Humiliation has become a powerful lens for making sense of contested accession trajectories. In Serbia, political leaders weave narratives around ICTY cooperation, the recognition of Srebrenica and the Kosovo dispute that recast EU conditionality as a series of symbolic wounds. Accession conditions become markers of national subordination, fuelling resistance, legitimising closer ties with Russia and sustaining a hybrid strategy that keeps accession formally open while hollowing out its content. A comparison with Türkiye shows how similar narratives of perceived injustice, double standards and cultural exclusion underpinned democratic decline there. Humiliation, in both cases, does not prompt straightforward withdrawal, but drives a deeper internal contestation of EU norms and the authority behind them.