The EU kicks the can

Carl Bildt, Sweden’s long-time and much-followed Foreign Minister, tweeted earlier this week from the General Affairs Council of the European Union:

Finally everything done. Cyprus presidency, Stefan Füle and Cathy Ashton moved all EU enlargement issues successfully forward. Off we go.

I wondered at the time what this meant.  Now I know.

It meant nothing:  no date for Serbia or Macedonia to begin accession talks, no date for Kosovo to negotiate a Stabilization and Association Agreement.  Croatia’s membership next year is expected to proceed on autopilot (with some corrections in Zagreb’s course requested) and Montenegro will continue accession talks.  Albania still awaits for a date to start accession negotiations.

Admittedly it is difficult to get too excited about anything in the Western Balkans these days.  Syria is imploding.  Egypt is turning its judicial system over to religious supervision.  Iran is making progress towards nuclear weapons.  North Korea is successfully launching a longer-range ballistic missile, disguised as a space-launch vehicle.  Afghanistan and Iraq are teetering.  Al Qaeda is setting up shop in Mali.  The euro is going down the tubes.  Who cares what the Greeks want to call Macedonia or whether the former belligerents who run Serbia and Kosovo get dates to begin negotiations (Belgrade for accession, Pristina for a Stabilization and Association Agreement) with Brussels?

The people who live in those places do, that’s who.  However insignificant the Balkans look these days from Washington, which is busy with its own domestic quarrels above all else, the region is important to those who inhabit it and has the potential to make life difficult for the rest of us, as it has proven repeatedly over the past 100 years.

A closer reading suggests that things might unfreeze in Brussels in the spring.  Macedonia at least can expect a framework for negotiations then, provided it delivers on reforms in the meanwhile.  Likewise Serbia, which is asked specifically for

…irreversible progress towards delivering structures in northern Kosovo which meet the security and justice needs of the local population in a transparent and cooperative manner, and in a way that ensures the functionality of a single institutional and administrative set up within Kosovo.

Also important is

…the agreement of the two Prime Ministers to work together in order to ensure a transparent flow of money in support of the Kosovo Serb community…

While couched in the EU’s usual obscurantist language, we see emerging here a detailed understanding of the real challenges that have so far blocked reintegration of the north with the rest of Kosovo.  Bravo to the EU for acknowledging them!

Some of the same perspicacity is evident in the discussion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the EU finds the need to reiterate

…its unequivocal support for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU perspective as a sovereign and united country enjoying full territorial integrity.

It’s not good news when Brussels kicks off this way, though I’d be the first to admit that its subsequent suggestions of what needs to be done to fix the problem are thoroughly inadequate.

Pristina gets a pat on the back for its engagement in the talks and language identical to that addressed to Belgrade on northern Kosovo, plus a recommendation to develop an outreach plan.

Don’t get me wrong:  it is correct for the EU to insist on specific reforms and benchmarks in dealing with the Western Balkans.  Unfortunately, it is still true that conditionality is what moves things forward in many of these countries.  In most of them, I expect the EU carrot will bring real changes, albeit in fits and starts.  The most concerning is Bosnia, where the EU acknowledges the challenges to sovereignty that Milorad Dodik and Republika Srpska pose but fails to offer adequate responses and continues to quarrel with Washington over whether the High Representative should stay or go.

The EU has kicked the can down the road.  The best we can hope for is a spring thaw.