Policy Brief: The Working Group on the Western Balkans

Although the EU and the US agree that the long-term goal for the Western Balkans is European integration, progress has stalled. This series of working group meetings aims at launching a discussion on the hurdles to enlargement in the Western Balkans, the tools available to various international actors in the region, and how these resources might best be applied to reach the goal of integration most efficiently. These meetings, therefore, address issues that are at the core of the making the Transatlantic relationship work. The Working Group is support by a grant from the EU Delegation. This brief is the result of a meeting held in June 2010.

Policy Brief from Meeting I: The Hardest Cases for EU Accession—Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Since the second half of 2009, European and American policies towards the Western Balkans seemed to have an historic level of coordination and harmony. Rhetorically, at least, there has been unequivocal agreement on both sides of the Atlantic that these countries will be members of the European Union, once they meet the conditions. EU membership, it is agreed, will end the unhappy chapter of the violent demise of Yugoslavia, by bringing the region into a secure, democratic and prosperous EU.

Progress toward this goal has been extremely slow, however. As a baseline for comparison, the countries of Central Europe and the Baltic states that had submitted their applications by 1996 acceded within eight years. By contrast, six years after the 2004 Thessaloniki Summit declared that enlargement to the Western Balkans would be the top priority of the EU’s foreign policy, only two countries (Croatia and Macedonia) are official candidates for membership. Worse still, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo have not achieved a sufficient level of political development to be able to apply as candidates yet. While no one expected this process to be quick, the protracted period of accession threatens to undermine the entire policy, as reform momentum fails, undemocratic policies and corruption flourish, and voter apathy turns to hostility towards the EU.

The EU accession model is facing a difficult challenge in the Western Balkans as a whole, where internal and external obstacles to reform thwart the EU’s conditionality. But in Kosovo and Bosnia, these obstacles are compounded, and it will be difficult for the EU to combine its tested EU member-state building model with its untested state building abilities. The slow progress also threatens to undermine EU-U.S. unity on this policy.

Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are the hardest cases, and the stasis there has caused some observers to support radical solutions that would further fragment the region. Both Kosovo and Bosnia have problems that surpass typical governance issues associated with transitional governments. Neither has full sovereignty, and therefore international organizations are actively buttressing their governments. Sovereignty is essential for signing contractual agreements and treaties, which make up the legal side of the EU accession process. This legal problem is most acute in Kosovo, since its independence is contested by Serbia and has not been recognized as an independent state by several EU member states[1]. And although Bosnia and Herzegovina is recognized internationally, it consistently fails “to speak with one voice” as a state. The rhetorical disunity between the country’s Entities is mirrored by its complex institutional and legal structure, and continues to rely on the support and guidance of the Office of the High Representative, which acts as an externally imposed governor of the country.

In Kosovo, Bosnia, and Serbia, the conflict over territory dominates politics, permeating every level of government. The nationalist-driven contest over territory has not ended despite the end of overt war. Kosovo’s contest over territory goes beyond the question of recognition, but also manifests itself in the maintenance of parallel government institutions in Northern Mitrovica. In Bosnia, the ethnic conflict continues through the ethnically-segregated Entities and the parallel legal systems created by the Dayton Constitution. Although the EU Commission has identified the absence of state-level institutions and ethnic-based voting to be a hindrance to the country’s progress to EU membership, deep-seated ethnic divisions in the country have prevented attempts at institutional reform to succeed.

In theory, the EU accession process offers a distraction from ethnic and territorial concerns because the process forces leaders to focus instead on meeting the technical conditions for membership. Civil society demand for EU accession compels politicians to compromise on the wide range of issues necessary for the state to meet EU standards. However, a different dynamic is at work in Bosnia, where creating links between high-profile reforms (such as constitutional reform, or closing the OHR) and EU accession may be raising the ethnic stakes and creating a “catch-22” situation. Rather than driving reforms, local populations and their politicians view high-profile reforms as “selling out” to the EU, and these reforms are seen as a zero-sum game by all ethnic groups. In Serbia, this dynamic plays out in term of recognizing Kosovo.

A pattern of international involvement can be observed, in which high-profile initiatives are presented to the political elite and the public, with the result that nothing changes. If progress is made, it can only be seen on paper. The disillusioned external actors retreat for a time, until a new initiative is launched. This episodic involvement and paper progress undermines the credibility of external actors, and damages the credibility of the EU accession project.

To end this stagnation, some working group participants advocated substituting high-profile, “quick-fix” initiatives with incremental changes. These smaller changes may be initially less impressive and may extend the time-frame of the process. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the cumulative effect of all of these small-scale reforms will be a way out of the current impasse. Linking small-scale reforms with clear incentives, as was the case with visa liberalization policy, will help induce political leaders to act.

For this incremental approach to work, it will be important to consider the EU accession process as a series of smaller steps and for all of the actors involved to create a functional and coherent agenda. These other actors (the U.S., individual EU member states, Turkey as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) should be brought into this process to coordinate incentives and arguments that will help politicians to buy into the EU agenda.

The current economic crisis in the EU, the recent institutional reform initiated by the Lisbon Treaty, and other compelling issues are turning the focus away from the Western Balkans. If the EU is seen as less attractive to the Western Balkans, or if it seems indifferent to the region, the EU accession policy will falter. The EU must recognize that there are tools and actors outside the Accession process, and actively engage with them, lest the momentum for accession decline.

Working Group participants discussed how the current economic crisis has dashed the hopes of many countries in the region to follow in the development path of Ireland and the Baltic States. Some see the crisis as a blow to the region, since there is unlikely to be a game-changing economic model to follow. Nevertheless, the current crisis also creates opportunities, since financial issues can be used to kick-start a political dialogue. The example of Greece may convince politicians in the Western Balkans to create greater transparency and create a more conducive environment for business in order to be able to attract new foreign investors.

Part of the problem with the EU-U.S. strategy in the Western Balkans is that it is not clear whether EU accession is a remedy or a goal. Of course, it must be both, but in order for the goal of EU accession to be a remedy for the Western Balkans, there must be a greater focus on the process, rather than the end. Focusing solely on the EU as a goal, creates a binary system, and seems to place the responsibility for enlargement on the EU rather than on the Western Balkan countries. This perspective also gives the EU a reactive, rather than proactive, position, as it is simply there to judge events in the region.

But by flipping the rhetorical switch, it becomes clear that the process involved in acceding to the EU involves activity in the region, not just a decision by the EU. When accession is seen as a process, the many steps involved in EU accession can be presented as a menu of activities that are compatible with EU goals. The Commission already prepares country-specific reports on issues that it needs to address, and these reports should be read by all actors involved as the single voice of the EU in terms of what must be done.[2] With EU accession as a process with many ‘menu’ items to choose from[3], politicians in the Western Balkans can build an agenda according to their capacity and the many actors that make up the international community can find a sector or issue that they can work on, and ensure that these different elements will eventually push each country further down the path towards the EU.