Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party and the embodiment of excessive caution, long treated Brexit as a radioactive subject. Pro- European by conviction yet pragmatic in electoral strategy, he built his 2024 victory on a paradox, speaking about everything except the essential issue of departure from the European Union. It was a victory founded on avoidance, while the Conservatives, embarrassed by their own legacy, refrained from celebrating an exit that delivered neither an economic miracle nor a tangible recovery of sovereignty. Even Nigel Farage, the ideological father of Brexit, has turned the page, preferring to focus on new electoral targets such as immigration or global elites rather than defend the mixed results of the policy he once championed.
BREXIT COST
From an economic perspective, the United Kingdom avoided outright collapse, but at the cost of prolonged economic slowing and a relative decline in geopolitical influence. Trade with the European Union weakened, productivity stagnated, and the trade agreements presented by the authorities as successes yielded modest gains, far removed from the prosperity once promised. The British public eventually turned to the figures, and opinion polls now show that a majority of citizens believe leaving the European Union was a mistake. It is a brutal reckoning for a country that pledged to take back control and now negotiates each issue as though it were a privilege that has been withdrawn.
Confronted with this reality, Keir Starmer ultimately broke the taboo, publicly denouncing the falsehoods of the 2016 campaign, including promises of billions for the health care system and an end to immigration. This partial acknowledgment of error was accompanied by a discreet yet symbolic rapprochement with Brussels, highlighted by the planned return to the Erasmus program in 2027. This evolution shows that even the most cautious governments eventually recognize the practical advantages of membership in the European Union, especially as geopolitical instability grows and the special relationship with the United States increasingly resembles a one-sided dependency.
This British retreat offers a clear counterpoint for examining the trajectories of countries that remain candidates for membership in the European Union.
CHANCE FOR SERBIA
In contrast to the United Kingdom, which chose to leave the European single market and now bears the economic cost, Serbia finds itself in a fundamentally opposite and potentially far more favorable position. The European Union already accounts for nearly sixty percent of Serbian trade and around seventy percent of foreign direct investment entering the country. In other words, Serbia is already deeply integrated economically with the Union, yet without full access to the stabilizing mechanisms, structural funds, and political influence that membership provides. According to numerous economic assessments, full membership could generate in the medium term a gross domestic product increase of approximately five to ten percent, thanks to complete access to the single market, the removal of non-tariff barriers, and deeper integration into European production chains.
The experience of Western Balkan and Central European countries is unequivocal: European integration acts as an accelerator of growth. Croatia, a member since 2013, has recorded an increase in gross domestic product per capita of more than twenty percent thanks to structural funds and access to the single market. Slovenia, integrated in 2004, more than doubled its exports to the Union over the following decade and a half, while productivity rose by more than thirty percent. Poland, since its accession in 2004, has achieved a gross domestic product increase of roughly 25-30 percent, driven by foreign investment and integration into European value chains. Montenegro conducts more than seventy five percent of its trade with the Union, while North Macedonia has increased its industrial exports to the European market by more than forty percent over a decade. By contrast, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, situated on the margins of the integration process, display gross domestic product per capita levels thirty to forty percent lower than those of member states and remain dependent on diaspora transfers due to a lack of structural investment.
Serbia, with nearly half of the Western Balkans gross domestic product and more than fifty percent of foreign investment in the region, has much to gain from rapid accession. Effective integration could function as a regional economic multiplier, strengthening its role as an industrial, logistical, and financial hub, while simultaneously expanding the tax base and the capacity to finance health care, public services, and social protection. Where the United Kingdom lost around fifteen percent of its trade with the European Union and experienced a relative decline in productivity, Serbia can transform European integration into measurable growth and a direct improvement in the standard of living of its citizens.
Conclusion: two trajectories, one lesson – integration pays while disintegration exacts a cost.
Brexit and the European integration of Serbia present a striking contrast between two geo economic models. On one side stands the United Kingdom, which chose to exit the single market in 2020 and has since faced trade losses with the European Union and a decline in productivity as lasting consequences. Opinion surveys indicate that roughly 60-65 percent of Britons now believe Brexit was a mistake, an admission of failure for a country that promised to reclaim control.
On the other side, the countries of Central Europe and the Western Balkans demonstrate that European integration remains a driver of prosperity and growth. For Serbia, the stakes are clear. Full membership could raise gross domestic product by five to ten percent, eliminate non-tariff barriers that currently cost around two percent of annual output, and attract additional investment. Balkan countries marginalized in the integration process, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, continue to stagnate, with gross domestic product per capita thirty to forty percent below the average of European Union member states.
The final lesson is unmistakable. Brexit has shown that disintegration carries an economic and geopolitical cost, while integrated Central Europe and the Balkans confirm that the European Union remains an accelerator of prosperity. For Serbia, the alternative is simple: to replicate the successes of Croatia and Slovenia or to risk a bilateral decline in economic development. History will judge whether Belgrade can transform its candidate status into a lever of growth, or whether, like London, it will choose to pay the price of isolation.
*Author is former member of the UN senior staff