These days Belgrade radio stations often play a song by Gyorgye Balasevics titled “We are to blame” from his record album that came out in 1993. One detail of the song that was popular at the time goes: “Farewell Europe, don’t wait for us. Farewell Earth, it was good to make friends with you. We’re alright, we got what we deserved”.

Commentators claim that it is as if the song’s composer had had a glimpse of the future. They go on to assert that only the Serbs can be held accountable if after the bloody events that took place during the recent gay parade in Belgrade and in the stadium in Genoa they are not accepted into the EU. The view is becoming increasingly widespread that the rowdy behavior at both venues was deliberately organised in order to bring discredit upon Serbia in the eyes of the EU. 

The outbreak of trouble in Genoa’s football stadium on 12 October was not a spontaneous event. The Euro 2012 qualifier match took place in the northern Italian city between the Serbian and Italian national teams. The match started half an hour late and following a brief period of play the referee suspended the game after all hell broke loose on the stands. Several dozen Serbian football hooligans hurled smoke bombs onto the pitch and broke through the plastic walls separating the sectors of the stands. Days before the match people in Belgrade were worked up to prepare them for a fight. After the stadium in Genoa was emptied it did not even occur to the Serbian hooligans to leave the city and they instead opted to terrorize its inhabitants for three more days. 

The organizers of the riotous behavior were lucky that a political connotation was linked to the disturbance in public order. On that same day Hilary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State, arrived in Belgrade in a bid to promote dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo and to push for Belgrade’s integration into the EU. Clinton was forced to come face to face with what kind of country she supports. The football riot was followed two days later by the bloody events that broke out at the Belgrade gay parade. The hooligans attacked the participants and went on to set fire to the headquarters of the Democratic Party, which supports accession to the European Union.   

Dark interest groups

After the incident in Genoa, Bozhidar Djelic, the Serbian deputy-prime minister, stated that the government would take action against the extremist hooligans and would not allow them to derail Serbia’s aspirations to join Europe.

Reacting to the government statements, Magyar Szó (“Hungarian Word” - a daily paper in Újvidék) raised the question: “Who are the people funding these young unemployed people between the ages of 20 and 30, who are then able to go abroad and cause havoc with expensive pyrotechnics? And why are they doing this?”   

It has been quite clear for some time that there are still forces in Serbia whose agenda is to stop the country getting anywhere near the EU. Many Serbs are not comfortable with the idea of Brussels deciding what should be done in Belgrade. An example of this was the EU’s demand that Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian leader accused of war crimes, be arrested and extradited to the Hague to be put on trial at the International Criminal Court. 

The Serbs objected to the forced extradition to the Hague – where he died in his cell - of former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, a tireless crusader for the creation of a Greater Serbia. The ace on the wanted list is now Ratko Mladic, the former Serbian military commander, who is still on the run. Mladic’s apprehension is a prerequisite for EU accession. The question arises how the general has been able to evade capture for so long when there is even a video recording of him with his family, which was broadcast by a Serbian commercial TV channel.

Just pretexts?

None of this would be possible without considerable clandestine support. It is even probable that the political elite in Belgrade do not dare oppose their own army, which continues to aid Mladic.

The notion that something is wrong in the state of Serbia is being voiced increasingly frequently in Brussels. Since spring last year, when Serbia was granted visa exemption, huge numbers of its citizens have requested political asylum in the EU states. The Roma and the Albanians have been the main ethnic groups to attempt to leave. Many of the new arrivals have complained that they are exposed to discrimination in their home country, including being excluded from employment because of their ethnic origin.      

At the same time, it is perceptible that in the background the flight of the asylum-seekers is an organised process. It is conspicuous that when interviewed they use almost the same word-for-word justification in order to have their application accepted. It is as if they had been prompted. What is without a doubt is that the wave of asylum seekers from Serbia is throwing a bad light on the Balkan state. And it seems that every time Serbia’s accession to the EU is gaining new impetus the Belgrade leadership finds itself having to make excuses for something or other. (For example, the motion passed on Kosovo by the UN General Assembly in the middle of September improved the atmosphere between Belgrade and Brussels.)  

The mass exodus of the Roma – in September 150 applications were sent to Belgium’s Ministry of the Interior, which was twice as many as in the previous month, while there were recently more requests for political asylum in Sweden from Serbian citizens than from Somalians – bears a disturbing similarity to the Zámoly gypsies’ immigration from Hungary in 2000. At the beginning of 2001 the British intelligence journal, Jane’s Intelligence Digest, wrote that the French asylum of the Zámoly Roma was organised by the Russian secret service. The aim may have been to create a scandal in order to block Hungary’s accession to the EU in 2004. 

Hooligans and students

B92, a Serbian commercial television channel, concluded its comment on the events in Belgrade and Genoa with the following: “The objective in both cases was to wreak havoc, to bring people out onto the streets, create a state of emergency and thus have the election brought forward, i.e. to induce a change of power. Something similar to what happened on 5 October 2000”. 

However, the instigators hiding in the background, who provide the not insubstantial financial support for the young hooligans, are forgetting one thing; ten years ago it was the intellectuals and the students who jointly overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. This is not the sort of thing hooligans can do.