European Union enlargement chief Marta Kos has cancelled a planned trip to Serbia after a Serbian government plane brought the body of former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic to Belgrade for what is expected to be a large funeral.

The cancellation was reported on September 4, 2026, and Kos tied her decision to what she described as glorification of Mladic’s death. In a post on X quoted by Reuters, she said that celebration around him was incompatible with the values underpinning the EU path and that reconciliation requires confronting the past and respecting victims of war crimes.

Mladic died the previous week in a U.N. detention facility in The Hague at the age of 84. He had been convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. The Straits Times report says his body was flown to Belgrade on a Serbian government plane before the funeral arrangements were made public.

The political reaction in Serbia was immediate. President Aleksandar Vucic dismissed Kos’s explanation as “extremely short, but stupid, as usual,” according to the Reuters report carried by The Straits Times. That reaction underscores how Mladic remains a polarizing figure in Serbia and in Bosnia’s Serb Republic, where he is still revered by many supporters.

The funeral itself is being treated as both a family event and a political flashpoint. The report says a commemoration ceremony is being arranged at the Army Hall building in central Belgrade by an association of retired generals. It also says the funeral will take place in a church in a Belgrade suburb on Monday, with burial at a cemetery beside Mladic’s daughter.

Kos’s decision reflects a broader EU message that the bloc expects candidates and aspirants to confront wartime atrocities rather than celebrate them. Her public remarks suggest the trip was not cancelled over logistics or protocol, but over what she saw as a symbolic break with the values required for EU accession.

That makes the episode more than a dispute over a funeral. It is another reminder that the politics of the Yugoslav wars still shape Serbia’s relationship with Brussels decades later. A leader’s burial can become an accession test when the person being mourned is also a convicted war criminal.

The report also notes that a Serbian minister had initially said Mladic would receive a state funeral, though that was not confirmed after European criticism. Even without that label, the ceremony is clearly intended to be high-profile. For the EU, that is enough to turn a planned visit into a diplomatic statement.

Kos’s cancellation leaves the message in sharp form: the accession process is not only about formal reforms. It also carries moral expectations about how the region handles the legacy of war. In this case, the symbolism of bringing Mladic home was enough to prompt a direct public rebuke from Brussels.