Koen Slootmaeckers: Coming In: Sexual Politics and EU Accession in Serbia

Coming in: Sexual Politics and the EU Accession in Serbia is certainly not the only book examining the promotion of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights in EU candidate countries. 1However, it may be one of the few to engage in depth with the agency of a candidate state, in this case Serbia, in the process of the EU's (LGBT) norm diffusion.Underlining the apparent paradox of Serbia appointing its first female and openly gay prime minister in 2017 despite the overwhelmingly conservative public, one of the questions the author seeks to address is: "How are LGBT rights simultaneously promoted and resisted within Serbia's EU accession process?" (174).The central argument of the book is that both the EU's and Serbia's utilitarian and formalistic approach to sexual politics have contributed to the LGBT community in Serbia "coming into" rather than "coming out" of the closet, thus increasing their invisibility, despite the ostensible improvement in LGBT advocacy.To demonstrate this, the author employs the process-tracing method, drawing on his fieldwork in Serbia, which follows developments from the country's democratic transition in 2001 all the way to 2015, when Serbia opened its first negotiation chapters with the EU.For the study, the author conducted semi-structured interviews with politicians, employees of public institutions, experts, and LGBT activists.Besides this, he also analyzed legislation and participated in Pride parades.The book is innovative both owing to its theoretical approach (Chapters 1 and 2) and the richness of its empirical data (Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6).The first chapter argues that it is necessary to conceptualize Europeanization as a relational and transnational process in order to fully grasp how LGBT norm diffusion functions in Serbia, and within the context of EU enlargement in general.The relational aspects suggest that Europeanization is a political process of negotiations, filled with tensions between the two partners, which, when settled, can produce "pathological" or 1 See for instance, Markus Thiel.2022.