European Values as Simulacra: The complex politics of EuroPride 2022 in Belgrade

EuroPride 2022 in Belgrade was event that many will not easily forget. First announced as cancelled by the Serbian President, then banned by the Minister of Interior, to eventually being allowed to take place by the Prime Minister, participants and organisers of EuroPride were put through a rollercoaster of politics. This paper seeks to trace the politics that governed EuroPride – a pan-European Pride event (its roots firmly in Western Europe) that is licensed to be hosted in different cities each year ¬–, which represents a European concept and practice that transferred to Southeastern Europe. Yet, whether this ‘transfer’ was successful is a topic of intense debate. The EuroPride saw the Serbian government mock supporters of LGBT rights and actively sought to undermine the event, resulting in a spectacle of conflict. This raises many questions as to what politics are at play and for whom Pride was performed as three separate narrative emerged: the European Pride Organisers Association claimed this EuroPride was the most important in their history, local activists wondered whether the event could be called a success, and the government insisted the event no march had taken place. Drawing on the work of Baudrillard, the paper engages in an analysis by asking whether EuroPride became a simulacrum of Pride. Doing so, the paper looks beyond the superficial politics of EuroPride, and asks critical questions of what issues were allowed to be seen, what was made invisible and ultimately, what whether EuroPride was more than the symbols it engaged.