The European Union has made Serbia a candidate for membership in an attempt to promote better government in the western Balkans.
EU leaders took the decision at a summit in Brussels, launching a potentially lengthy process to bring the former Yugoslav republic into the bloc.
It marks a turnaround for Serbia, once seen as the outcast of Balkans for its central role in wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic.
Becoming an EU candidate rewards years of political reform and improvements in relations with Kosovo, a former Serbian province, as well as Belgrade's efforts to come to terms with its past by catching war crimes suspects.
The EU wants to commit Belgrade to the bloc's democratic values, and ensure ethnic tensions do not again spark violence in the region, which was the scene of Europe's most devastating fighting since World War Two in 1990s.
The Balkan wars marked a failure by the EU to stop violence in its backyard.
In the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Serbia backed the Bosnian Serbs with guns and money against Muslims and Croats to carve out an ethnically cleansed Serb Republic.
Around 100,000 people were killed before NATO air strikes forced the sides to the negotiating table.
More than a decade after the fighting subsided, the EU is accelerating its embrace of former Yugoslav states, which started when Slovenia joined the bloc in 2004.
Croatia last year earned the invitation to become the EU's 28th member in July 2013.
Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 in a move Belgrade still refuses to recognise, is also establishing closer political and trade links with the EU.
