On 7 September 2026, Ratko Mladić was buried in Belgrade. Known to the world as the “Butcher of Bosnia,” the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska had died ten days earlier in The Hague, while serving a life sentence for international crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian War. In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladić guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) upheld his conviction and life sentence in 2021.

Mladić’s legacy is inseparably linked to, among other crimes, the campaign of terror against the civilian population of Sarajevo, and, above all, the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995. It was under his command that Bosnian Serb forces, after capturing the UN-declared safe area of Srebrenica, systematically killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, while forcibly deporting approximately 25,000 women, children, and elderly people. These atrocities formed part of a broader project of ethnic cleansing aimed at reshaping the territorial and demographic map of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Yet despite these crimes, Mladić did not return to Serbia as a convicted war criminal. He returned as a national hero. Thousands of people gathered in Belgrade to honor him at his funeral. Political and religious figures participated in the ceremony, and military symbolism accompanied the burial. The event provoked international condemnation, with EU officials questioning its compatibility with European values and Serbia’s European future.

Mladić’s controversial funeral should be understood as more than a disturbing episode in Serbia’s contemporary politics. It was, first and foremost, a manifestation of a broader politics of memory surrounding the wars of the 1990s, in which revisionist narratives continue to deny or relativize war crimes and glorify their perpetrators. It further showed the limits of international criminal justice as a mechanism of reconciliation, as well as Serbia’s failure to translate international standards on memorialization into domestic memory practices. Finally, the episode exposed the tension between Serbia’s declared European orientation and a domestic memory politics that is difficult to reconcile with the values underpinning the European project. The future of Serbia’s European integration may ultimately depend not only on political and economic reforms, but also on its willingness to confront its recent violent past and transform the memory through which that past continues to shape the present.

The Memory of the 1990s Wars

Since 2012, when the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power under the leadership of Aleksandar Vučić, the wars of the 1990s have become increasingly central to Serbia’s official politics of memory. As Jelena Đureinović has argued, before that period, the country lacked a coherent state-sponsored memory concerning the 1990s wars. Political elites made little effort to construct an official narrative that would acknowledge Serbia’s involvement in the conflicts, the crimes committed in its name, or the suffering of non-Serb victims.

Nor did the 2010 Declaration on Srebrenica represent a decisive turning point in Serbia’s process of confronting the past. As Jasna Dragović-Soso has argued, the Declaration’s principal aim was to satisfy the EU’s expectations and advance Serbia’s European integration. Dubravka Stojanović has further interpreted the Declaration as an attempt to undermine the significance of the findings of the ICTY and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning Srebrenica. The Declaration, in fact, expressed regret for the crime, but notably avoided explicitly characterizing it as genocide.

After 2012, the 1990s wars became increasingly incorporated into a broader narrative of Serbia’s “liberation wars.” Within this narrative, Serbia’s military history – from the 1389 Battle of Kosovo and the anti-Ottoman uprisings to the First and Second World Wars, and ultimately the wars of the 1990s – is presented exclusively through the lens of liberation and defense. This framing effectively absolves Serbia of responsibility for the crimes committed in the 1990s. If Serbia’s wars are understood fundamentally as defensive struggles for liberation, the logic follows that war crimes could not occur in wars fought as self-defense. This also allowed Serbia to center the 1990s wars narrative exclusively on victimhood and heroism. The heroes are the Serbian Armed Forces, including convicted war criminals, and the victims are exclusively Serbian. There is no acknowledgment of the suffering of other communities.

Three events, in particular, occupy a central position in this narrative: the 1995 Croatian Operation Storm, which is remembered as an aggression that resulted in the expulsion of approximately 250,000 Serbs from Croatia; the 1999 NATO bombing, remembered primarily through the suffering of Serbian civilian victims; and the 1999 Battle of Košare, which became a symbol of Serbian military heroism and the suffering and displacement of Serbs during the Kosovo War. Such events, however, are narrated without any references to a broader political and historical context of the conflicts, or to the violence committed by Serbian forces or forces supported by Serbia.

Mladić occupies a particularly important place within this mnemonic framework. He is not remembered for some of the gravest atrocities of the 1990s wars, but as a military commander who defended Serbs in Bosnia. His public celebration is not new. When, for example, in 2021, a mural glorifying Mladić appeared in Belgrade, the authorities not only failed to remove it, but police officers intervened to protect the mural from a small group of human rights activists attempting to remove it.

The 1990s wars narrative has also found its expression in memory laws. The 2016 amendment to Serbia’s Criminal Code criminalizes the denial of genocide and war crimes, but only if these crimes have been adjudicated by Serbian courts or the International Criminal Court. The amendment intentionally excluded the judgments of the ICTY and ICJ adjudicating the Srebrenica genocide. This has contributed to the creation of a legal environment in which denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the consequent glorification of war criminals remain possible despite the final judgments of international courts that established the relevant facts and individual responsibility.

The 2018 Law on War Memorials further regulates the memorialization of Serbia’s war history from the First Balkan War to the conflict in Kosovo (1912-1999), establishing that monuments can exclusively commemorate Serbia’s “tradition of liberation wars.” As this tradition also includes the 1990s wars, the law’s implementation raises important questions about its potential impact on the construction of monuments commemorating other communities who were victims of crimes committed in the 1990s, as the law prohibits the erection of war memorials if they challenge Serbia’s sovereignty or territorial integrity.

European Mnemonic Conditionality

Serbia’s official memory politics of the 1990s wars fits uneasily with the requirements of European integration. While the latter may initially have been conceived primarily as a process of economic integration and political unification, more recently, increasing attention has been devoted to what Klas-Göran Karlsson calls cultural Europeanisation, launched by the EU institutions in the early 1990s. At the center of European cultural integration lies the construction of a transnational European memory, originally centered on the memory of the Holocaust and, following the EU’s eastern enlargements in the 2000s, also on the memory of Soviet Communism, with the EU considering both historical experiences, although not without criticism, as equally evil.

This development has created what might be described as a form of European mnemonic conditionality. The latter requires that not only EU member states, but also candidate countries come to terms with their own violent pasts in an unbiased way and acknowledge national crimes such as those committed during the Holocaust, and in the case of the Western Balkans, during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Tony Judt, for example, famously argued that the inclusion of the Holocaust as an important element of national history was one of the “entrance tickets” to the EU in the 2000s. In the Western Balkans, including Serbia, this mnemonic dimension of European integration demands respect for, alongside the traditional Copenhagen criteria, international obligations, including full cooperation with the ICTY, and consequently brings legal memories produced by international criminal justice into the accession process.

The Srebrenica genocide has subsequently become part of the European memory and commemorative practices; its denial and the glorification of its perpetrators thus conflict with the EU’s approach to remembrance and with the broader values associated with European integration. Nor can it be sustained that the denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the celebration of its perpetrators are simply protected by freedom of expression guaranteed by the ECHR. As I have argued elsewhere, the Srebrenica genocide falls, in the same way as the Holocaust, within the category of what the European Court of Human Rights describes as “clearly established historical facts” whose denial is not protected by the ECHR. Clearly established historical facts, in this context, include acts constituting genocide or crimes against humanity, as defined by international law and recognized as such by final and binding decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, or of any other international court established by relevant international instruments.

The “Hero Funeral”

Against this background, the events surrounding Mladić’s death were especially significant. Following his death, Serbia’s Justice Minister Nenad Vujić initially announced that Mladić would receive “all the military and state honors”. After international criticism, however, the state authorities withdrew from formally describing the burial as a state funeral and emphasized that the funeral arrangements were ultimately a matter for Mladić’s family.

Yet the distinction between a private funeral and state-sponsored commemoration became difficult to sustain in practice: Mladić’s body was transported from The Hague to Serbia on an official Serbian government aircraft. His coffin was wrapped in the Serbian flag and carried by Serbian military personnel. The commemoration was held at the Army Hall in Belgrade and was attended by the ministers responsible for justice, defense, and culture, while the funeral service was conducted by Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije. The ceremony attracted thousands of supporters, including war veterans and nationalist groups, turning the burial into a major public display of the Serbian official narrative of the 1990s wars.

Brussels Reacts

The European response made clear that the episode was not understood as a purely domestic controversy. Before the funeral, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos cancelled a planned visit to Serbia, arguing that the glorification surrounding Mladić’s death was incompatible with the values underlying Serbia’s European path. The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights further explicitly argued that the public glorification of Mladić is not protected as an exercise of freedom of expression. The European External Action Service described the 1990s wars as among Europe’s darkest moments and stressed solidarity with the victims, survivors and families.

After the funeral, the criticism escalated further, with EU leaders calling Serbia’s EU candidacy into question. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the images from the burial as “shocking,” while European Council President António Costa condemned the glorification of Mladić and stressed the importance of confronting the crimes of the 1990s. These reactions signal that memory has become an important part of the relationship between Serbia and the EU, with the funeral becoming an accession issue rather than merely a matter of moral condemnation.

When Criminal Justice is not Enough

Mladić’s funeral further demonstrates a fundamental limitation of international criminal justice: an international tribunal may investigate crimes, establish facts, determine individual responsibility, and impose punishment, but it cannot determine, by itself, how society will remember those crimes. A perpetrator convicted in The Hague can remain a hero within the community from which he comes, while for victims and survivors he represents the personification of criminal violence. This is one of the reasons why international criminal justice cannot, on its own, produce reconciliation. In other words, a judgment may establish what happened as a matter of law without producing a shared social memory of those events.

This, however, does not mean that criminal judgments should have no consequences for public commemoration. Quite the opposite. Criminal justice may not be able to create reconciliation, but its findings should at least establish limits within which public memory operates. This does not mean that the state should impose a single interpretation of a complex history. Democratic societies must allow disagreement about history and politics. But pluralism cannot mean that all historical claims have equal status, particularly where the facts have been established by international courts. The freedom to contest interpretations of the past cannot extend to state facilitation of the public transformation of a person convicted of genocide into a symbol of national pride.

Against International Standards of Memorialization

Mladić’s funeral has also created tension with contemporary approaches to memorialization under international human rights and the UN framework on transitional justice, which recognize memorialization as relevant to the rights to truth and reparation, and to guarantees of non-recurrence of violence. According to such a framework, the purpose of memorialization is not simply to preserve historical memory, but to contribute to the creation of a culture of remembrance that places victims and survivors at its center.

Mladić’s funeral reversed this logic of a victim-centered memorialization. It shifted attention away from those killed at Srebrenica and the civilians who suffered during the siege of Sarajevo and towards the person convicted of those crimes. It transformed criminal responsibility into military heroism and placed the perpetrator, rather than the victims, at the center of public remembrance.

The Price of Europeanisation

The Mladić’s funeral demonstrates that Serbia’s struggle over the memory of the 1990s wars remains unresolved – and that this unresolved past fits uneasily with its European aspirations. Europeanization cannot, in fact, be separated from how Serbia confronts its violent past. This requires accepting the legal facts established by international criminal justice and respecting the international standards that govern memorialization of mass atrocities. Criminal judgment may not produce reconciliation or a shared memory, but they establish boundaries that public commemoration should not erase. Similarly, memorialization should be centered on the victims rather than rehabilitating perpetrators.

For Serbia, confronting its violent past means more than acknowledging that crimes occurred. It requires rejecting the public glorification of those responsible for them and developing a culture of remembrance grounded in responsibility and respect for victims. Until then, the gap between Serbia’s declared European orientation and its politics of memory will remain one of the unresolved costs of Europeanisation.