[2] In 1928, quoting inopportune timing, the French government rejected a Yugoslav general staff proposal for military cooperation.

[1] Following the French participation in the Four-Power Pact of 1933, pro-French states such as Yugoslavia became increasingly worried about their reliance on France, and began strengthening their own security arrangements.

[1] On 9 October 1934, Yugoslav king Alexander I and French foreign minister Louis Barthou were assassinated in Marseilles during the former's state visit to France.

[1] Yugoslav policy in the following period reoriented itself towards rapprochement with Bulgaria, Hungary, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.

Further policy disagreements with the Soviet Union led to the 1948 Tito–Stalin split, after which Yugoslav relations with all Eastern Bloc countries were either suspended or significantly strained.

Contemporary commentators interpreted President François Mitterrand's approach as being based upon a fear of a resurgent reunified Germany, and the memory of the historical friendship with Serbia.

[2] French diplomacy nevertheless stressed the primacy of a unified common European approach in order not to threaten the Maastricht Treaty nor the national referendum on its passing in September 1992, and was therefore willing to follow the German insistence on Croatian and Slovenian independence.

As a NATO member, France later took part in the coalition's intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its subsequent bombing campaign against the FR Yugoslavia.