By Krenare Recaj

September 30, 2026

Canada and Serbia have something in common: both are seeking closer ties with the European Union.

Canada is pursuing, per Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policies of variable geometry and trade diversification, an “alliance for the future” with the EU. Serbia has been a candidate for membership since 2012.

But as Ottawa draws closer to Europe, it will have to confront questions that have long troubled the EU about how to deal with Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbia — a dilemma that revives the painful recent history of the former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic’s massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo, Canada’s role in helping its people recover from that history, and the complexities of a geopolitical contest that has seen China’s influence on the Serb government eclipse Russia’s as a rival of the EU.

Vučić, who has been either prime minister or president since 2014, resigned September 9th and called a snap election for October 25th to seek the prime ministership again as he is constitutionally barred from a third term as president.

For years, Western governments have sent Vučić a message: bad behaviour will be tolerated. With Serbia now heading to the polls, they must decide how much longer they are willing to keep sending that message.

Vučić’s controversial handling of convicted war criminal and genocidaire Ratko Mladić after his death last month is only the most recent example of Serbian intransigence toward the norms of the international community and the EU, but it should serve as a stark reason to reconsider the level of tolerance displayed by Western governments toward the Vučić regime.

Mladić, also known as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” died in The Hague on 27 August while serving a life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during Milosevic’s 1990s rampage. As commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, Mladić was responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide, which together saw more than 17,000 Bosniak civilians, including children, killed.

His death and burial exposed the tension between Canada and its allies’ stated commitment to accountability and human rights and their continued courtship of Serbia.

Within days of Mladić’s death, Serbia’s Minister of Justice, Nenad Vujić, said Mladić would be buried with the “highest military and state honors,” a plan President Vučić pledged to carry out in a “decent and dignified manner.” EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos responded on August 31 at a press conference, saying glorifying convicted war criminals violates fundamental European values and has no place in the EU or among countries seeking membership.

The warning did little to alter Serbia’s course. On September 3, Mladić’s coffin was flown to Serbia draped in the Serbian flag, carried by uniformed soldiers, and accompanied by Vujić. The following day, Kos cancelled a planned visit to Serbia. Vučić responded by telling Serbian media that her criticism had been “extremely short, but stupid, as usual.”

Just as Kos’s comments on “European values” — meant to remind  Vučić of what is expected of a state seeking EU membership — did not deter the Serbian government from bringing Mladić’s coffin home draped in the Serbian flag, neither did the cancellation of her visit deter plans to bury him with military honours.

On September 7th, following a procession and service in Belgrade attended by thousands, and during which members of the Serbian Armed Forces stood guard over his casket, Mladić was buried with honours. Though President Vučić did not attend, citing a “prior engagement,” his son and other high-ranking officials did.

The strongest reaction came only the day after the funeral, on September 8th, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa issued a joint statement calling the funeral images “shocking,” declaring that the presence of senior Serbian officials was “deeply regrettable” and contradicted the values underpinning Serbia’s EU accession.

Despite this high-level condemnation, the next day Vučić dissolved parliament and called a snap election for October 25th, exposing his political calculus that the value of nationalist symbolism will outweigh the cost of diplomatic rebukes.

For a country seeking EU membership, honouring a convicted war criminal should have serious consequences. But Serbia has good reason to believe it will not. For years, Western governments, including Canada, have tolerated increasingly provocative behaviour from Vučić’s government in the hope that Serbia can be pulled toward the West and serve as a guarantor of stability in the Balkans.

For years, Vučić has repaid that patience with intransigence, and the events surrounding Mladić’s death and funeral suggest he has every intention of continuing to do so.

It is not only in Bosnia that Serbia has courted nationalist extremism and been intransigent towards the international community — for years, it has done the same in Kosovo. In September 2023, heavily armed Serbian militants attacked police in northern Kosovo, killing one officer. Serbia declared a national day of mourning for the three militants who were killed in the attack, while government-aligned media portrayed them as martyrs. Despite evidence linking people close to Vučić’s government to the attack, the international response was muted.

The European response eventually became stronger. A European Parliament resolution strongly condemned the attack and called on the European Commission and Council to impose measures against Serbia if investigations confirmed that Serbian authorities were directly involved. Yet the broader Western approach toward Serbia remained largely unchanged. Vučić continued to be treated as a necessary partner in maintaining regional stability. This is just one of many examples of Serbian intransigence and Western tolerance.

For years, Western governments have sent Vučić a message: bad behaviour will be tolerated. With Serbia now heading to the polls, they must decide how much longer they are willing to keep sending that message.

The pattern has become familiar: Serbian authorities participate in, provoke, or tolerate dangerous nationalist behaviour and Western governments condemn it, sometimes strongly, but the relationship continues much as before.

For the victims and survivors of the unhinged Serbian nationalism of Milosevic through the 1990s, it’s a pattern painfully reminiscent of the years when Milosevic played a cynical game of cat and mouse with the international community while human rights in Bosnia and Kosovo were obliterated along with thousands of lives.

For years, as the international memory of the 1990s genocide and ethnic cleansing have faded, the United States and European Union have treated Vučić as a guarantor of stability in the Balkans, someone whose cooperation is necessary to prevent another conflict in the region. That approach has taken on greater urgency since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Western governments have sought to pull Serbia closer to Europe and away from Moscow.

Canada’s part in the Western strategy of drawing Serbia closer to the Euro-Atlantic community has been smaller, but it has followed much the same logic. Courting Serbia, through the promise of EU accession and deeper Euro-Atlantic integration, has largely been the domain of the EU, backed by the US. Canada has played a supporting role, or as Canada’s Ambassador to Serbia, has put it, Canada has “lent our voices to EU and other Western countries that have other carrots and sticks.”

It was not until September 9th, 13 days after Mladić ’s death and two days after his burial, that Canada’s embassy in Belgrade publicly responded, declaring on social media that “honouring convicted war criminals is unacceptable” and that Canada “unequivocally condemns efforts to celebrate those responsible for genocide and other atrocities.”

The statement is welcome. But what will such condemnation mean without any apparent change in Canada’s relationship with Belgrade?

In July, in an interview with the Belgrade-based English-language business magazine Cord on the 85th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Belgrade, Ambassador Michelle Cameron described the relationship as “positive, constructive, and full of potential.” Indeed, the embassy’s last post before its condemnation of Mladić’s funeral welcomed members of the Canada-Serbia Parliamentary Friendship Group to Serbia.

Canada’s posture toward Serbia is hard to reconcile with its historic commitments to Bosnia, to Kosovo, and to human rights more broadly.

As a member of the Peace Implementation Council’s Steering Board, Canada helps oversee the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia, and supports military capacity-building, governance and the rule of law in the region. Forty thousand Canadian Armed Forces personnel served in Bosnia, and 23 lost their lives.

As one of five non-EU contributing states to the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), Canada helps support the development of independent, accountable justice institutions in Kosovo. Canada also took part in NATO’s 1999 air campaign, Operation Allied Force, to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and subsequently deployed troops as part of NATO’s peace support operation, Kosovo Force (KFOR). Canada continues to contribute personnel to KFOR through Operation KOBOLD, though the CAF will conclude its contribution this year.

In May 2024, Canada co-sponsored the UN General Assembly resolution establishing an International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, which was organized and carried out under Mladić’s command.

In June, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development held a series of meetings on the Security Situation in the Balkans, hearing from expert witnesses, many of whom were critical of Canada’s current approach to the region, specifically its dealings with Serbia, and urged a more coherent strategy.

Taking on a larger role in the Balkans would require greater attention and resources, as part of a broader reassessment of Canadian priorities. But coherence does not. Canada can, at minimum, ensure that its engagement with the region is consistent with its commitments, as well as the values it claims to uphold.

Honouring a convicted war criminal responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in Europe since the Second World War was not simply a “breach of European values”. It was Belgrade demonstrating, once again, that condemnation carries little consequence.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canada must “actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world as we wish it to be.” Canada and its allies may wish for a Serbia firmly aligned with the West, but wishing has changed nothing. It is time their approach accounted for the Serbia that actually exists.

Krenare Recaj is a PhD Candidate at Carleton University and a Junior Fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto. Her research examines Canada and Kosovo, and the intersections between Canadian foreign policy, migration, and diaspora.