Belgrade hosts the first All-Serb Assembly

Young people wearing traditional dress during the All-Serb Assembly rally in Belgrade on June 8th 2024. Photo: Mirko Kuzmanovic / Shutterstock

In Serbia, nationwide patriotic celebrations throughout the year have become part of the political culture. However, the streets of Belgrade have recently witnessed a rather uncommon number of high-level meetings, public prayers and cultural events. Under the slogan “One people, one assembly” (Jedan narod, jedan sabor), the first “All-Serb Assembly” (Svesrpski Sabor) has taken place, gathering representatives ofSerbs from all over the region in a bid to show the unity of the Serb nation.

The All-Serb Assembly has created a platform for the chauvinistic and irredentist ambitions of the political leaderships of Serbia and Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-led entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This development is another stark reminder of the vitality of Serb ethnonationalism across the Western Balkans. It should raise concerns regarding the region’s orientation, especially considering the emerging “Serb World” (Srpski Svet) narrative. This offers an ethnocratic alternative to a liberal and democratic orientation that was formerly offered by potential European Union (EU) membership.

Show of force and unity

Initiated by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and RS President Milorad Dodik, the All-Serb Assembly vowed to send a message to the estimated 1.3 million Serbs living outside of Serbia as a show of unity for the Serb nation. In that sense, the Assembly can be seen as an upgrade to other similar celebrations, including the establishment of the “Day of Serb Unity, Freedom and the National Flag”. This shared public holiday has taken place in Belgrade and Banja Luka since 2021.

From June 7th to 9th, a series of high-level meetings took place between representatives of the Serbian government and the Bosnian Serb entity. Overseen by Vučić and Dodik, the Serb member of the Bosnian presidency Željka Cvijanović, the RS Prime Minister Radovan Višković, and the Speaker of the RS Assembly Nenad Stevandić signed several cooperation agreements with their Serbian counterparts. These figures included Prime Minister Milos Vučević, the President of the Assembly Ana Brnabić and other high officials.

Gravitating around the Serbian and Bosnian Serb delegations, preeminent pro-Belgrade stakeholders from the region also attended the gathering. For example, the speaker of the Montenegrin Assembly, Andrija Mandić, was present at the meeting. Providing spiritual guidance, the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije engaged with the statesmen and led them in prayers. Reportedly, several hundreds of Serbs travelled from all corners of the former Yugoslav region, including people from North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia.

However, regional analysts have relativized the popular fervour in Belgrade. Ljubomir Filipovic, a political scientist and Chairman of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Montenegro (FLAS), underlined that the initiative was mainly a rally for the clientelist and militant apparatus of pro-Belgrade and ethnic Serb political parties across the Western Balkans. In this regard, the All-Serb Assembly facilitates the claim of unity and leadership by Vučić and Dodik concerning the Serbs of the region.

An ever-closer union of Serb lands

On June 8th, the Serb stakeholders adopted in a joint session a “Declaration on the Protection of National and Political Rights and the Joint Future of the Serb People”. This document proclaimed that “Serb people represent a single entity [that] had multiple states with different names through history.” This amounted to a pledge to call for the unification of all Serbs in the region as a natural historical outcome. In 49 points, the Declaration formulated orientations that set guidelines for the realization of the “Serbian World”. Promoted by Aleksandar Vulin, the openly pro-Russian deputy prime minister of Serbia, this irredentist political project amounts to a revamped version of wartime “Greater Serbia”. It is clear that the resurgence of such ideologies casts a shadow over the region reminiscent of the dark decade of the 1990s.

The Declaration has been an opportunity to observe the unorthodox handling of international rulings by the Serb representatives. UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999 was deemed a sound legal base to reassert Serbia’s legitimate control over Kosovo, while the Assembly rejected several international rulings not to their liking. For instance, they ignored the recently adopted UN General Assembly Resolution designating July 11th as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide.

Besides, the Declaration aimed to achieve an ever-closer harmonization between RS and Serbia through a distorted interpretation of the Dayton system, the constitutional structure that emerged from the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Seemingly alarmed by the “permanent and significantly damaged” constitutional order, the All-Serb Assembly called upon Serbia “to internationalize the problem of the collapse of the Dayton Peace Agreement”, therefore encouraging Belgrade to further mingle in its neighbour’s affairs.

Such positions bring to light the showdown between the central authorities in Sarajevo and the Dodik clientelist network. By all means, Dodik has for years put pressure on the state-level institutions to provide Banja Luka with full legal dispositions, a de facto secession of RS that would imply a collapse of the political structure of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ultimate aim would be to merge with Serbia. Echoing Dodik’s claims, President Vučić reiterated his support for the Dayton system only to then reassert his commitment to any action that “rehabilitates Serbian national interest”.

References to the DPA and UNSC Resolution 1244 are to be understood as a legalistic claim, backed by the ethnocratic agenda voiced by the All-Serb Assembly. Ironically, Vučić’s pious wishes to “sustain the Dayton structure from Westerners that seek to destroy” refers to the questionable track record of Christian Schmidt, the current High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The highly contested legal authority in the country has provided grounds for the Serbs’ twisted claims.

Geopolitical implications and misperceptions

The call for Serb unity launched from Belgrade has provoked unease among neighbouring countries, as well as divergent reactions from the traditional partners engaged in the region.

Dodik brought from Moscow a letter of support from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, renewing his tacit support for the Bosnian Serb secessionists and affirming that Moscow would “never close its eyes to any injustice towards the brotherly Serbian people, and attempts [at] trampling on their legitimate rights”. The Serbian and RS presidents have always maintained a cordial relationship with Vladimir Putin, even amid increasing US pressures following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Vučić and Dodik have relied on Russia to leverage geopolitical tensions by calling for Russia to neutralize undesired western demands. The Russian support has thus become a cornerstone of the balancing act they have come to excel at, reassuring western partners while moving closer to autocrats.

For the West, Vučić has appeared to be a beacon of stability next to Dodik’s actions. By stepping forward to reassure western partners through engagement with RS and limiting Dodik’s secessionist outbursts, a number of western diplomats have come to understand the role of the Assembly as an initiative to tie down Dodik. In other words, the All-Serb Assembly, creating space for irredentist appeals, has been perceived as a stabilizing factor for the Western Balkans in several capitals of the West. This explains why in the following days, western reactions have been at best tepid, and sometimes unsettling. It is worth mentioning that there has been a reaction from the German foreign ministry and the EU Delegation in Serbia, which expressed serious concerns in pointing out the damage done to the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the other countries of the Western Balkans.

In the following week, Vučić responded on behalf of RS, backing the promise pledged at the All-Serb Assembly. The president of Serbia effectively forced the US Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina to respond, taking part in discussions in spite of this fait accompli. This unsettling situation broadly raises questions concerning the US strategy, which has relied mostly on Vučić and Serbia to stabilize the region. This is despite the autocratic drift of Belgrade and its role in maintaining ethnic tensions in the Western Balkans.

The call for Europe lost in translation

The All-Serb Assembly is a new step forward in the buildup of an irredentist agenda. It is a very negative sign concerning the orientation of the Western Balkans and especially given the centrality conferred to the Serbian government. The All-Serb Assembly appears to be a display of power, endeavouring to show leadership over all Serbs in the region. The political desire of the leaders from Banja Luka and Belgrade – to build an ethnocratic narrative – spells out a grim outlook for the erosion of EU leverage in the region. Simply put, ethnocratic and irredentist narratives such as the “Serb World” are leading these territories in the very opposite direction from the EU path and its guiding values of rule of law, democracy and social inclusivity.

The creation of such a platform for ethnonationalist displays is a warning for all those following developments in the Western Balkans. Weaponizing ethnic issues has often been used to hide critical socio-economic problems, such as the demographic collapse affecting both territories. It also hides a terrible fact about fatigue in the face of European promises, whilst the socio-economic gap between the EU countries and the Western Balkans widens.

Eventually, the public display of chauvinistic and openly irredentist calls reveals the absence of accountability concerning ethnonationalist leaders in the region. Ethnocrats from Serbia and Republika Srpska have neutralized all democratic mechanisms by capturing and corrupting state institutions. Given that the vast majority of Western Balkan citizens remain very opposed to any type of conflict in the region, two options remain: whether to disengage from the civic space or to walk out from their society by emigrating, very often to the EU.

Grégoire Soria-Metais is a prospective PhD student in critical geopolitics. Graduate from the College of Europe in Natolin, he has worked in the Western Balkans, previously as administrator for the French webmedia Courrier des Balkans. His research interests include Serb ethnonationalism, the socio-economic impact of the EU integration process and geopolitics in the Western Balkans.

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Balkans, nationalism, Republika Srpska, Serbia, serbian foreign policy, Western Balkans