Ursula Throws Her Toys Out of the Crib
European Commission President Refuses to Meet Serbian Prime Minister.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Belgrade, Serbia on Friday October 25th. She was scheduled to meet the Serbian prime minister but abruptly canceled the meeting at the last minute. The stated reason for the cancellation was because Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucevic had just completed a meeting with Russian Minister of Economy Maksim Resetnikov who was also in Belgrade.
President von der Leyen visited Serbia with the stated belief that Serbia’s, a traditional Russian ally, future “lies with the European Union”. She visited Serbia knowing that it was also sending a representative to the BRICS Summit in Kazan Russia, but takes offense when the Serbian head of state meets with a Russian official.
If President von der Leyen was serious about Serbia being in the EU and knowing its strong traditional ties to Russia she should expect to have to “fight” to get the Serbians to move away from their natural Russian alignment. The President should have expected this and still held the meeting as scheduled. That would have been a show of strength by the EU in face of Russians competing to hold their influence.
Instead President von der Leyen showed petulance and refused to meet. This is not a show of strength but one of weakness and a lack of confidence by the European Commission leader.
This is not the first time that the European Union acts out against a leader that has contact with the Russians as experienced by Hungarian leader and current European Union President Viktor Orban who was censured by the EU for going to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin to seek starting peace talks.
President von der Leyen is showing herself to have a lack of confidence at best and an authoritarian at worse that does not have the confidence or tolerance to stand up and win on the merits of her position when faced with beliefs contrary to her own. Either way this is something Europe does not need while the largest land war in Europe since World War II is on the EU’s frontier.
