“The EPP does not have a blind eye on what is happening in Serbia,” Weber told reporters, adding that he would submit Vučić’s party to a “scrutiny process” which he expects to conclude “in the next few days”.
Whether this process could lead to the party’s expulsion, which would require approval from the EPP’s full membership committee, remains unclear.
The move comes after the Serbian president threatened to take legal action against European Green politicians over the weekend after they joined protests in his country. He called them the “scum” of Europe’s Green bloc and threatened to prosecute them.
“The EPP must come clean about having an autocrat in the family,” Danish Green MEP Rasmus Nordqvist, who joined the protests, told Euractiv.
Serbian protestors have demanded early elections and the resignation of Vučić, who has ruled the country since 2014 – first as prime minister and then as president.
The recent student-led anti-government protests which were triggered by the collapse of a railway station roof in Novi Sad last year that killed 16 people. Many suspect that the collapse was linked to official corruption.
Nick Alipour contributed reporting.
(mm, vib)
CORRECTION: This article has been corrected to reflect that Aleksandar Vučić is president of Serbia. The headline has been amended to reflect that the EPP is not yet planning the expulsion of Vučić’s party.
