The EU gives Serbia time
The European Union today decided to postpone a decision on Serbia’s candidacy for membership. According to B92:
…Serbia will get the EU candidate status by March 2012 if the European Council is convinced that Serbia is showing genuine commitment, that it has achieved progress in the implementation of agreements reached in the dialogue (with Priština), including integrated border management, that it has reached an agreement on overall regional cooperation and is actively cooperating in enabling EULEX and KFOR to perform their mandates.
The same article says that the Council has noted significant progress Serbia has made in fulfilling the Copenhagen political criteria, adding that the cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is completely satisfactory.
When it comes to determining the date for the beginning of Montenegro’s accession talks, the article 15 says that the talks could begin in June 2012, when the Council will review the country’s progress in implementing reforms, with a special focus on the rule of law, respect for fundamental rights and suppression of corruption and organized crime.
The postponement was the right thing to do, and this all sounds eminently reasonable, but too foggy, to me. What does it mean to reach an “overall agreement on regional cooperation”? How is “genuine commitment” to be judged? What constitutes enabling EULEX and KFOR to perform their mandates?
I might hope that greater clarity lies under the fog, along the lines Angela Merkel suggested last summer: Belgrade needs to cooperate with Pristina in eliminating the Serbian parallel structures, establishing border/boundary controls and reintegrating the north with the rest of Kosovo. But I doubt it. What we are seeing here is a lowering of the bar, with the hope of getting Serbia candidacy status two months before its parliamentary elections in May, so as to boost the chances of Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party.
Boris Tadic would do well to use the time this postponement gives him to exert his authority over the Serb population in northern Kosovo, which seems to be more beholden to his political rivals and Serbia’s secret services than to the institutions of the Serbian state that pays many of their salaries. It once upon a time served his purposes well to deny he controlled them. Now it is becoming a serious embarrassment that threatens to cast doubt on whether Serbia can in fact control its own borders and meet other EU requirements.
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And congratulations to Montenegro, which got its date to start negotiations in June, provided it continues with implementing some rule-of-law provisions. B92’s original headline was simply that MN had not received a date, but they’ve since changed it to their receiving a provisional date. There’s really no sense in trying to fudge these things, there are too many alternative sources these days. Or maybe they were just thrown by the EU jargon, or English double-negatives rules?
And Croatia is coming home to Europe – expected, but still good news. I remember what I think was Jeremic’s first trip outside the country after the new government took power, to a regional meeting in Croatia, where he proposed – to everyone’s bemusement – that Serbia and Croatia should together lead the Western Balkans into the EU. Things haven’t gotten much better for him since then, unfortunately for Serbia.
The postponement was the best possible decision at the moment. If Serbia had been given the obviously undeserved candidacy, that would have virtually represented a vindication of Belgrade’s irresponsibility. Instead, Serbia now has the opportunity to take the right steps and earn the status over the next couple of months – and, most importantly, before the elections.
However, an anti-European campaign was launched in Serbia almost immediately after the EU’s decision had been announced via literally all mainstream media – most of which are either directly or indirectly controlled by the closest aides of President Tadic. The campaign mainly consists of spins suggesting that Serbia “did everything that was required, but the EU has once again proved unfair and punished Serbia undeservedly”. It remains to be seen how this hypocritical campaign is going to affect the overall attitude of ordinary people toward the European integration process in Serbia in the months ahead.