealt with the topic in the whole of 2024. Companies are hoping that the Polish presidency in the first half of 2025 will bring momentum to the negotiations.
SEPs are a niche topic with high explosive potential. Their importance will increase in the coming years as the Internet of Things becomes a reality. Specifically, these are patents that are part of a standard, such as the 5G mobile communications standard, which plays a major role in connected driving. Companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes criticize the fact that they do not always receive licenses for SEPs on fair terms. In recent years, there have been numerous spectacular disputes in court.
The EU wants to be the first region in the world to regulate SEPs. The interests of patent holders and licensees clash. The EU Commission estimates that the mobile communications groups Nokia from Finland and Ericsson from Sweden together hold 80 percent of all relevant SEPs in the EU. Around 3800 companies from the EU are licensees, the majority of which are small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Commission sees a lack of transparency, as it is not clear who actually holds the SEPs. The EU Commission also argues that it is often not clear whether the patent holders’ claims are reasonable. The EU Commission also saw a reason to intervene because the disputes in court cost time and resources. According to the industry, court proceedings often take five to six years.
In other regions of the world, problems with SEPs have also been observed, but nowhere have binding rules been seriously considered. In the USA, for example, only competition law applies.
The EU Commission wants to establish an SEP competence center at the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Alicante, where SEP holders must register their patents within six months and disclose existing licenses. The center would also collect court decisions on the respective SEPs in order to create transparency. And it would help the parties to determine the amount of fair license payments. Only when this nine-month process has failed could the parties go to court.
In February 2024, the European Parliament voted in favor of such a competence center with the intention of reducing the number of court cases. “We are strengthening Europe’s SEP by bringing much-needed transparency to a highly opaque system,” emphasized rapporteur Marion Walsmann (CDU) at the time. “The new rules will reduce inefficiencies and transaction costs.”
However, the issue is not making any progress in the Council. Sweden and Finland do not want to see the position of their companies weakened. License fees are an important source of income for Nokia in particular. At the same time, there is criticism of involving the EUIPO, an authority that has not dealt with patents to date but is responsible for trademarks. The licensing industry is saying that it is not unreasonable to locate the competence center in Alicante. At the same time, there are still those who believe that the European Unified Patent Court in Munich would be a suitable location.
Both sides are lobbying behind the scenes. The Fair Standards Alliance, which includes US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon and Google, as well as German car manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes and supplier Continental, commissioned a study. According to the study, German companies paid up to €770 million in license fees to foreign patent holders in 2022, while French companies paid up to €401 million. However, the figures calculated by external consultant Charles River Associates are controversial.
The US company Qualcomm, the world’s largest 5G patent holder after the Chinese company Huawei, organized an event in December to raise the interests of the opposing side. There, the liberal Spanish MEP Adrian Vázquez Lázara, shadow rapporteur on SEP and declared critic of the Commission’s proposal, predicted that the blockade in the Council would last a long time – possibly a whole ten years.
The European hydrogen industry pressed for lead markets for clean hydrogen at a meeting with Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera and Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen on Tuesday. “We agreed that the Clean Industrial Deal must be a success,” said the CEO of Hydrogen Europe, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, after the meeting. This requires a partnership approach that starts with lead markets.
The Renewable Hydrogen Coalition, the Hydrogen Council and the global association IPHE also took part in the meeting. Hydrogen Europe called in particular for risk mitigation for customers from the chemical, fertilizer and steel industries as well as more flexible rules for the production of green hydrogen and joint infrastructure planning for electricity and hydrogen. ber
The frequent accusation that Germany, France and the Eurocrats are practicing the policy of the three monkeys – hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing – towards the Serbian autocrat Aleksandar Vučić is inaccurate. In reality, they very actively support Vučić and some of the other enemies of democracy in the so-called Western Balkans.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen showed this quite openly in her laudatory speech for Vučić in Belgrade last October, when she said: “Dear Aleksandar … You have committed yourself to carrying out reforms, especially with regard to the foundations of the rule of law and democracy, as you have just said. And you have shown that your words are followed by deeds …” Bliss to the ears of the regime, which savors such praise from Western politicians.
A week later, the canopy at the train station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, which had recently been renovated, collapsed: 15 people died under its rubble. It turned out that this construction project was also botched. Regulations were disregarded and, as always, a lot of money ended up in the coffers of companies close to the regime.
This is why protests broke out immediately after the disaster. The demonstrators, mainly students, held up their red-colored hands. They want to show that the regime has blood on its hands because of the rampant corruption and criminality. On Dec. 22, over 100,000 people took to the streets of Belgrade to protest against the intertwining of organized crime and the criminal state.
In a New Year’s interview, Vučić, who had given over 350 monologues, some lasting hours, on various television channels the previous year, threatened to deploy the army’s special Cobra unit. The unit of protesters could be “dispersed in just 6 to 7 seconds”.
There are “around 17,000 loyalists” in his party, said the head of state, men with “somewhat extremist attitudes” who have sworn a “bloody oath of allegiance”. They would not allow everything they had fought for over the years to be lost. Many citizens now fear that this time “dear Aleksandar” will actually put his words into action.
The fact that autocrats in the region enjoy so much understanding in the West is only partly due to the widespread narrative that China, Russia, Turkey and the Gulf states are “geopolitically” gaining ground in this “soft underbelly” of Europe and that Western European democracies must fend them off. A look at the geographical map of Europe shows that the Western Balkans are surrounded by EU and NATO member states. Three of the six entities in the region are part of NATO. How is Russia supposed to break through the chain of NATO states from the Baltic to the Black Sea in order to gain a military foothold between the Danube and the Adriatic?
The explanation that simple financial interests are the decisive factor also falls short. It is true that the EU countries, mainly Germany and Italy, have raked in more than €100 billion in trade surpluses with the six poor economies of the Western Balkans over the past decade. Yes, France sells its Rafale fighter jets to Croatia, Serbia, Greece and others in the region.
It is also a fact that Chancellor Scholz wants Germany and the EU to participate in the exploitation of the extensive lithium deposits in Serbia in order to secure access to important raw materials and thus “strategic autonomy”. Strangely enough, this is to be done with the help of a company based outside the EU, the British-Australian giant Rio Tinto. In addition, Chinalco, a Chinese state-owned company, has a 14.99 percent stake in this group.
But probably the most important reason for the West’s leniency towards the despots in the Balkans is another: the promise of EU enlargement has proved deceptive, and no one is prepared to put up enough money to accelerate socio-economic development in this part of Europe. The West is left empty-handed: Neither good coaxing nor threatening gestures are having much effect in the Western Balkans now.
One EU diplomat told the author of these lines: “If we talk to them in plain language, they will become even more uncooperative.” And then there is the uncertainty of how Donald Trump will shake up south-eastern Europe. However, Vučić and his Albanian colleague Edi Rama have long been preparing for their American friend: In Belgrade and on the Adriatic coast, they have awarded lavish construction projects to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Dušan Reljić was head of the Brussels office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) between 2013 and 2023. Today, the former journalist works as a political consultant.
There is likely to be a bit of a farewell or even end-time atmosphere at the US base in Ramstein today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will chair the Ukraine Contact Group meeting there for the last time before Donald Trump and his team take office on Jan. 20. It will probably also be Boris Pistorius’ last appearance among the 50 or so countries that support Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has announced his attendance, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas are also expected.
It is undisputed that Ukraine would not have survived the almost three years since the start of the Russian war of aggression as a sovereign state without the 25 meetings in the so-called Ramstein format. According to US figures, the allies have provided or promised military aid worth a total of USD 126 billion during this time.
Now the future of the format is uncertain. Donald Trump is laying claim to Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. The borders and sovereignty of neighboring states are apparently generally up for discussion. In any case, Vladimir Putin can hope to do business with the new POTUS on Ukraine soon.
Host Austin will repeat like a mantra in Ramstein that a militarily strong Ukraine will also have a better position at the negotiating table. The American will try to persuade the allies to provide long-term support until 2027. Under no circumstances should the impression be created that the Contact Group will be wound up with the end of the Biden era. The Europeans want to discuss how they can compensate for the potential decline in US aid. However, hopes are not high.
Have a nice day.
X owner Elon Musk is getting heavily involved in the German election campaign – with his election recommendation for the far-right AfD and now also with his public talk with AfD top candidate Alice Weidel. Is he allowed to do this? First of all, the EU Commission says yes. Everyone, including Mr. Musk, naturally has the right to express their opinion, writes the Commission in a reply to CDU MEPs Daniel Caspary and Andreas Schwab.
However, the Digital Services Act (DSA) in Europe “regulates the responsibility of online platforms for amplifying individual views through the design of their services and algorithmic systems“. It is well known that the DSA regulates this. But what is the Commission doing to enforce the rules? Are they even sufficient? On Friday, Green MEPs want to submit another question to the Commission on what it is actually doing to protect the Bundestag elections. And the S&D Group has announced that it will request a plenary debate on the topic of “Elon Musk and the abuse of social media – threats to European democracy”.
Like Caspary and Schwab, the Greens’ new question to the Commission is about the extent to which Musk artificially increases the reach of his own X account and thus pushes his own opinions and those of his peers beyond measure. Researchers observed this in the US election campaign – with negative consequences for the integrity of the debate space. After all, not all sides can make themselves heard in this way.
“Musk’s personal involvement in the German parliamentary election campaign, his soon-to-be key position in the US government, and his power to influence the political agenda in Germany via algorithm control on Platform X” poses a systemic risk to public discourse and elections, according to the undersigned MEPs (Article 34 DSA). This requires urgent interim measures by the Commission to protect the Bundestag elections.
“The European Commission’s silence in the face of Elon Musk’s political influence via algorithms and Meta’s intention to align Facebook with Trump’s ideology is alarming,” says Green MEP Alexandra Geese. If Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has priced in ongoing proceedings under the DSA as a bargaining chip for talks with Trump – for example on tariffs – this would be a fatal signal of weakness and an attack on pluralism in Europe.
In fact, official investigations are already underway against X – also with regard to the transparency of algorithmic recommendation systems. However, the Commission does not want to escalate this any further at present, as Europe.Table reported back in December. “Of course, it would be good if it were possible to bring the proceedings that have already been initiated to a decision before the election. But the procedure must be successful in accordance with the law,” says Schwab.
Damien Boeselager (Volt) sees an ethical and a legal dimension. “Personally, I find it hard to bear that Musk is using his astronomical economic and now political power to selectively promote extreme voices in Europe.” But it is his right to share his opinions and perspectives here too. It only becomes critical “when he systematically amplifies his statements with the help of algorithms without making this transparent”.
Julian Jaursch, project director at the think tank Interface, doubts that there is already a systemic risk in the sense of the DSA when an individual interferes in an election campaign. Even if it is a person of the standing of Elon Musk – future advisor to the US government, richest person in the world, with 200 million followers. “Is that a systemic risk? I’m personally very cautious,” says Jaursch. He also advises focusing more on technical issues relating to the algorithm in terms of transparency and the display of content.
The problem here is that analyzing how the algorithm works is also a challenge for the Commission. It simply takes longer, a spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The Lobbycontrol association considers the upcoming Musk-Weidel meeting to be problematic from a different perspective: “Musk clearly formulates the goal of strengthening the AfD. He is also using the resources of his platform to achieve this. The interview will certainly be played out much more widely than posts by normal users,” says Aurel Eschmann from Lobbycontrol. “In this respect, we can definitely speak of political advertising here, because platform X normally sells this kind of reach for a lot of money.”
The question is whether this is a party donation. The Political Parties Act was reformed at the beginning of 2024. It stipulates that third parties must report election advertising to the relevant party, in this case the AfD, in good time. If the party does not prohibit the election advertising, the value of the advertising is counted as a party donation. This is problematic because X is based in the USA. “Then it would be illegal,” says Eschmann. Donations from non-EU countries to political parties are prohibited in Germany.
However, it is currently still unclear how the new third-party campaign regulation will be interpreted by the Bundestag administration. “In any case, a party donation cap is urgently needed in Germany to prevent the super-rich from exerting as much influence on politics as they do in the USA,” says Eschmann.
While France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot is already calling on the Commission to apply the laws to protect democracy with the utmost determination or to consider “returning the power to do so to the member states of the European Union, to France“, the German government is keeping a low profile.
When asked, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Digital Affairs explained that it was first important to observe the effectiveness of the current legal framework, in particular the DSA, in practice “before we think about tightening it up”. The proceedings against TikTok for possible election manipulation in Romania are an important test case for the enforceability of the DSA. “Only then can we make a well-founded assessment of whether and where improvements are necessary.” If necessary, adjustments should be made at European level.
As Digital Services Coordinator, the Federal Network Agency has invited the Commission and the relevant national authorities to a roundtable in the context of the upcoming federal elections. In addition to relevant very large social media platforms, representatives of research and civil society organizations have also been invited to the meeting on Jan. 24, according to the agency. In order to protect the integrity of the elections in Germany, this date seems a little late.
Billions are at stake. Automotive companies and US tech giants are affected, and yet the issue is not making any progress in Brussels. In April 2023, the EU Commission made a proposal on standard essential patents (SEPs). But according to diplomats, the Council has not dealt with the topic in the whole of 2024. Companies are hoping that the Polish presidency in the first half of 2025 will bring momentum to the negotiations.
SEPs are a niche topic with high explosive potential. Their importance will increase in the coming years as the Internet of Things becomes a reality. Specifically, these are patents that are part of a standard, such as the 5G mobile communications standard, which plays a major role in connected driving. Companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes criticize the fact that they do not always receive licenses for SEPs on fair terms. In recent years, there have been numerous spectacular disputes in court.
The EU wants to be the first region in the world to regulate SEPs. The interests of patent holders and licensees clash. The EU Commission estimates that the mobile communications groups Nokia from Finland and Ericsson from Sweden together hold 80 percent of all relevant SEPs in the EU. Around 3800 companies from the EU are licensees, the majority of which are small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Commission sees a lack of transparency, as it is not clear who actually holds the SEPs. The EU Commission also argues that it is often not clear whether the patent holders’ claims are reasonable. The EU Commission also saw a reason to intervene because the disputes in court cost time and resources. According to the industry, court proceedings often take five to six years.
In other regions of the world, problems with SEPs have also been observed, but nowhere have binding rules been seriously considered. In the USA, for example, only competition law applies.
The EU Commission wants to establish an SEP competence center at the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Alicante, where SEP holders must register their patents within six months and disclose existing licenses. The center would also collect court decisions on the respective SEPs in order to create transparency. And it would help the parties to determine the amount of fair license payments. Only when this nine-month process has failed could the parties go to court.
In February 2024, the European Parliament voted in favor of such a competence center with the intention of reducing the number of court cases. “We are strengthening Europe’s SEP by bringing much-needed transparency to a highly opaque system,” emphasized rapporteur Marion Walsmann (CDU) at the time. “The new rules will reduce inefficiencies and transaction costs.”
However, the issue is not making any progress in the Council. Sweden and Finland do not want to see the position of their companies weakened. License fees are an important source of income for Nokia in particular. At the same time, there is criticism of involving the EUIPO, an authority that has not dealt with patents to date but is responsible for trademarks. The licensing industry is saying that it is not unreasonable to locate the competence center in Alicante. At the same time, there are still those who believe that the European Unified Patent Court in Munich would be a suitable location.
Both sides are lobbying behind the scenes. The Fair Standards Alliance, which includes US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon and Google, as well as German car manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes and supplier Continental, commissioned a study. According to the study, German companies paid up to €770 million in license fees to foreign patent holders in 2022, while French companies paid up to €401 million. However, the figures calculated by external consultant Charles River Associates are controversial.
The US company Qualcomm, the world’s largest 5G patent holder after the Chinese company Huawei, organized an event in December to raise the interests of the opposing side. There, the liberal Spanish MEP Adrian Vázquez Lázara, shadow rapporteur on SEP and declared critic of the Commission’s proposal, predicted that the blockade in the Council would last a long time – possibly a whole ten years.
The European hydrogen industry pressed for lead markets for clean hydrogen at a meeting with Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera and Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen on Tuesday. “We agreed that the Clean Industrial Deal must be a success,” said the CEO of Hydrogen Europe, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, after the meeting. This requires a partnership approach that starts with lead markets.
The Renewable Hydrogen Coalition, the Hydrogen Council and the global association IPHE also took part in the meeting. Hydrogen Europe called in particular for risk mitigation for customers from the chemical, fertilizer and steel industries as well as more flexible rules for the production of green hydrogen and joint infrastructure planning for electricity and hydrogen. ber
The frequent accusation that Germany, France and the Eurocrats are practicing the policy of the three monkeys – hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing – towards the Serbian autocrat Aleksandar Vučić is inaccurate. In reality, they very actively support Vučić and some of the other enemies of democracy in the so-called Western Balkans.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen showed this quite openly in her laudatory speech for Vučić in Belgrade last October, when she said: “Dear Aleksandar … You have committed yourself to carrying out reforms, especially with regard to the foundations of the rule of law and democracy, as you have just said. And you have shown that your words are followed by deeds …” Bliss to the ears of the regime, which savors such praise from Western politicians.
A week later, the canopy at the train station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, which had recently been renovated, collapsed: 15 people died under its rubble. It turned out that this construction project was also botched. Regulations were disregarded and, as always, a lot of money ended up in the coffers of companies close to the regime.
This is why protests broke out immediately after the disaster. The demonstrators, mainly students, held up their red-colored hands. They want to show that the regime has blood on its hands because of the rampant corruption and criminality. On Dec. 22, over 100,000 people took to the streets of Belgrade to protest against the intertwining of organized crime and the criminal state.
In a New Year’s interview, Vučić, who had given over 350 monologues, some lasting hours, on various television channels the previous year, threatened to deploy the army’s special Cobra unit. The unit of protesters could be “dispersed in just 6 to 7 seconds”.
There are “around 17,000 loyalists” in his party, said the head of state, men with “somewhat extremist attitudes” who have sworn a “bloody oath of allegiance”. They would not allow everything they had fought for over the years to be lost. Many citizens now fear that this time “dear Aleksandar” will actually put his words into action.
The fact that autocrats in the region enjoy so much understanding in the West is only partly due to the widespread narrative that China, Russia, Turkey and the Gulf states are “geopolitically” gaining ground in this “soft underbelly” of Europe and that Western European democracies must fend them off. A look at the geographical map of Europe shows that the Western Balkans are surrounded by EU and NATO member states. Three of the six entities in the region are part of NATO. How is Russia supposed to break through the chain of NATO states from the Baltic to the Black Sea in order to gain a military foothold between the Danube and the Adriatic?
The explanation that simple financial interests are the decisive factor also falls short. It is true that the EU countries, mainly Germany and Italy, have raked in more than €100 billion in trade surpluses with the six poor economies of the Western Balkans over the past decade. Yes, France sells its Rafale fighter jets to Croatia, Serbia, Greece and others in the region.
It is also a fact that Chancellor Scholz wants Germany and the EU to participate in the exploitation of the extensive lithium deposits in Serbia in order to secure access to important raw materials and thus “strategic autonomy”. Strangely enough, this is to be done with the help of a company based outside the EU, the British-Australian giant Rio Tinto. In addition, Chinalco, a Chinese state-owned company, has a 14.99 percent stake in this group.
But probably the most important reason for the West’s leniency towards the despots in the Balkans is another: the promise of EU enlargement has proved deceptive, and no one is prepared to put up enough money to accelerate socio-economic development in this part of Europe. The West is left empty-handed: Neither good coaxing nor threatening gestures are having much effect in the Western Balkans now.
One EU diplomat told the author of these lines: “If we talk to them in plain language, they will become even more uncooperative.” And then there is the uncertainty of how Donald Trump will shake up south-eastern Europe. However, Vučić and his Albanian colleague Edi Rama have long been preparing for their American friend: In Belgrade and on the Adriatic coast, they have awarded lavish construction projects to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Dušan Reljić was head of the Brussels office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) between 2013 and 2023. Today, the former journalist works as a political consultant.
