A group of MEPs warned on Thursday of what they see as an extremely serious situation in Serbia in regard to human rights.

In a letter to European Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, the MEPs said that the open-ended state of emergency imposed by President Aleksandar Vucic to tackle the coronavirus pandemic is a severe and disproportionate measure which restricts human rights, “apparently not in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but to impede freedom of expression and free movement.”

The letter added that “several citizens have been detained for violating strict curfew provisions, while the real reason behind their arrests was criticism of government policy.” It recalled that the Serbian government “wanted full control over the press, in order to broadcast only filtered, mostly fake information and defamation against the European Union” but the following protest revoked the decree “which was used as a pretext to arrest journalists.”

The MEPs believe that the deployment of the military to hospitals is “a measure compatible with a state of war, rather than a pandemic” and expressed concern over the fact that “the declaration of the state of emergency took place in the absence of a sitting parliament.”

  They asked Varhelyi if he was monitoring Serbia’s “extremely serious domestic developments and anti-EU statements and what action he intends to take to ensure that the EU acts to confront the rather extreme measures of the Serbian government.”

“What kind of political steps do you recommend to the European Commission with regard to the EU membership prospects of Serbia in case its government refuses to revoke its repressive policies and to fully honour common European values,” the letter said.