The European Union and the Balkans

[hrydz]

Third time lucky?
Jan 12th 2006
From The Economist print edition

The European Union has stumbled twice in the Balkans. Now it has a chance to
make amends


EVEN as European Union leaders yammer about resurrecting their constitution,
their attention this year may end up focusing instead on the Balkans. Twice
in the past 15 years, the region has tested the EU's claims to have ended
wars on the continent: in 1991-92, when EU members split over backing
independence for Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, and in 1998 when they stood by
as Serbs and Albanians slaughtered each other in Kosovo. Now three events are
coming together to turn the first half of 2006 into a third chance for the EU—
and perhaps the trickiest period in the Balkans for some years.

The first is a referendum on independence in Montenegro. If passed, it would
take yet another slice off Serbia (with which Montenegro exists in uneasy
union). Next, talks on the independence of Kosovo (also nominally part of
Serbia) could result in an offer of conditional independence, meaning that
the rights of the Serb minority in Kosovo are protected by international
guarantee. And third, the European Commission will rule in May on whether
Romania and Bulgaria have met the conditions for EU membership. Had this
ruling been made last year, say commission officials, the answer would have
been no. That would make headlines, even if its effects prove less obviously
dramatic than the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. (If the ruling is no,
the two countries will merely join in 2008, instead of 2007.)


What the three events have in common is that they will change the Balkans'
fragile status quo (with luck for the better, but it would be foolish to
count on that). All are also reminders of the importance of the EU's role.
Only Brussels can promise local politicians that their future lies in
integration with Europe, not with their historical grievances and inward-
looking nationalism. EU countries have promised to help Montenegro if it
plumps for independence. And although Kosovo's future is being hammered out
under the auspices of the United Nations, it will in practice be the EU that
will have to look after the place.

On the face of it, the Europeans have been making good on past promises of
help. Last year saw a flurry of negotiations in which nearly every Balkan
country started some form of talks with Brussels. Croatia began full
membership talks in October (at the same time as Turkey). Bosnia and Serbia
began the preliminary stage that should lead to talks. In December, the EU
gave Macedonia formal status as a candidate (a step up from Serbia and
Bosnia, a step below Croatia). Talks to get Albania to the preliminary stage
continue. And three economic deals have been done between the Balkans and the
EU.

Yet even all these may add up to no more than a good start. Ultimately, the
EU's powers of persuasion rest on the lure of full membership. Now the onset
of “enlargement fatigue” risks undermining that promise. Recently, the
disease has broken out even in that bulwark of expansion, the European
Commission. One commissioner has said that the EU should let in Romania and
Bulgaria, but then close its doors. Enlargement fatigue may not only reduce
the EU's appeal. It could also make it harder to dole out interim benefits
that go with membership talks, such as aid for new roads or help with
agricultural reform. Last month's budget deal has already cut the money
earmarked for Balkan reconstruction by about a fifth.

The Balkans will anyway not respond to the EU's gravitational pull in the
same way as did the central and eastern Europeans. The Balkan people are
further removed than the Czechs and Poles were from EU standards of democracy
and free markets. They have to set up functioning governments before they can
become functioning democracies. This means that much of the Balkans will have
to wait for membership even longer than did the central and eastern
Europeans. And it is no longer clear how long accession can retain its
allure, or how attractive the “pre-accession” phase can be made.

At worst, there is a risk that the EU could end up dividing the Balkans,
rather than modernising it—splitting the region into countries on the road to
membership (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Macedonia) and the ghetto of the
rest, whose status would be uncertain and whose “pre-accession” limbo might
be made worse by cuts in aid. For Bosnians and Serbs, there is a danger of EU
membership becoming like an old Soviet joke: we pretend to prepare for
membership, they pretend to be ready to give it to us.

The virtues of Austro-Hungarian imperialism
Doubts over the EU's influence in the Balkans will be either allayed or
confirmed over the next six months. At minimum, it must avoid the divisions
and passivity that bedevilled previous episodes in ex-Yugoslavia. But it
could do better. And by happy accident, the EU presidency—usually a silly
arrangement for each country to set the agenda for six months—has fallen at
this critical juncture to the largest single investor in the Balkans and one
of the strongest supporters of EU membership for Balkan countries: Austria.
The Austrians may be notoriously hostile to Turkey's membership aspirations,
but they have said that the Balkans are their top foreign-policy priority.
What is less clear is whether they are ready to spend political capital to
get reluctant partners to do things to give the rhetoric substance.

Michael Emerson of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a think-tank in
Brussels, suggests that Balkan countries might be given membership of the
customs union between the EU and Turkey, replacing a tangle of 31 regional
trade agreements. He also proposes that the EU should encourage Balkan
countries to set up visa-free travel among themselves, to avert travel
restrictions that would otherwise arise as some countries join. These are
good ideas in themselves, but more important is the message they would send:
that the Balkans matter even when blood is not being shed, and that the EU
wants to improve the entire region, not just (to borrow a phrase from the
constitutional debate) to cherry-pick the bits it likes best.