THE EU TAKES A FRESH LOOK AT THE BALKANS.
The countries of the western Balkans all seek rapid integration into
Euro-Atlantic institutions. The European Union seems on the way to
realizing that it must offer them serious prospects of membership,
much as NATO already has.
On 14 January, the "Frankfurter Rundschau" published an
interview with Christoph Zoepel, who is one of the leading Balkan
policy experts within Germany's governing Social Democratic Party
(SPD). He warned the EU not to be "arrogant" toward the countries of
the western Balkans -- Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, and
Yugoslavia -- nor to leave them outside that organization. To neglect
the five countries would be a great "historic mistake," he added.
Zoepel thinks that one way to defuse tensions surrounding
such delicate issues as the status of Kosova would be to hold out the
prospect of a common European citizenship to Serbs and Albanians
alike. To give weight to his argument, he suggested that Belgium
would have split up long ago along ethnic lines if it were not for
that country's membership in the EU. (And he might have also
recalled the positive role that European integration played in
Western Europe as a whole in the decades since World War II,
particularly in terms of Franco-German reconciliation.)
The Social Democratic legislator also noted that people
throughout the Balkans are enthusiastic about joining the EU, adding
that he has not met a single serious politician there who is opposed
to membership. Zoepel recalled that Kosovar President Ibrahim Rugova
once told him that an independent Kosova could do without its own
foreign minister and leave that job to the EU. Zoepel added that he
has not seen such eagerness to delegate prerogatives to Brussels
anywhere else.
Bringing the countries of the western Balkans into the EU, he
continued, amounts to nothing more than implementing a decision that
was, in effect, made already in 1981 when the then-European Community
voted to admit Greece. Zoepel stresses that the decision in favor of
Greece meant that Brussels accepted in principle that "everything to
the northwest of Athens" would some day belong to the EU.
That decision is well on its way to being realized by holding
out prospects of admission in 2007 to Romania and Bulgaria, he
continued. What Zoepel now misses is a readiness to engage the other
five countries of the region and to give them realistic possibilities
for membership.
He noted that there are several obstacles to doing so. One is
simple ethnic prejudice, particularly against peoples of Islamic
heritage, such as the Bosnian Muslims and many Albanians. This
prejudice is more intense than that against, for example, Poles or
Czechs, and ignores the fact that Albania is a highly secular
country, much more so than Turkey.
When asked whether the five should be admitted as a single
group, Zoepel suggested that Croatia is further along toward meeting
the EU's criteria for membership than are the others and could
proceed ahead of them. But the other four, in his view, are so
"interdependent" when it comes to ethnic and religious disputes that
it would not be practical or wise to separate them on the road to
membership.
Zoepel noted that Macedonia has met the criteria for
membership that the EU leaders set down at their recent Copenhagen
summit -- but only formally. Albania is a democracy and has a market
economy but has problems bringing its institutions into line with
European standards. Bosnia and Yugoslavia suffer from what he called
"unresolved status questions."
But the SPD legislator does not feel that the EU should wait
for the five countries to meet its standards before engaging them. On
the contrary: He argued that they can develop modern market economies
only when they have a clear perspective for EU membership. And that,
Zoepel concluded, could be a reality in 10 years.
Indeed, many people in the western Balkans concluded by the
end of 2002 that the EU had little time for them. NATO did not invite
any of them to join the alliance at its Prague summit in November.
But NATO at least held out some prospects for membership in the next
round of expansion for Partnership for Peace members Albania,
Croatia, and Macedonia (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 22 November
2002).
Bosnia and Yugoslavia are not so far along the road to NATO,
but the Bosnians at least know that setting up a common defense
ministry is the main obstacle keeping them from membership in
Partnership for Peace. The authorities in Belgrade, for their part,
are fully aware that membership for them depends on cooperation with
the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, establishing transparent
civilian control over the military, and purging the officer corps of
possible war criminals.
The EU has been less forthcoming with criteria and timetables
than NATO, to the point that many in the Balkans have concluded that
the five countries will be kept indefinitely in limbo (see "RFE/RL
Balkan Report," 6 December 2002).
This could be particularly problematic in the cases of Bosnia
and Yugoslavia, which are the furthest from meeting EU and NATO
criteria. The danger there is that these two countries could become
centers of organized crime, smuggling, and corruption in such a way
as to become a sort of "black hole" in the midst of the EU.
Croatia could pose a problem of a different sort. As the
"Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" wrote on 28 December, many Croats
fear that they have been lumped together with four countries less
advanced along the road to meeting EU standards than they are. Those
Croats feel that their country has been sacrificed like a pawn in a
chess game to plans by some powerful forces in Brussels to re-create
a regional Balkan association based in Belgrade -- and kept outside
the door of full membership in the EU. If such perceptions continue
and become widespread, the EU could discover someday that it has
unwittingly helped anti-European, nationalist politicians on the
right to come to power in Zagreb.
But matters are looking up for those in the western Balkans
who want to join the EU. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"
reported from Brussels on 11 January that a recent EU study has shown
that Albania, Kosova, and Yugoslavia have made great economic
progress since the Kosova conflict ended in 1999. One might suggest
that any such progress looks impressive because these countries were
so badly off that they had nowhere to go but up. Nonetheless, the
fact that an EU report made such a conclusion suggests that Brussels
may be moving away from the message it only recently sent even to
Croatia: Don't call us, we'll call you (see "RFE/RL
Newsline," 6 November and 20 December 2002).
Indeed, there seems to be movement in the EU toward
encouraging the countries of the western Balkans without lowering
Brussels' standards. The catalyst appears to be the Greek EU
presidency, which began at the start of 2003. From 13 to 15 January,
Foreign Minister George Papandreou made a whirlwind tour of the five
countries, where his message was largely positive (see "RFE/RL
Newsline," 9, 10, 14, and 15 January 2003). For example, he let
Croatia know that its hopes of catching up with Romania and Bulgaria
and joining the EU in 2007 are realistic. He also reassured Albania
that stabilization-and-association talks will begin soon.
Even EU Commission President Romano Prodi has been upbeat on
the Balkans recently, saying that the bloc's "doors are open" to
the countries of the region.
Meanwhile, the Greek EU presidency can be expected to provide
the leadership for its neighbors that many had wished that Greece --
as the only Balkan country belonging to both the EU and NATO -- would
provide as soon as communism collapsed in the region over a decade
ago. The Greek presidency will be followed by that of Italy for the
second half of 2003, and Albania in particular is expecting good
things from its powerful neighbor.
Questions, of course, remain. The biggest issue is perhaps
whether Yugoslavia and Bosnia can put their houses in sufficient
order to meet even minimum EU standards, particularly where the roles
of mafia structures in politics, business, and the military are
concerned.
Second, the EU will have to take great care not to let those
two countries fall so far behind the others that Bosnia and
Yugoslavia become isolated. At the same time, Brussels cannot afford
to lower its standards for the two, lest Croatia and other hopefuls
feel that they have become the victims of a policy of double
standards and some sinister Western plot to reestablish Belgrade as
the dominant regional center.
Third, all five countries have their homework to do in
meeting EU criteria for membership. Politicians in some of them could
start by showing more responsibility by rejecting the culture of
boycotting parliaments and other institutions that is endemic in much
of the region.
Fourth, the status question will have to be addressed sooner
rather than later where Kosova is concerned, and probably Montenegro
as well. The EU should respect the decisions of the majority of the
voters who live there and not try to impose solutions from outside.
Zoepel's suggestion regarding the prospect of a common EU
citizenship should not be overlooked.
Finally, everyone concerned should be realistic about their
expectations. People in the region are deluding themselves if they
expect that EU membership will automatically bring them Dutch living
standards and a massive infusion of money without efforts and
sacrifice on their part.
It will in any event be interesting to see how the EU evolves
once its expansion into Eastern Europe and the Balkans is complete.
Will it become an increasingly bloated bureaucracy in which important
issues can be settled by a telephone call between the French
president and German chancellor, or will it develop into a more
transparent and democratic community of which all its citizens can be
proud? (Patrick Moore)
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