The Impact of the New Global Reality on the European Integration Process: The Case of the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

The acquisition of full membership for the Republic of Serbia in the European Union depends on a large number of factors. The combined and synergistic effect of these factors has made the process of Serbia's accession to the European Union extremely uncertain in terms of date and final outcome. The new reality, including the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. isolationist policies during President Trump's tenure, the strengthening of China and Russia, and Britain's exit from the EU, has made this process even more uncertain. In this context, it is crucial to identify and prioritize key factors that affect or could affect the process of Serbia's accession to the European Union, in order to evaluate the possible outcomes of this process. To solve problems of this level of complexity and uncertainty, it is necessary to apply an interdisciplinary approach of the appropriate level of complexity. Therefore, this paper is an extension of previous research (Krstic et al, 2018; Mimovic et al, 2019) based on the defined research goal, but incorporates a complex, network model called theAnalytical Network Process, which included new circumstances that determine what is colloquially called the new reality. All calculations in the paper were performed using the software package SuperDecisions as computer support for the Analytical Network Process.