A health worker carries boxes from the Sinopharm Group Co Ltd. Covid-19 vaccine to a vaccination site at the Belgrade Exhibition Center on Jan. 19.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic calls his country’s status as the front runner of continental Europe in obtaining human vaccines just one thing: looking both east and west.
The Balkan country may look like an unlikely success story as the neighboring European Union gets stuck in a vaccination fiasco. Yet Serbia’s history of balancing its geopolitical interests is bearing fruit at a critical time.
Serbia has been an important bridge to a foothold in Europe, while also being a traditional ally of Russia and striving to join the EU. Those relationships have made it possible to diversify vaccine sources and create a a higher proportion of the population than any other country in Europe after the UK injected Serbia with 6.8% of its 7 million inhabitants, more than twice the proportion in the EU.
Most of the 1.1 million doses imported into Belgrade by the government to date have come from Chinese state-backed Sinopharm. Vucic says his refusal to join a chorus of leaders criticizing China at a security conference in Germany helped him build good relations with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Aleksandar Vucic will meet Chen Bo and members of the Chinese medical expert team in Belgrade on May 1, 2020.
Photographer: Shi Zhongyu / Xinhua / Getty Images
“I was the only one to not accuse China of anything, so we had a fraternal meeting – the Secretary of State and I – and since then, Chinese support for us started in regards to the coronavirus and everything else,” Vucic said on a television . address to the nation last week.
The rapid roll-out of injections to combat Covid-19 vis-à-vis the EU underscores it tensions across the continent, as well as the possible geopolitical consequences in the most unstable region. The Serbian approach has already been imitated within the EU: neighboring Hungary became the first member of the bloc to accept recordings from Russia and China.
Serbia’s goal is to join the EU, but with an electorate already divided over membership, the pandemic threatens to push the country into the orbit of rival powers. Meanwhile, Belgrade has pledged vaccine donations to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, re-exposing the divisions in former Yugoslavia that sparked the bloody wars of the 1990s.
Read more: Vaccines are turning into geopolitics in Europe’s most volatile region
The EU has pledged to give six potential members in the Western Balkans – including Serbia – 70 million euros ($ 85 million) to purchase Covid shots, but deliveries are delayed. Rather than waiting for help from the EU, Belgrade arranged for the vaccine to come directly from China, Russia and the US.
French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the difficulties Europe has with rolling out vaccine programs for a lunch with Vucic in Paris on Monday. “I would have liked France, Europe, to have been more on your side in terms of vaccines,” Macron told Vucic and a group of reporters. “We Europeans must be even more efficient at this.”
Europe’s early winners
Serbia is only following the UK to get its people vaccinated
Source: Bloomberg
The late strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s former intelligence minister, Vucic, enlisted favors when the Covid-19 crunch began, securing fans and protective gear in the early stages of the contamination. He then ordered vaccines from three suppliers: Sinopharm, the Russian Gamaleya and Pfizer-BioNTech.
Details about the Chinese and Russian vaccines are less transparent than the Western ones, although health authorities in Serbia have tried to assure citizens that all injections used are safe and effective.
A week ago, Vucic said he met with the Chinese ambassador and “literally begged” her for more supplies. “Knowing President Xi, I think we will receive significant amounts of new vaccines from China before May or June.” Serbia now also wants to start local production of the Russian vaccine.
The Serbian leader controls the government and tightened his grip on power in the 2020 elections with a overwhelming victory amid a boycott by some opposition parties accusing him of autocracy. However, his pitch to voters also includes his ability to forge relationships across the geopolitical spectrum, with little regard for the feathers he might ruffle along the way.
In June, Vucic was convicted by pro-EU politicians for kissing the Chinese flag when a plane delivered medical equipment from Beijing to Belgrade. At the time, he described the pledge of solidarity from the EU, by far the largest donor of aid and investment to Serbia, as “a fairy tale on paper”.
The Sinopharm Group Co Ltd. vaccine delivered to Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade on January 16.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Providing vaccines to Serbia represents a major geopolitical victory for China, as it faces a less unruly and more Chinese-skeptical West under US President Joe Biden. In recent years, China has focused on infrastructure in the Balkans through its Belt and Road Initiative, including a rail link between Belgrade and Budapest in Hungary.
There is a perception that China is more willing to help than the EU, said Faris Kocan, foreign policy researcher at the University of Ljubljana. “It started with mask diplomacy and the story continues with vaccines, despite the fact that Balkan countries are strategically dependent on the EU,” he said.
Health workers outside vaccination booths at the Belgrade Exhibition Center on January 19. Serbia has contracts for 6.5 million vaccines.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Serbia started vaccinating on December 24, days before the EU. It has contracts for 6.5 million vaccines, but the global battle over injections is hurting confidence that the deals will be fulfilled, Vucic said. No vaccines have come through the multinational Covax initiative, which the Balkan state was involved in early on.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel loved it crisis talks on Monday with pharmaceutical executives and European Commission officials as part of efforts to speed up the stuttering vaccination pressure. According to Bloomberg, the 27 states of the EU collectively vaccinated 2.9% of the population, compared to 14.7% in the UK and 10% in the US. Vaccine Tracker.
“People in the EU are good people, but luckily I had enough experience and knowledge to believe it would end like this,” Vucic said. “This is a war for people’s lives, but also for the future of every country.”
– With the assistance of Ania Nussbaum, Peter Martin, Andrew Langley and Jan Bratanic