Balkan States

Three years after launching its bid for membership of the European Union, Serbia was officially granted candidate status on 1st March, joining Iceland, Turkey, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as a candidate country.

It has been a long hard road for the Balkan nation, which has been something of a “pariah state” over the last twenty years, considered by many to be the principle aggressor in the Balkans war and responsible for horrific ethnic cleansing campaigns and massacres during that conflict.

But over recent years, Serbia has instituted programs of democratic reform and has made the effort to capture and extradite war criminals such as Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, accused of playing a major role in the aforesaid atrocities. It has also improved relations with Kosovo, its former province which declared independence in 2008, although Belgrade still refuses to recognise it as an independent nation. These were all measures required by the EU for candidate status to be granted.

Romania had raised last-minute objections to Serbia being given candidacy due to concerns over the treatment of a Romanian minority group, the Vlachs, living in Serbia, but withdrew these after the EU commission drafted a special agreement on the issue, vowing to “continue to closely monitor Serbia’s efforts in this regard”.

It may be several years before Serbia is ready to join the EU - candidate countries must meet the requirements for membership which include guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities and the existence of a functioning market economy. Plus, the issue of Kosovo is likely to be a taxing one. 22 EU Member States, including the UK, France and Germany, recognise Kosovo as an independent nation: whether or not Serbia will be obliged to do the same in order to gain full membership remains to be seen. But whatever the future holds, Serbia has taken the first step towards coming in from the cold.

Image source: European Commission

In a referendum held on 22nd January, around 67% percent of Croatians have voted for their country to become the 28th member of the EU. “This is a historic moment, and could be a turning point in our history,” stated Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic . Providing all 27 Member States ratify the accession, Croatia will become a member of the EU on 1st July 2013, becoming the second former Yugoslav state to do so after Slovenia.

However, the turnout of voters was only around 42%, which is a record low for a referendum of this nature and would suggest a certain apathy in the country towards EU membership. Zeljko Sacic, who had campaigned against membership, said that this turnout reflected “Croatia turning its back on the EU.” Certainly enthusiasm has waned in recent years, most probably due to the Eurozone crisis. Croatia itself has been hit hard by the global economic meltdown, with high levels of debt and unemployment, and thus joining a Union with several countries in dire straits economically may have lost its appeal for many. However, others point to the greater investment opportunities and access to wider job markets that membership will bring.

Image: Flickr/by Canolais, http://www.flickr.com/photos/canola...

2008 has been a year of many changes for the Balkans. The year began with Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17th. Although this decision had been expected, it confronted the international community with a range of new challenges. Like many other states, 22 of the 27 European member states recognised the Kosovo as independent. The EU sent a civilian peace-keeping mission, EULEX, to support the establishment of a democratic state of law. In Serbia, anticipated elections took place on May 11th after Prime Minister Kostunica had resigned. The EU supported the pro-European tendency with the signature of a stability and association agreement. The pro-European democratic party under president Tadic finally won the elections. Serbia further proved its pro-European attitude with the capture of Radovan Karadzic who had been searched for several years by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Bosnia equally signed a stability and association agreement with the EU. On December 15th finally, Montenegro officially applied for EU membership. The negotiations with Croatia are ongoing, whereas in the case of Macedonia different political problems hinder further negotiations.

Photo: www.flickr.com/David Le Masurier

The weekend saw elections taking place in a Macedonia that is eager to join the EU. Outgoing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative party won a comfortable victory and is set to continue its drive for EU and NATO membership. But Macedonia seems to be facing many challenges on its way. The name dispute with Greece over the name of the Macedonia, led Greece to block Macedonia’s bid to join the military organisation at a NATO high level summit in April in Bucharest. Apart from the name dispute with Greece, the Commission has also expressed concerns as to whether the country is ready to join the Union. The most recent Commission assessment report asserted that “frequent tensions and problems in achieving constructive dialogue between major political actors undermined the functioning of the political institutions and led to a slowdown in reforms”. There is still a lot of work to do.

The pro European coalition led by Boris Tadic won parliamentary elections in Serbia last Sunday. The results were warmly welcomed by the Slovenian presidency and are clearly a good sign for EU-Serbia relations; however, this does not represent a breakthrough in the Kosovo dossier. Indeed, Mr Tadic has two stated objectives, integrating the EU and defending the territorial integrity of Serbia. “The new government is never going to recognize the independence of Kosovo” he declared on election night. Mr Tadic now needs to form a coalition before September which will not be easy as the radicals of Tomislav Nicolic who came in second also claim to be capable of building a government coalition. The European path of Serbia may well hinge on Tadic’s ability to work around the most radical parties and establish a government which could bring a couple of years of stability.

Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has for several years been engaged in a dispute over the right to the name Macedonia. A consequence of the dispute is exactly the rather clumsy name FYROM, which is used by the international community, whereas the former Yugoslav Republic’s constitutional name is the Republic of Macedonia. Thursday the name quarrel led Greece to state that while the Hellenic state would support Albania and Croatia’s bid to join NATO, Greece would block FYROM’s NATO bid as long as the name dispute remains unresolved. In the same way Greece insinuated that the dispute could have damaging consequences for FYROM’s hopes to launch EU-membership negotiations later this year.

Saturday Vojislav Kustunica chose to resign from his post as Serbian Prime Minister due to disagreements within Mr. Kustunica’s governing coalition over Kosovo and EU integration. Elections are set to May, which means that the scene is set for another showdown between Serbian pro- and anti-European forces. The elections will take place a couple of months after the Serbs chose the pro-European Boris Tadic as their President over radical nationalist Tomislav Nikolic. The upcoming parliamentarian elections represent a chance to see a more pro-European government in power in Belgrade. To this end the EU has a decisive role to play. The EU is already finding itself in an extremely delicate situation as a consequence of the turmoil caused by the EU-supported unilateral declaration of independence made by Kosovo. Over the next two months every every statement made by the EU on Kosovo and on the prospect of Serbian EU-membership will be scrutinized intensively in the Serbian media, and will be turned into a weapon in the ongoing battle over the Serbs hearts and minds.

Those were the words on Serbia spoken by enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, when the Commission Wednesday presented a paper on the Western Balkans. Mr. Rehn stressed the key role in ensuring peace and stability that Serbia holds. In relation to some of the other Balkan states the commissioner stated that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be able to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement in April, which is the first step towards EU membership. A condition is, however, that Bosnia and Herzegovina begins a state-level political reform. In the same way Mr. Rehn called for Croatia to make progress with its judicial and administrative reform. Croatia is the more advanced country in the membership process with ongoing association talks and Zagreb hopes to join the EU by 2011. There is a long way to go before peace and stability is the order of the day on the Western Balkans.

The events of the last century on the Balkans have given way to a little flattering geopolitical term. Balkanisation describes a process of fragmentation or division of a region into smaller regions that have an antagonistic relationship to each other. Last week underlined exactly why the Balkans is often taken as synonymous with chaos, hostility and fragmentation. Following the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo several incidents played out with Serbs displaying their hostility to the new country of Europe. In Beograd, some thousand Serbs looted and set fire on the American embassy, Serbian tanks moved towards the Serbian-Kosovar border and UN police, guarding a bridge in northern Kosovo, was attacked by angry Serbs living in Kosovo. One inevitably has the feeling that we have not seen the last of example of balkanisation on the Balkans.

EU foreign policy, if there is one, has produced a number of several blunders over the last decade. In retrospect, granting EU membership to Cyprus before the southern Greek part of the island had accepted to be unified with the Northern part of the island was a serious strategic blunder. How history will judge the issue of Kosovo remains to be seen. The words spoken by Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic to the European Parliament, indicates that EU foreign policy could have produced another blunder. Serbia is now as far away from EU membership as ever. The member states are split down the middle. The EU is left with Kosovo under its protection - a country that is unable to run its own affairs, with 40 per cent unemployment, staggering levels of corruption and organized crime and an economy in a poor state. One can not help wondering if the Balkans as a whole, and with that Europe as a whole, would not have been better of by maintaining status and securing peace through EU-membership with time.

With those words Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo began reading the declaration of independence of Kosovo from Serbia. Sunday 17 January 2008, Europe gave birth to a new country when all 109 deputies of the Kosovar parliament voted in favour of the declaration. In the minutes following the announcement, Kosovars gathered on the streets throughout Kosovo, defying temperatures in the vicinity of minus 10 degrees. The same picture could be seen throughout European capitals where Kosovar emigrants took to the streets to celebrate. Meanwhile, in Belgrade, the Serbian President Boris Tadic immediately rejected the declaration as a “humiliation” of Europe by the United States, which allegedly had forced the EU to discard its basic principles. Kosovo might have declared its independence but we have certainly not heard the last from the Serbian-Kosovar conflict. It has only just begun.

Kosovo is expected to proclaim independence next Sunday. The breakaway province has been waiting for the most adequate time for such a move. Now that the Serbian presidential elections are over and that the Kosovo authorities feel they can count on the support of the United States and several European states, nothing justifies the prolonging of an increasingly awkward situation. Although Serbia is very much opposed to the independence of its province, Mr Tadic, the newly elected president has called on Serbian citizens to refrain from acts of provocation that could actually endanger the minority Serbian population living in Kosovo. Kosovo’s premier Hashim Thaci sent messages suggesting that this minority population would be respected in the process. Once again the EU will have to deal with this complicated issue without showing a united front. Indeed, Romania, Greece and Cyprus are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of Kosovo’s independence. They will soon have to deal with that reality however.

The incumbent president Tadic has just won the presidential elections in Serbian after a hard-fought campaign mainly centred on the theme of Kosovo. The nationalist candidate Mr Nicolic conceded defeat a few hours after the closing of the polls. Although the two cadidates were more or less on the same line on the status of Kosovo, the potential election of Mr Nicolic had worried other European capitals as he clearly advocated for closer ties with Moscow to the detriment of Serbia EU relations. With another mandate for Mr Tadic, Serbia’s European partners see a more stable situation potentially favouring accession talks in the future. The path will be rocky however and accession is not exactly around the corner. Let’s hope Serbian voters are conscious of it otherwise the nationalist candidates will kep knocking on the door with ever more appeal.

A nationalist candidate leads after the first round of voting in the Serbian presidential elections. Tomislav Nicolic won more than 39% of the vote for the pro-Russian Serbian Radical Party while Tadic the incumbent president, representing the Serbian Democratic Party got 35.5 %. The race in very much undecided and some analysts believe that the endorsement of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica could be the deciding factor. The debate leading up to the second round will continue to focus on the status of Kosovo, whose independence is opposed by both candidates. Debates on this issue have yielded a record turnout with 61% of voters going to the polls. This is bad news for the EU which is trying to find a solution regarding the status of the breakaway province as both candidates will be tempted to demonstrate their firmness on the Kosovo dossier to catch undecided voters. Given the political situation, the impatience of the people in Kosovo and Russia’s support of the Serbia, the EU is left with very little margin for manoeuvre.

The Croatian Parliament has approved the nomination of the cabinet led by Ivo Sanader two months after a close electoral contest which had failed to identify a clear winner. Mr Sanader, the centre right Prime Minister managed to build a coalition by making concessions to the social liberals, the Serb party and the farmers’ political representation. He also has the support of smaller parties giving his coalition a sizable majority. For the first time a Serb reaches the position of Deputy Prime Minister and the cabinet includes a member of the Roma minority which is unprecedented. It might be quite a challenge for this cabinet to deliver on the promise of Croatia to become the 28th member of the EU before the end of the decade. The peasant’s party holds key positions and might obstruct talks in some of the more difficult chapters of the accession negotiations. However, the composition of this cabinet sends a positive signal, with the inclusion of minorities which, to date, had not had an opportunity to weigh in on Croatian politics.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French head of state, commented on a decision by the Council reached Friday 14, to deploy a 1800 strong police and civilian mission in Kosovo. In this way the UN will refer the current UN-mission in Kosovo to the EU. The unity on the deployment of the mission stands tall instead of the unity on the question of independence of Kosovo, which countries like Cyprus, Spain, Greece and Slovakia are still opposed to. Instead, the scenario outlined in EU-diplomat circles is that the EU will “take note” of the expected one-sided declaration of independence from Kosovo. Hereafter, it is up to each member state to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. The perspective of European unity on Kosovo, the perhaps single most important foreign policy question since the invasion of Iraq, does not look promising.

They came, they saw and they left, without having reached an agreement. Less than two weeks before the US, Russia and the EU are to report back to the UN on the future of Kosovo, the EU-countries failed to align their foreign policy positions on the status of Kosovo, who seeks independence from Serbia. Three-day talks in Austria between the member states ended Wednesday 28 without an agreement on the single most important foreign policy issue in the backyard of the EU. A majority of the 27 would support a unilateral declaration of independence from Kosovo as would the US. However, at least five member states are strongly opposed to this solution. Should Kosovo, as expected, declare its independence, a strong and firm common position is necessary to prevent the question from turning into another regional armed conflict. At present, the member states are writing the script of another Balkan-story featuring the Union as a lame duck in its own backyard. Again, it is not looking good.