PANEL DISCUSSION 2024

Milutin ILIĆ:
THE GRADUAL LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY CAN LEAD TO THE COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE OF STATEHOOD

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to start by saying that as the President of the Society of Czech-Serbian Friendship, I would like to speak Czech, and I believe that you will bear with my pronunciation. I believe you will accept it with understanding. It is said that Slavs have brothers everywhere, so I hope it will also be true in Prague.

Let me begin by apologising the Vice-premier of the Serbian Government, Aleksandr Vulin, who sends the most cordial greetings to this conference. Vice-premier Vulin cannot be with us today because he was entrusted with the leadership of the Serbian state delegation at the BRICS summit in Kazan, which is taking place in parallel with our conference. He firmly believes that next year nothing will prevent his participation in Prague. I will continue speaking as the Managing Director of the Geopolitikon Institute.

The key issue in today's politics is the concept of sovereignty. Traditionally, it is understood as the ability of the so-called Westphalian state to exercise state power over a defined population in a defined area. This term is gaining new importance especially for countries that are current members of the European Union, and which have voluntarily transferred a significant part of their powers to a transnational level, i.e. to the EU headquarters in Brussels. The current state of supremacy of Community law over national law in practice means that the national state has only limited, residual sovereignty. However, only a few people are aware that the doctrine of Community law supremacy does not stem directly from the primary EU law, that is, from a set of founding and follow-up treaties, but from the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Communities in the case of Costa versus ENEL. That is why we could have recently seen the Polish attempt to declare the supremacy of domestic constitutional order by a decision of the Polish Constitutional Court.

The theme of sovereignty is also related to the phenomenon of political secession called secessionism, which means the separation of a part of the state from the existing state and the declaration of its independence. For Serbia, this issue is crucial and burning because of the process of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, and especially because of the Kosovo issue. Kosovo is the most pressing problem in the Balkans, which defines the overall stability in the region. From our point of view, the secession process undermines state sovereignty and is only possible if it is carried out in accordance with international law.

But back to all of Europe. In our view, the problem of EU Member States is the process of gradual loss of national sovereignty, which may lead to the complete demise of statehood. Today, we can even see attempts to abolish the veto right of EU Member States. That is why we feel that European countries are divided into two camps. Those who want to restore and realistically exercise their state sovereignty and those who have resigned to this ambition and voluntarily accept the supranational supergovernment of European federalists. Every day, we see a growing conflict between European federalists who rely on multiculturalism and progressivism and the sovereigns who defend traditional values: the nation, faith in God, family, culture, and language.

The current system of global power subordinates all to influence and profit. The wealth of some is at the expense of others. Moreover, it applies very skilfully the "divide and rule" principle, using partial differences between individual states and ethnicities in order to minimise the possibility of their independent decision-making. Therefore, knowledge of this manipulative technique should motivate us to cooperate and overcome the various resentments that came with time and history. Nations that want to preserve their traditional values and their sovereignty should begin to cooperate systematically. Especially the countries of the wider Central European area, because it is our "common living space", only our "common living space", should employ the principle of maximum cooperation with mutual respect for the national interests of individual countries. I feel that it is crucial that Christian countries in the Balkans try to adopt this approach, and I believe that they can achieve it together with us.

Moreover, it shows that this close cooperation is possible both with EU Member Countries and non-EU countries. Trilateral cooperation in the format of Serbia, Hungary and Austria in the field of control of illegal migration has recently been working well and yields its fruit; the same is true about the present developing cooperation between Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia in the same area of illegal migration and the risks associated with radical Islam. It works well. The result is that there are only symbolic 477 migrants in Serbia now. Viktor Orbán has even tried to give the group a format called the Sovereign Alliance. Italy has also found its solution to the migration problem by deporting illegal migrants to Albania, an Islamic country in which most migrants feel "at home" as we say in Serbia.

I think that Serbia feels naturally connected to Central Europe and considers itself a part of it, as Serbia shared a common destiny with Central Europe in the past and will share it even more in the near future. Central European Union would make our living space safer and more resilient and could foster development and prosperity of all of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to get to work!

Thank you for your attention.