One has to wonder when the European Union's policy people will stop flogging the sick-horse economy of Serbia, that Balkan country damaged by sanctions and brutal secession wars in the 1990's.
Desperate for markets anywhere, but lucky enough to call China a partner, the Serbs were forced by the EU last week to reverse a decision not to send anyone to Norway's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Serbian foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, said he had tried to show support for a trade partner which recently agreed to finance the first part of a $1.25-billion (U.S.) upgrade of Serbia's devastated power utility.
As it has in the past, Brussels applied enormous pressure on Belgrade, telling EU-keen Serbs that not attending the Nobel ceremony for laureate and China dissident Liu Xiaobo endangered their EU membership application.
"We had expected that a country with ambitions of joining the European Union EU would share the values … human rights is basic value in the EU," a statement from European Commission headquarters said. The Serbs chose Europe, and sent a ministry-backed human rights ombudsman to the Nobel concert in Oslo.
For many Serbs, real deals with China now are better than the promise from Brussels of a Europe without import levies and minimum prices for commodities from outside the bloc.
Exports to China -- not nearby Europe -- have fuelled a feint (1.5 per cent) spurt of production for Serbs in 2010. Like the rest of the world, Serbia can ill afford to have China close the doors to trade. And human rights or not, Europeans aggressively push their trade to China.
So, why flog a Serbia surviving on €367-million in International Monetary Fund disbursements, relations with China and the waning direct investment of crisis-hit Greeks?
This month's International Monetary Fund report on Serbia said food-price hikes are worsening, and exchange rate losses could mean 2010 ends with 8 per cent inflation for a nation that saw net wages fall by 10 per cent in 2009.
Though the IMF says Serbia is just "on track," the pain is real for the one in two Serbs who believe accession documents from the EU are a ruse akin to withholding aid at the last minute to effect the handover of war crimes suspects.
For Serbs, the year that ended when Kosovo Albanians declared independence showed that Brussels could say it was negotiating in good faith while instead writing a new state's constitution and crafting it a blue, EU-like flag.
Europe's power brokers must be straight on the "us or China" threat to Serbia while the IMF "negotiates" Serbian fiscal policy.
Should the EU flog the horse again and renege on membership, then what's Brussels up to?
It isn't a stable Serbia.