In European diplomacy, few jobs are more demanding than the post of Serbia’s foreign minister. Its holder must manage relations with several neighbours that the nation has fought against in recent history, one of which – Kosovo – it refuses to recognise as a sovereign state. For related reasons, Serbia looms in the Western imagination as somehow not quite one of us. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which it was a part until 2003, was the only European country to have engaged in a hot war with Nato. Meanwhile, Belgrade maintains obstinately friendly relations with Russia.

Throughout his career, Marko Djuric, Serbia’s 41-year-old foreign minister, has had to deal with such challenges. Before being appointed to his current position last May, he spent more than three years in Washington as Serbia’s ambassador to the US. Before that, he was the director of Serbia’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija, which oversees the country’s turbulent relations with its reluctant former constituent. On one visit to Kosovo in 2018, Djuric was unceremoniously arrested and deported after local authorities claimed that he had entered without permission.

Prior to that, he was a foreign-policy advisor to Serbia’s then president, Tomislav Nikolic. Unlike the current president, Aleksandar Vucic, who served as minister of information under Slobodan Milosevic, Djuric has no ties to the regime culpable for the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Quite the opposite: as a teenager, he was active in the Otpor! (“Resistance!”) movement, which was crucial to the overthrow of Milosevic in October 2000.

Serbia is now convulsed by remarkably similar-looking demonstrations. In November the collapse of a concrete canopy at Novi Sad train station killed 15 people. There have since been huge and recurring protests. Serbia’s government has seemed uncertain how to respond. The prime minister, Milos Vucevic, resigned in January – but his deputy, Aleksandar Vulin, has suggested that the protests are being stoked by Western intelligence agencies, an echo of the Milosevic-era complaint about Otpor! In a corner office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade, an aide tidies away a “Make America Great Again” cap before Monocle sits down with Djuric to discuss the current protests, Milosevic, Ukraine, Donald Trump and more.

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What drew you to politics?
My grandfather was involved in Yugoslav politics and my great-grandfather’s brother [Nikola Pasic, former prime minister of both Serbia and Yugoslavia] was too. So it was natural for me to be interested. Growing up in Belgrade in the 1990s, you couldn’t escape what was going on. I was born in the capital of a country of 23.5 million people, covering more than 255,000 sq km. Then it became smaller and smaller, until it was the capital of a country of about seven million people.

As a teenage rebel, did you imagine that you would be sitting where you are now?
I certainly didn’t. But we had big dreams for our nation. Those years were a crucial moment in Serbian history. We were able to introduce serious democratic reforms after a difficult decade in which we not only lost our reputation but suffered tremendous losses – in terms of territory, people and the economy. It all went very wrong during the 1990s. But on 5 October 2000 [when protests forced Milosevic to resign], the people said, in a loud, clear voice, “We do not accept the direction that the regime is taking us and want to belong to a different type of community of nations.”

Do the current protests in Serbia remind you of Otpor! at all?
Apart from the fact that both are protests, I can’t say that I see any other similarity. The protests of 2000 were the culmination of a nationwide struggle for democracy. They were driven by our desire to free our country from a regime that had isolated us from the international community and to build a bright future in a new, democratic society – which is what we have today. 

Today’s protests originated as a public expression of grief over the tragic incident in Novi Sad; this was coupled with calls for accountability. So the context is quite different. Centred on four key student demands, these protests have brought issues such as upholding the rule of law, fighting corruption and strengthening our institutions into our focus. The government has addressed these concerns within a democratic framework and has fulfilled the students’ demands.

Which aspect of Serbia’s foreign policy are you prioritising?
We need to break free from the paradigm that we inherited from the 1990s and resolve our political problems. These include our difficult relations with some of our immediate neighbours and the relationship between Belgrade and Pristina. It’s the only way for us to turn the Balkans into one of Europe’s engines of economic growth, which I believe is possible. For us to be even more successful, we have to create a friendly environment for Serbia. As foreign minister, I view this as my primary task: to make new friends for my country and ask people across Europe and beyond to take a fresh look at us.

Do your neighbours still have fears and suspicions about Serbia because of what happened in the 1990s?
Yes. The break-up of Yugoslavia didn’t unfold like Czechoslovakia’s. There are still many families suffering as a result of those wars, as well as unresolved issues, including missing persons. It’s our duty to establish, where they do not exist, working groups to tackle these things. But we need two tracks: one for resolving those issues and closing open wounds, and the other for looking towards the future. We have to forge better connections between our countries. We have hard borders in our region that divide communities and families, and prevent business. Think of the number of hours that trucks spend a year on the borders between Serbia and Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia and Croatia: it probably adds up to thousands of years.

“No rational Serbian politician would support any policy that would involve attempts to forcefully change borders”

Do you still need to reassure your neighbours that Serbia is happy with where its borders are now?
A quarter of a century ago, Serbs renounced a regime that was involved in very wrong-headed attempts to amend regional borders and we were burned by this. No rational Serbian politician would support any policy that would involve attempts to forcefully change borders.

Does this thinking apply to Kosovo?
Our relationship with Kosovo is very specific. It unilaterally declared independence in 2008, almost a decade after the war in 1999, in which Serbia also suffered greatly.

The ruins across the street are of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building, aren’t they?
Yes. Nato bombed it in 1999. But just a year later, Serbs embraced and elected a pro-EU, pro-Nato government. Then, in 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence without the participation of Kosovo’s Serbs. It was completely outside the Constitution of Serbia and outside the scope of the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which ended the hostilities in 1999. The resolution stipulated that Kosovo should be an autonomous province within Serbia, with the highest degree of autonomy to be determined through negotiation. This not only resulted in a new political problem in our region but also created political openings in Serbia for various malign influences.

If you ask Kosovo’s current government what it wants – and I’ve interviewed its prime minister, Albin Kurti, several times – the answer is simple. Kosovo wants to be a country like any other. Does Serbia have a preferred end point now?
We’re working hard to change the relationship between Serbs and Albanians. Relations between Serbia and Albania have helped a lot in recent years. With Albania and North Macedonia, we created a single labour market that has been in effect since March 2024. It shows that things can be different. Last summer about 118,000 Serbs spent their holidays on the shores of Albania. It’s no longer a conflict between Serbs and Albanians.

But what would a settlement look like?
We need a pragmatic solution that will be a win-win for both Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Serbs are the majority in 10 out of 38 municipalities in Kosovo. That’s what remains of the Serbian community, which has suffered very greatly, just as Albanians have. We need a compromise that will address the questions of status and territory in a way that won’t leave either side entirely frustrated. We’re not setting any red lines as to what the final outcome of the arrangement might be.

Has there ever been any talk along the lines of: just let Kosovo go and President Vucic and Prime Minister Kurti can share a Nobel Peace Prize?
We’re not in the business of doing things that are personally profitable. For Serbs, Kosovo and Metohija aren’t just about territory. There are four Unesco World Heritage sites of the Serbian Orthodox Church [in Kosovo], which, by the way, has been around since 1219. For Serbs, it’s like a spiritual cradle. Many of our medieval kings and queens ended their lives as monks in the monasteries that they built in Kosovo. So it’s complex. It’s something that deeply touches the emotions of every Serbian.

Serbia has been an EU candidate since 2012. Your office is decorated with the bloc’s flag, as well as the Serbian one. Are you still serious about joining it?
It’s a key priority. By 2027, Serbia will fully complete all of the reforms required for membership. Even now, Serbia is doing far better economically than many countries that are already members. Our debt-to-gdp ratio is 46 per cent, while the Eurozone average is more than 90 per cent. The IMF has projected that we’ll have a growth rate of 4.1 per cent this year. The Eurozone’s projected growth rate is 0.7 per cent. Serbia can contribute a lot to Europe – not just in terms of the economy but also when it comes to culture and our geopolitical position. We are at the crossroads of civilisations. We are in the middle of southeastern Europe and have a vast network of connections and friendships with countries just beyond our region.

What is your position on Russia and Ukraine? Serbia has declined to participate in sanctions against Russia. But you’ve sold Ukraine a lot of ammunition – at least, through third parties. Whose side are you on?
Serbia has a clear position of unambiguous support for Ukraine’s integrity and sovereignty in the entire territory of the country – including Donbas, including Crimea. My first guest here after I was appointed to this role was Ukraine’s former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. Since then we have also met its current foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha. Serbia has consistently voted in the UN and in the OECD to support Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemn any actions that undermine this. I should also mention that Ukraine supports Serbia’s territorial integrity in the question of Kosovo and Metohija. However, our relationship with Russia is somewhat different, both historically and currently, than with some other European countries.

Why is that?
We have some interests – including the question of Kosovo and Metohija – for which the Russian Federation provides support at the UN Security Council, alongside the People’s Republic of China. Sometimes, people have used this specific situation to criticise Serbia. It’s easy not to look under the surface and come to the conclusion that there’s something more to our relationship with Moscow. I’ve read conspiracy theories linking Serbia to Russia in ways that would mean that we ostensibly support what it is doing in Ukraine. But we aren’t supporting that war in any way.

Could Serbia be an interlocutor? Have you had any direct contact with Russia since taking this job?
I haven’t met my Russian counterpart and haven’t been to Moscow yet. I can say that we have been approached by various actors internationally with ideas to act as intermediaries. But, for the time being, we are doing everything we can to help with the humanitarian needs of the people of Ukraine, and we are focusing on maintaining our position and our interests, because this is not simple in the current circumstances, as you can imagine.

“The Balkans can’t be Europe’s blind spot while Russia and Trump-era politics loom over the continent”

With Trump back in the White House, do you think that things will be easier? I noticed a Maga cap on the bookcase when I arrived and I doubt that many European foreign ministers own one of those.
In the coming months we will need more countries that are able to talk to all sides. Being ready for conversation while taking a principled stance is what I believe will be most helpful for Serbia. As for Trump, if you look at the opinion polls in Europe, you’ll see that Serbia probably has the biggest number of his supporters per capita. Even many liberals here are pro-Trump. Their reasons aren’t ideological. It’s to do with the fact that it was the Democratic Clinton administration that bombed Serbia in 1999, bombed my hometown of Belgrade. Unfortunately, this is still a feeling that is out there but Serbia has made tremendous steps forward in its relationship with the US. People in Serbia would support any politician who is ready to take a fresh look at our country and establish a new type of relationship. We are moving closer to the US in many ways and are hopeful about seeing its new president visit Serbia.

How much of a burden is the recent past? Do you feel obliged to maintain some grievances for domestic political reasons? For example, you recently complained that the UN-designated day of recognition for the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 [in which some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed] only memorialised one group, rather than the 100,000 victims of the wider conflict.
Unfortunately, many among the political elites and the wider public in the West haven’t been exposed to new developments in the Balkans so I often need to talk about all of the things that have changed. Among these is our mindset. In the 20th century, many of us were focused on ideological, territorial and identity issues. Now we are concentrating on growth and building up our infrastructure. Ethno-nationalism in its malign form is still out there but it’s not a prevailing current of Serbian politics – or even regional politics, for that matter.

Much of the rhetoric of Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska [one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two constituent entities, predominantly inhabited by Serbs], sounds like ethno-nationalism in its malign form.
I speak for the Republic of Serbia. We are committed to regional co-operation and stability. Serbia firmly supports Bosnia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. It also supports the Dayton Peace Agreement, which means that we support the territorial integrity of Bosnia but also the [autonomy] of Republika Srpska and the Federation [of Bosnia and Herzegovina].

So you’re absolutely against any declaration of independence by Dodik?
I’m against anything that violates the Dayton Peace Agreement, including that.

Is your overall contention that prosperity is the cure for ethno-nationalism? 
Economic prosperity and connectivity are prerequisites but we also need to emancipate ourselves to a sufficient level to be able to preserve our national identities and cultures without hating each other. We might not be there yet but we’re getting close.

When you talk about the idea of the Balkans without internal borders, with national identities preserved yet subsumed in mutual self-interest, it sounds like you’re describing Yugoslavia.
We aren’t aspiring to recreate Yugoslavia because it failed miserably in previous generations. We want to create a truly European Balkans that will enable young people to live their dreams in their own region, instead of leaving for Western Europe, the UK or the US. And I believe that this is achievable in our generation.