DISINFO: Serbia left out of EU aid package
SUMMARY
The European Union is sending aid to the [Western Balkan] region, but not to Serbia.
RESPONSE
While it is factually correct that Serbia will not benefit from the Macro financial assistance package to ten neighbouring countries to the EU due to its own decisions, the title gives the impression that the EU deliberately left Serbia out of the aid package. The package, worth € 3 billion, was adopted by the Commission on 22 April. More details can be found here. It also omits that Serbia already benefited from EU assistance (worth €15) with immediate support to the Western Balkans to cope with the pandemic, which was announced on 30 March. The fact is that one of the criteria for inclusion of countries in the aid package of 22 April was whether a country had asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency liquidity assistance, for example in the form of a Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI). The Commission had made Serbia aware of the possibility to receive macro financial assistance under the condition of an IMF-RFI being in place. The Serbian authorities did not see a need for external financial assistance, and consequently for the EU’s micro financial assistance. While the body of the Sputnik Serbia article contains the accurate reasoning, the title is clearly misleading - and importantly, as research shows, many readers do not read beyond headlines. This practice of misleading readers by omitting key bits of context encourages speculation that Serbia has been forgotten or punished by the EU, and may leave readers under the impression that the EU left Serbia without micro financial assistance in this critical time, while it helped other countries in the region.