The Serbian Socialist Party Attitudes towards the EU through the Lens of Party Programmes

Abstract

In this paper, we will analyse the attitudes of the oldest political party in Serbia (the Socialist Party of Serbia – SPS) towards the European Union from the party’s establishment to the present day. We have chosen this party for two important theoretical and methodological reasons. First, it is the only party in Serbia to inherit the continuity of socialist heritage, i.e. the only one to retain the socialist nomenclature when, at least nominally, party pluralism, an electoral regime and the transformation to capitalism began. The second reason is that the SPS is the largest left-wing party in Serbia, and one of the largest parties in Serbia in general. In this paper, we will apply a narrative analysis of the party’s most important legal documents. The focus of our analysis will be on documents from 2010 and 2014, but to be able to follow the historical development of the attitudes of the SPS towards the EU, we have also included a document from 1990 in the analysis.

Keywords

• Serbia
• Serbian Socialist Party
• European Union
• democracy
• populism
• nationalism