Here for all Balkanphiliacs is an interview with me in the Belgrade publication Svedok.

In the unlikely event you don’t speak Serbian and/or Google translator blows up under the pressure, here is the English text I sent them which as far as I can see has been reproduced in Serbian more or less 100%.

After the election of Tomislav Nikolic as the new Serbian president, do you expect the Russian influence to be strengthened?

Influence is an interesting concept. Russia and Serbia have plenty of cultural, historical and commercial ties – most of them (but not all) seen by both sides as positive – and no doubt look to develop them. Why not? Plus of course Serbia’s leaders want to increase their influence in Moscow.

It’s hard to say how far such trends will lead to Russia’s ‘influence’ being enhanced, in the sense that Russia’s opinions in fact affect what the Serbian leadership do in other policy areas. EU countries’ economic weight and investment potential in Serbia are far greater than Russia’s. Governments tend to be pretty pragmatic about such things.

Do you expect Tomislav Nikolic to be more pro-European then Boris Tadic? Do you expect his election to accelerate the Serbian EU bid?

Insofar as I have followed Mr Nikolic’s earlier positions, I expect him to adopt at least on the rhetorical level a ‘balanced’ approach in his foreign policy moves (such as visiting Moscow before his inauguration and then Brussels soon after it?). That said, Serbia is patiently working towards eventual EU membership, and it is not easy to see why Mr Nikolic would want to change that trend substantively. There is a huge amount of technical work to be done to take Serbia up to EU standards and further delays will do the country no good: reaching these standards is in Serbia’s own interests.

Plus Mr Nikolic will have to find a way to manage the Kosovo issue. Will making ‘tougher’ noises or even some supposedly tougher moves necessarily bring Serbia any real lasting advantage on any level?

For many analysts and journalist in Serbia, the election of Tomislav Nikolic came as a shock. On the other hand, in the parliamentarian elections his Serbian progressive party, which he formed and presided over until his election as the new president, achieved the best result winning the largest present of the votes. How do you comment on that?

I suspect that some of those analysts and journalists allowed their hopes to confuse their judgement. Opinion polls look at big picture results and do not easily cope with relatively low turnouts and underlying mood/motivation.

While most media, analysts and pool-companies argued that Boris Tadic would probably win the elections, and in many cases often forced this opinion on the public, the voters in Serbia reacted completely different and elected Tomislav Nikolic. How would you assess this fact?

Given the first round results it looked difficult for Mr Tadic to win easily, and he didn’t.

Has the long going policy “Europe has no alternative” been the cause of Boris Tadic’s demise?

I’d say probably not, and if anything the opposite – Mr Nikolic went out of his way to make reassuring general statements on ‘Europe’, a clear sign that he spotted the political mainstream moving in that direction and away from what we might call primitive declamatory Milosevic-Seseljism.

The main problem for Mr Tadic looks to have been a clear feeling of disappointment within his own traditional support-base, perhaps from a sense that the Democratic Party have had too much power for too long and have failed to deliver the results they promised. Many of the policy criticisms that might previously have been aimed convincingly at Mr Nikolic ended up being aimed at the Democratic Party and Mr Tadic too. In other words, there were fewer reasons to vote for Tadic and more reasons to vote against him. There were more reasons to vote for Nikolic and fewer reasons to vote against him. The majority of Serns looked at this situation and stayed at home!

How do you comment on the great return of the Socialist party of Serbia, making third place in the parliamentarian elections with almost 15 percent of the votes (which made it the breaking factor for the formation of the future government)?

The Socialist Party won 570,000 votes or about 8% of the available vote. That is probably more than it deserves after its catastrophic record when it was in power down the years. It nonetheless may have a role in shaping Serbia’s policies. Why should anyone see that as a helpful development for Serbia?

On the day of the second round of presidential elections, a letter from the EU arrived at 4 p.m. congratulating Nikolic on his win over Tadic, although there were 4 more hours of voting. Later the EU apologized asking the media not to publish that as it could have effect on the voting process, but the word was already on the street. Was that just a mistake by a bureaucrat in Brussels or would you say there is something else behind that?

Stupidity has no limits.

What is your opinion on Boris Tadic and Tomislav Nikolic?

I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Mr Nikolic for any length of time, if at all. I enjoyed my various meetings with Mr Tadic. He always gave me the impression of someone trying to deliver a methodical and measured approach in the very difficult circumstances left by the Milosevic years

How common is it that a person who just lost the presidential elections afterwards heads the government and how does that affect the institutions?

We have a monarchy where such problems tend not to arise.

How do you assess the fact that in most elections in the EU the ruling parties and politicians who played in favor of the ongoing EU policies on “tightening the belt” suffered a defeat, except in Poland?

It is alas understandable that many tens of millions of people across Europe have got used to high levels of state funding and ‘social’ policies, and naively press for that way of life to continue. Unfortunately for them, world markets rightly have no faith in this model: it is fundamentally unproductive and, more important, unsustainable.

(a) Will Greece eventually have to leave the euro, and (b) will this mean the end of the EU as we know it?

Probably.  (b) Maybe. The issue is whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing. I think that it will be a good thing, albeit perhaps dangerously painful – the current European ‘social model’ is unaffordable because it rewards too many people for not working. Reality does not go away just because populist politicians and greedy voters don’t like it.

Let me add just one question: Do you consider it to be normal that Mr Tadic who just lost the election now probably will head the new government?

It’s obviously not ’normal’ in the sense of frequent: people who have been a national president tend to have a high opinion of themselves and don’t like to step ’down’ to a hard executive role. But that does not make it a bad thing. If President Nikolic and PM Tadic find a way to work together in Serbia’s interests – and particularly if they identify a solid but creative shared position on where Kosovo fits in to national policy-making – it could be a big step forward. If ’co-habitation’ leads to an idiotic political/economic policy stalemate and endless feuding over who gets what job, Serbia’s poor performance will just last longer.