European Commission spokeswoman Anita Hipper stated today that there is no place in Europe for rhetoric that justifies and advocates ethnic cleansing, commenting on the statement of Serbian Minister Snežana Paunović that if she had been in the place of the former President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević in 1999, she would have carried out ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
As she said, that statement is contrary to the obligations that Serbia accepted within the framework of the dialogue under the auspices of the European Union for the normalization of relations with Kosovo.
She said that refraining from inflammatory rhetoric is expected, as well as contributing to mutual trust and regional stability.
When asked what it means in practice when it is said that in Europe there is no place for denying crimes, denying genocide, or glorifying war criminals, Anita Hipper said that the message is clear – that there is no place for such rhetoric.
She said that work is being done on this both through the dialogue and the enlargement process, that work is being done on paying tribute to the victims and identifying the missing, as well as on promoting peaceful coexistence.
To questions about why, in the wake of such statements, Serbia receives positive recommendations from the European Commission for opening clusters, Commission spokesman Guillaume Mercier pointed out that the assessments were given for specific things requested from Serbia in the non-paper document from 2024, and that those are the reform of the judiciary, the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, and election laws.
This does not mean that the entire situation has improved, Mercier said, adding that there is still concern in some fields.
Asked about the assessment of relations with Kosovo, Mercier said that this would be discussed in the progress report on Serbia, which will be published in the autumn.
Minister Snežana Paunović stated, during a guest appearance on Kurir television, that – if she had been in the place of Slobodan Milošević – she “would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998”, which is, as she stated, “the harshest qualification she has ever uttered in her life”.
“But not in a way that I would, I don’t know, liquidate them now, the way they are trying to ethnically cleanse Kosovo to this day, but in a way that anyone who feels less of a resident of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia leaves it and goes to their home country. And that those who opted for terrorist actions be liquidated in the way that terrorists are usually dealt with even today, let alone at that time,” she said.
She added that, “however, Slobodan Milošević, and even the Socialist Party of Serbia itself, never had the relationship to that which I have.”
Snežana Paunović has been a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia since 1992, and vice-president since 2024, according to the official biography. She was first elected to the position of member of parliament in 2013, and in two terms she performed the function of vice-president of the Assembly.
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