The European Commission has denied that it has halted funding to Serbia, contradicting remarks made days earlier by enlargement commissioner Marta Kos, who suggested payments had been stopped over concerns about judicial backsliding.
Kos said last week the EU had paused disbursements under the Growth Plan, the EU’s cash-for-reform scheme for Western Balkan candidates.
“For the time being, we have stopped all payments from the Growth Plan because it was backsliding in the judiciary,” she said last Thursday in Switzerland. “As long as this is not repaired, they will not be able to get European financial support,” she added at an event in Fribourg.
Serbia has been an EU candidate since 2012 and opened accession talks in 2014, but its membership bid remains stalled over slow progress on rule-of-law reforms, media freedom, and normalisation of relations with Kosovo, as well as limited alignment with EU foreign policy.
Yet on Monday, Markus Lammert, a Commission spokesperson…
