A healthcare worker carries boxes on January 19 with the Covid-19 vaccine Sinopharm Group Co Ltd. at a vaccination center at the Belgrade Fair Exhibition Center.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic states the status of his country as the forerunner on the continent of Europe to get one vaccine in humans: look east as well as west.
The Balkans may seem like an unlikely success story because the neighboring European Union is caught in a fiasco over vaccinations. Yet Serbia’s history of balancing its geopolitical interests has borne fruit at a critical time.
Serbia was an important bridge for China to build a foothold in Europe, while the country is also a traditional ally of Russia and strives to join the EU. These ratios have made it possible to diversify and inoculate vaccines larger part of its population than any other country in Europe after Serbia injected 6.8% of its 7 million people, more than twice the ratio in the EU.
Most of the 1.1 million doses imported so far by the government in Belgrade come from China’s state-sponsored Sinopharm. Vucic says his refusal to criticize a chorus of leaders at a security conference in Germany has helped him establish good relations with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Aleksandar Vucic will meet on May 1, 2020 with Chen Bo and members of China’s medical team in Belgrade.
Photographer: Shi Zhongyu / Xinhua / Getty Images
‘I was the only one who did not accuse China of anything; that’s why we had a fraternal meeting – the foreign minister and I – and since then the Chinese support has started for us regarding the coronavirus and everything, ‘Vucic broadcast on television. addressed to the country last week.
The rapid injection to combat Covid-19 against the EU underscores the tensions across the continent, and also the potential geopolitical consequences in its most volatile region. The Serbian approach already has its followers within the EU: neighboring Hungary becomes the first member of the bloc to approve shots by Russia and China.
Serbia’s goal is to join the EU, although voters are already divided over membership, the pandemic could drive the country in the path of competing powers. Meanwhile, Belgrade promised a donation of vaccines to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which again exposed the divisions in former Yugoslavia that fueled the bloody wars of the 1990s.
Read more: Vaccines turn into geopolitics in Europe’s most volatile region
The EU has promised to give six prospective members in the Western Balkans – including Serbia – 70 million euros ($ 85 million) to buy Covid shots, but the deliveries are facing. Instead of waiting for EU help, Belgrade secured the vaccine directly from China, Russia and the US.
French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the difficulties Europe is facing with the implementation of vaccination programs ahead of a luncheon with Vucic on Monday in Paris. “I wish France, Europe would be more present about the vaccines,” Macron told Vucic and a group of reporters. “Our Europeans need to be even more effective with this.”
Europe’s early winners
Serbia follows the UK only to have its people vaccinated
Source: Bloomberg
The former information minister of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Vucic, called for favors when the Covid-19 crisis began and secured fans and protective equipment in the early stages of the contamination. He then orders vaccinations 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 want to assure the citizens that all the shots used are safe and effective.
A week ago, Vucic said he met with the Chinese ambassador and literally begged her for more deliveries. “Because I know President Xi, I believe we will receive significant quantities of new vaccines from China before May or June.” Serbia also now wants to start local production of the Russian vaccine.
The Serbian leader controls the government and has his power in the 2020 election with a great victory amid a boycott by some opposition parties accusing him of autocracy. However, his vote for voters also includes the ability to forge relationships across the geopolitical spectrum, with little regard for the feathers he can break along the way.
In June, Vucic elicited condemnation from EU politicians for kissing the Chinese flag when a plane delivered medical equipment from Beijing to Belgrade. At the time, he described the promise of EU solidarity, by far the biggest contributor to support and investment to Serbia, as ‘a fairy tale on paper’.
The vaccine Sinopharm Group Co Ltd. was delivered on January 16 at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
The supply of vaccines to Serbia provides an important geopolitical victory for China, as it faces a less fickle and more Sino-skeptical West under US President Joe Biden. In recent years, China has focused its infrastructure on 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, a foreign policy researcher at the University of Ljubljana. “It started with mask diplomacy and the narrative continues with vaccinations, despite the fact that Balkan countries are strategically dependent on the EU,” he said.
Healthcare workers on January 19 outside the vaccinations at the Belgrade Fair Exhibition Center. Serbia has contracts for 6.5 million vaccines.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic / Bloomberg
Serbia began vaccination on December 24, days before the EU. It has contracts for 6.5 million vaccines, but the worldwide scramble for shock damage undermines confidence that the deals will be honored, Vucic said. No vaccines came through the multinational Covax initiative, to which the Balkan state also joined early.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel crisis talks on Monday with pharmaceutical executives and European Commission officials as part of efforts to accelerate the faltering vaccination push. The 27 EU countries together vaccinated 2.9% of the population, compared to 14.7% in the UK and 10% in the US, according to Bloomberg’s Nothing Tracker.
“People in the EU are good people, but fortunately I had enough experience and knowledge to assume it would turn out that way,” Vucic said. “This is a war for the lives of the people, but also for the future of each country.”
– With the help of Ania Nussbaum, Peter Martin, Andrew Langley and Jan Bratanic