Serbia holds lying-in-state for Mladic in Belgrade, brushing off EU objections

Background: who Ratko Mladic was

The lying-in-state took place against the explicit advice of the European Union, which had urged Belgrade not to accord official honors to a figure found guilty of the continent's first case of genocide since the Second World War. EU officials warned that the optics of a state farewell could complicate Serbia's already stalled path toward membership in the bloc and would send a troubling signal about Belgrade's willingness to reckon with the wartime record of its closest ethnic kin in Bosnia.

Serbian authorities pressed ahead nonetheless, framing the ceremony as a question of domestic respect for the deceased rather than a political statement about the underlying convictions. President Aleksandar Vucic, who has long resisted pressure from Western capitals to distance himself from wartime nationalist icons, defended the decision to allow public mourning. For many Bosnians, Croats and Kosovo Albanians who suffered during the wars of Yugoslav dissolution, the images of crowds paying respects in central Belgrade carried an unmistakable political charge.

Why the EU objected

The event unfolded in a city whose government has spent years balancing a proclaimed strategic goal of EU accession with a domestic political culture that continues to lionize figures convicted by international tribunals. Belgrade's posture has long irritated diplomats in Brussels and The Hague, who argue that genuine reconciliation with the country's southern neighbors is a precondition for membership. Monday's ceremony sharpened that friction at a moment when several EU member states are already skeptical of further enlargement.

Mladic was convicted in 2017 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which found him responsible for the killings of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, and for the use of hostage soldiers to deter NATO airstrikes. The appeals chamber upheld the life sentence in 2021, and international justice officials have repeatedly rejected domestic political efforts in Serbia and the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska to challenge the verdicts or lionize the perpetrators.

Reaction from survivors and Bosnia

Survivors' associations in Bosnia and Herzegovina announced a day of mourning on the date of the funeral and urged European institutions to respond firmly. They warned that public state honors in Belgrade amount to a form of moral rehabilitation of a man whom international courts have held responsible for Europe's worst atrocity since 1945. Diplomatic observers said the response from Brussels is likely to be measured but pointed, with possible consequences for ongoing accession talks.

Within Serbia, the ceremony exposed familiar fault lines. Nationalist parties portrayed the lying-in-state as a matter of dignity and family grief, while opposition figures and civil-society groups criticized the government for using a convicted war criminal to rally domestic support. The episode comes as Serbia faces renewed pressure over its relations with Kosovo, its energy ties to Russia and the slow pace of judicial cooperation with the Hague-based tribunal's successor body.

European governments were already divided over how to handle Serbia's accession bid, with several member states publicly skeptical of admitting a country that has not aligned with EU foreign policy on sanctions against Moscow. Monday's events are likely to harden that skepticism, even if no immediate procedural step is taken in Brussels. Officials in several capitals said privately that further public honors for Mladic would test the limits of EU patience.

For the families of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo, the Belgrade ceremony was personal as well as political. Many said they watched the live coverage from Bosnia and felt the ceremony amounted to a public denial of the suffering their relatives endured. International legal experts noted that honoring a convicted genocidaire does not alter the legal record, but argued that it corrodes the social foundations on which reconciliation depends.

The funeral itself is expected to take place in the coming days at a location that Serbian authorities have not yet disclosed. Security in central Belgrade was tightened for the lying-in-state, and additional officers were deployed around government buildings and foreign embassies. EU representatives in Belgrade declined to attend, and several Western embassies signaled that their staff would stay away from the ceremony as well.