A week before the adoption of a European Commission conclusion on Serbia's progress on the path to EU membership, the support of Serbian citizens for the country's EU entry is only 46 percent, which is the lowest level of support in the last 11 years, Belgrade daily Blic said on Wednesday.
Public support for EU membership has dropped seven percent in the last three months, the paper says, adding that the latest surveys show that as many as 37 percent of citizens are opposed to the country's EU entry.
The findings of the latest survey were confirmed by Svetlana Logar of the Serbian agency Ipsos Strategic Marketing. The findings are part of a regular monthly survey the agency carried out in September among 1,010 adults, Logar said.
According to Blic, the decline in support is owing to some moves by European officials, notably regarding Kosovo. Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European integration, Bozidar Djelic, told Blic that the citizens' attitude during the crisis in northern Kosovo showed that the decline in support for EU membership was exclusively due to "the decision of a small number of countries to support unilateral acts of the Kosovo government in northern Kosovo."
"There are two victims to any act of giving up on dialogue - the people in Kosovo and the European idea in Serbia. That is why I expect support for the European idea in Serbia to continue declining in the weeks to come," said Djelic.
He went on to say that the most worrying element was that the "painstakingly built consensus on EU entry" was now being lost at an increasingly fast pace.
A six-month regular survey carried out in June and presented in early July showed 53 percent support for Serbia's EU entry, a drop in relation to December 2010, when the support was at 57 percent. In June 2010, the support was 65 percent.
The latest survey shows an increase in support for ongoing reforms, a trend that was reported in late 2010 as well.
Presenting the results of the last six-month survey, the head of the Serbian government's office for European integration, Milica Delevic, said at the time that the level of support was declining as the process of integration was progressing because citizens were realising that there were concrete benefits from EU membership but also that they had to change or give something up.
She recalled that support to reforms in December 2010 was 78 percent and in June 85 percent.
At a meeting on October 12, the European Commission is expected to adopt a conclusion on Serbia's progress towards EU membership, after which it should be known if a suggestion will be made to give Serbia EU candidate status.
