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In the next few days, the leadership of the European People’s Party (EPP) will decide whether to keep the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) as an associate member of the EPP.
The European People’s Party has decided to “start a scrutiny process” on the associate membership of Aleksandar Vučić ‘s Serbian Progressive Party, EPP President Manfred Weber told reporters in Strasbourg on September 9. Weber said the investigation into the SNS membership would be by an EPP working group and would take place “in the coming days.”
Vučić ‘s SNS is an associate member of the party family because Serbia is an EU candidate country. Associate members have close ties and shared values with the centre-right organisation, but with limited voting rights.
Criticism of the Serbian government’s policies is growing in Europe: On 9 September 2025, the European Parliament discussed the escalating violence against protesters in Serbia with Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos. The plenary session raised serious concerns about corruption, police violence, media repression and democratic decline. The debate, entitled “Wave of violence and continued use of force against protesters in Serbia”, was the subject of criticism of the Serbian government from centre-left and centrist groups, but also from the majority of speakers from the European People’s Party. Speaking on behalf of the EPP, MEP Davor Ivo Štir confirmed what EPP President Manfred Weber had earlier on the sane day said that the party would consider further associate membership for the ruling Serbian SNS. “The EPP will make appropriate decisions regarding relations with the SNS,” Davor Ivo Štir said.
Right-wing and far-right groups have supported the SNS, accusing the EU of interfering in Serbia’s affairs.
Euronews cited an EPP source as saying that there are many discussions within the party family about how to deal with SNS membership. Vučić’s handling of opposition protests and his ties to Putin and Orbán are a problem for the EPP. On the other hand, many in the EPP believe that channels of communication with Vučić should remain open, and keeping the SNS’s associate membership could contribute to this.
Vučić’s absence from the EPP congress in Valencia at the end of April 2025 was one of the early signs of deteriorating party relations within the center-right family. Serbian media reported that on August 21, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić sent a letter to EC President Ursula von der Leyen (from the EPP political family) warning of the growing unrest in Serbia. He complained to Ursula von der Leyen that over the past 9 months, more than 23,000 unregistered gatherings, such as student protests, had continued but “escalated into blockades and violent incidents led by extremist groups”. According to him, they had disrupted daily life and damaged the economy. Vučić stressed that the police had acted with restraint.
Of the other parties in the EP, the most critical was the European Green Party, which accused Vučić of escalating repression against protesters, the media, politicians and freedom of speech. The Greens also called on the EPP to insist on free elections in Serbia.
A bitter exchange of criticism between the European Greens and Aleksandar Vučić erupted when Rasmus Nordqvist, a Danish Green MEP, and Vula Tsetsi, co-chair of the umbrella organization of the European Green Parties, joined the protests in Novi Sad after appearing with leaders of the Serbian Green-Left Front in the national parliament on September 5. In a televised address late at night after clashes between police and protesters, Vučić attacked Nordqvist and Tsetsi, calling them “scum from the European Green Party… who came to support the violence in Novi Sad,” according to a party press release. It calls for a change in the Commission and Council’s approach to Vučić and for the EPP to take responsibility, condemn Vučić’s authoritarianism and distance itself from his regime.
At the EP session, the Left faction even called for targeted sanctions against those who suppress democracy, understand Vučić. At the other extreme were the representatives of the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), who pointed out the danger of Serbia becoming a second Ukraine and insisted that the EP not interfere in Serbian internal affairs (“the Serbs are allergic to foreign interference”).
Overall, the EP concluded that Serbia is not on the European path or, as Marta Kos diplomatically put it, that trust in “the sincerity of Serbia’s commitment on the path to the EU” is diminishing.
The EPP headquarters are clearly trying to discipline the SNS (for example by temporary suspension) and distance themselves as much as possible from the contaminated Vučić, who easily shakes hands with Putin and Xi Jinping. However, it took the center-right EPP years to break with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The Party of European Socialists, on its part, suspended Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party from the umbrella alliance of Europe’s centre-left parties in 2023, and just now, at a congress in Amsterdam next month, the socialists will permanently exclude Smer.
Depriving the SNS of associate membership in the EPP will not change Vučić’s policies in any way, but permanently exclusion may isolate him even more from Europe, and forever close his path to the European mainstream.
