THERE WAS delight in many EU capitals yesterday at the news from Belgrade. In what is a significant setback for Serb ultranationalism, the country's voters have surprised pollsters and commentators alike by giving moderate, pro-EU president Boris Tadic's party a significant margin of victory. But not a majority.
It is not that Serbia's eventual membership of the union, any more that of Turkey, is viewed with unalloyed joy by Brussels, although sometimes the enthusiasm with which Enlargement Commissioner Oli Rehn has sold the joys and benefits of EU accession to its voters might suggest otherwise.
The dangling carrot of Serb accession, however, is the price the union is willing to pay for regional stability and to nurture a neighbour which may be prevailed on to shed ambitions it may have had to shape in its image the map of the Balkans.
The election result will almost certainly see the end of the unholy alliance that is Serbia's current administration between the bloc led by Mr Tadic's Democratic Party (DS) and that led by outgoing prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, the Democratic Party of Serbia and the New Serbia party (DSS/NS). Mr Kostunica recently denounced Mr Tadic's signing of an agreement with the EU setting out a path to membership as "Judas's seal on the surrender of Kosovo". These are hardly comments conducive to a harmonious working relationship.
Yesterday, ultranationalist Radicals' leader Tomislav Nikolic insisted that a nationalist majority government was still a possibility mathematically. While split between different parties, nationalist voters taken together still make up more than half the electorate and Mr Tadic will have a difficult challenge cobbling together a new coalition. He may have to rely not only on a small pro-EU liberal party but, ominously, on the Socialist Party - which was led by Slobodan Milosevic until he was ousted in 2000 - which appears to hold the balance of power. "We are the ones who expect to be called," Socialist leader Ivica Dacic said yesterday, warning that they will not come cheaply. "We don't want power at any cost." Agreement with the Socialists on turning a blind eye to EU recognition of Kosovo will be particularly difficult, as will softening the party's traditional hostility to the Hague war crimes court.
Serbia's voters appear to have taken a step away from the irredentism of the past and towards a European future but it is still tentative and uneasy. It is to be hoped Mr Tadic succeeds.