EUROPEAN integration takes different forms. For governments like Serbia’s it means struggling with thousands of instructions from the EU on how to build a modern state. Yet for thousands of ordinary Serbs, since IKEA opened in Belgrade on August 10th, it means spending the weekend like millions of other EU citizens: buying furniture from the Swedish megastore and struggling with the instructions on how to put it together.
If it had been anywhere else in Europe, the opening of the 400th IKEA store would hardly have been news, let alone an occasion for national soul-searching led by Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic. In a newspaper article he penned an ode of praise for IKEA and Ingvar Kamprad, its founder. In his youth, wrote the president, Mr Kamprad had been a member of a wartime Swedish fascist party, but he had redeemed himself. No one in the Balkans needed to scratch their head and wonder what Mr Vucic was alluding to here. The president spent 16 years as a leading member of an...Continue reading
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