Tag: European Union
The guests who won’t come calling
Today is turning into a Balkans day. It must have been less than 5 minutes after I posted about the SecState visit to the Balkans with Lady Ashton that I got a note complaining that they weren’t going to Macedonia. I’d of course be perfectly happy if they did go to Macedonia, but I’m not sure the Macedonians would be delighted. When the EU and the U.S. come calling, they do it wanting results.
In Belgrade and Pristina, they will be looking for further progress on the bilateral dialogue, which already had a big moment last week with a meeting between the two prime ministers. A settlement of north Kosovo is presumably in the works, though I doubt it will be full-fledged by the end of the month. I don’t really know what they can hope for in Sarajevo. The political situation there is a shambles. They may be content to give a pep talk.
In Skopje, they would necessarily be looking for progress on the “name” issue, which means they would have to go to Greece as well. I can think of a lot of reasons why they might not want to do that. In addition, Washington and Brussels have come to believe that Macedonia’s Prime Minister Gruevski is a big part of the problem in the decades-long search for a name (other than Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM) that Greece will accept. He seems to think he is better off just leaving things as they are, since everyone except Greeks calls the country Macedonia (even Greek officials don’t object any more).
The big problem for Gruevski and Macedonia is that they have been blocked from entering NATO because of the “name” issue. This is unjust, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said clearly and unequivocally last December. But Athens has convinced Washington not to bulldoze it into accepting FYROM, despite the Interim Accord that obligates Greece to do so.
I imagine that if Gruevski rang up the State Department and told them he is willing to accept a “qualifier” (as in North Macedonia) that he might get a SecState and HiRep visit. He does not want to do that because Greece is insisting that any solution be used for all purposes, including every time the name of the country is mentioned in its constitution. I imagine that is at least as difficult for him to swallow as it would be for other prime ministers.
I am notoriously sympathetic with the Macedonians on this question: I think any country (and people) is entitled to call itself what it wants, as in Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Also “Americans,” which is a term some of my Latin American and Canadian friends think should be available to them as well as citizens of the United States. Fat chance they have of stopping us from using it as we like, or we them.
I don’t for a moment believe that Skopje has designs on Greek territory. Certainly its claims, if it had any, would be no better than those of Mexico on large parts of the United States, and the power relationship between the two countries is similar. Greece needs to get over its fear of Macedonia and unworthy defiance of the ICJ decision.
But none of that is likely to get Skopje a visit from Hillary Clinton and Lady Ashton.
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To concert is a virtue
The weekend allowed me to look at a number of interesting reports on the Balkans. The common thread of the two I cite below is the recognition that the issues still plaguing Albania and Bosnia require concerted regional and international approaches. It is often difficult to take concerted action, but when we do we tend to get results that are worth the effort.
1. Antoinette Primatarova and Johanna Deimel, Bridge Over Troubled Waters? The Role of the Internationals in Albania. Unsparing, they fault the internationals for failing to see the negative implications of 2008 constitutional amendments that ushered in a retrograde period in Albania’s young democracy. But they see hope in the EU commission’s advocacy of 12 key priorities, now embraced by the Albanian government and opposition and supported by the U.S.
2. Kurt Bassuener and Bodo Weber, Croatian and Serbian Policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Help or Hindrance? Equally unsparing of past mistakes that allowed Croatia and Serbia to favor their conationals within Bosnia and thereby undermine the country’s unity, they want to see a more concerted U.S., EU and Turkish effort to turn Zagreb and Belgrade in the direction of supporting the Bosnian state. I’m not seeing this one posted yet on the Democratization Policy Council’s website, but I’ll come back and install a link when it appears there (and someone tells me so).
I haven’t seen a recent report on the international mistakes in Kosovo and the importance of concerted action there to overcome remaining problems between Belgrade and Pristina, but of course one could be written. We saw in September the completion of the internationally imposed agenda for the four and a half year period of Kosovo’s “supervised independence.” Last week, with the meeting between Prime Ministers Thaci and Dacic, we witnessed how effective concerted action by the U.S. and EU can be in pushing the remaining issues to the political level, even if there is good reason to be concerned with the lack of implmentation of earlier “technical” agreements.
Of course none of this figured in this week’s presidential debate, but it is relevant: collaboration with the EU enables the U.S. to help resolve Balkans problems on the cheap, committing little more than the diplomatic and political weight of its oversized missions in Belgrade, Pristina, Sarajevo and Zagreb plus the occasional phone call from Hillary Clinton or one of her minions. The EU provides the bulk of the troops, money and “European perspective” required to rescue countries that 20 years ago were basket cases. Sharing burdens is a lot better than carrying them on our own, especially if our vital interests are not at stake. Which they are not in the Balkans.
After I’d written the text above, the State Department announced yesterday that Lady Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative (foreign minister, more or less) and Hillary Clinton will travel together to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo October 29-November 1. This is very much the right approach. If they can concert their messages as well as their travel plans, there is nothing really important in the Balkans that can’t be solved. That includes the political mess in Bosnia as well as the difficult relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
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Good news
It wasn’t just excess wonkiness that made me tweet about the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report website. It was this tidbit I found there: Kosovo jumped up 28 places in the rankings (from 126 to 98). Big improvements were in protecting investors, starting a business and dealing with construction permits. Serbia also saw a jump of 9 places in the rankings (from 95 to 86), with most of the improvement in starting a business and resolving insolvency.
I did my own unscientific survey last summer of a few entrepreneurs I met at a barbecue in Pristina. They all reported that it was easy to open a business and to operate one without serious problems. That’s better than I can say for my experience in DC.
This, to me, is very good news. It takes concerted effort to jump ahead the way Kosovo and Serbia have done. It also gets harder as you move up the rankings, for obvious reasons. I won’t be surprised if progress is uneven. The important thing is that both continue in the right direction.
Why is this important? Above all because it is the opening and growth of small businesses that will create stronger economies throughout the Balkans and raise the standard of living. Both Serbia and Kosovo have seen strong growth in recent years, but both appear to be slowing now due to the financial crisis plaguing all of Europe. Kosovo uses the euro as its currency, which in my way of thinking is a big plus since it eliminates monetary policy issues that are difficult to manage. But as a result, it cannot devalue to improve its trade position, as Serbia can.
The improvement in business climate is also an important indication that governance is improving. I’ll hope to see those improvements reflected in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in the future. Neither Kosovo nor Serbia can be proud of their most recent (2010/11) scores there. In the long run, it is the willingness, or not, of Serbia and Kosovo to adopt the needed reforms to improve business conditions and governance that will determine whether and when they are ready to enter the European Union.
Of course there are other factors, not least the willingness of Belgrade and Pristina to normalize their relations and resolve the many outstanding issues between them. The meeting last week of the two prime ministers was a step in the right direction. Later, Serbian Prime Minister Dačić said that the issues to be discussed with Pristina
include missing persons, rights of the Serbs in northern and southern Kosovo, protection of the cultural and church heritage and property and privatization
This looks to me a good deal like former President Tadić’s four points. from early this year, which represented an effort to greatly reduce Serbia’s “asks” of Kosovo.
The big missing item is partition, which Dačić will more than likely raise again in due course. He is deeply invested in the idea. Neither Dačić nor Tadić has been prepared to put recognition of Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as establishment of diplomatic relations on the table. Those things will come at the end of the process, not at the beginning, but come they must. The EU and U.S. will need to provide the leverage required to make Serbia swallow pills Belgrade has made much more bitter by its diehard resistance.
In the meanwhile, let’s celebrate what there is to celebrate: two countries that are moving, however haltingly, in the right direction. I wish I could say as much for my other friends in the Balkans, in particular Bosnia.
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A step in the right direction
So Dačić and Thaçi have met in Lady Ashton’s office in Brussels. The world has barely noticed. That’s the good news. While their domestic oppositions may criticize the two prime ministers (of Serbia and Kosovo, respectively) for “giving in” to each other, no one else thinks this meeting is really a big deal. They may not have shaken hands, but they have taken a quiet step towards normalizing relations.
That is what the European Union has rightly insisted on. Ashton deserves credit for pulling this meeting off, so far as I know as a surprise. I find myself in comfortable agreement with my professor colleagues Ognjen Pribićević and Predrag Simić, former Serbian ambassadors in Berlin and Paris respectively. The meeting is important symbolically and will reduce the tension between Belgrade and Brussels. There is still a long road ahead, at the end of which Serbia will have to choose between the EU and Kosovo. This is a first step in the right direction.
The question is whether there is more in than that. I suspect so. The EU has made it clear in recent days that Serbia cannot expect to hold on to part of Kosovo. Dačić has implicitly, if not explicitly, accepted this EU condition in meeting with Thaçi, whose commitment to Kosovo’s territorial integrity is not to be doubted. President Nikolić and Aleksander Vučić, defense and deputy prime minister, must be enjoying putting their coalition partner Dačić out front on an issue that has little upside in Serbian politics.
What did Thaçi give? Implicitly if not explicitly he has I trust agreed to discuss north Kosovo with Belgrade. This is very much the right thing to do. There can be no resolution of the situation there without cooperation from Belgrade in the reintegration process, which will have to be carefully planned and implemented. But there are those in Pristina who prefer to use north Kosovo has a bludgeon rather than get it resolved, so Thaçi will no doubt get some flak for moving ahead.
I trust Washington contributed something to this effort, if only encouraging Thaçi. I suspect it may also have had a hand in the strange high-profile visit of Clint Williamson to Belgrade earlier this week. He is the American the EU has named to lead an investigation of crimes against Serbs, including alleged involvement of Thaçi. That enabled the Belgrade’s political leaders to pose as protectors of the Serbs just before the meeting with Thaçi.
Kosovo and Serbia still have a long way to go. It is my hope that they can develop the habit of helping each other get over the bumps in the road. That will require a lot more effort from both Brussels and Washington, both of which should be gratified to see that their tough stance on partition has bent Belgrade in the right direction.
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A bird’s eye view of north Kosovo
A well-informed, well-situated birdie offers the following picture of what is going on in northern Kosovo and its broader implications. None of it is surprising, and none of it is confirmed by hard evidence, but worth pondering nevertheless. Solutions are going to have to take current circumstances into account:
The main reason why most ordinary Serbs in northern Kosovo are refusing to integrate into Pristina’s political system and institutions is not that they fear local kingpins but because they also benefit from smuggling even if they are not criminals themselves. Almost everyone there has at least one relative – in either their immediate or broader families – who is involved in smuggling business, and almost all Serb families are interconnected in one way or another. Profits from smuggling are so huge that gang bosses are able to bribe a large number of people into turning a blind eye to organized crime. In other words, even if you are not directly engaged in illegal business, you can benefit indirectly from it. The result is that most people have virtually no job but are nevertheless able to provide for themselves thanks to these high profits from smuggling. Therefore, they see no interest in changing a situation favorable to themselves, in spite of all the anarchy that exists in the area.
The Serbian gendarmerie troops deployed across areas bordering Kosovo are ordered to prevent only the illegal transfers of commodities from Kosovo into Serbia but not from Serbia into Kosovo.
Belgrade finds it difficult to dismantle the parallel institutions in northern Kosovo because a number of high-level Serbian politicians from nearly all relevant political parties and consecutive governments (including the incumbent one) were in earlier periods involved in smuggling and other criminal activities related to Kosovo by providing political protection to prominent criminals and getting in return a share of the profits. This enables criminals and their accomplices from unreformed parts of security-intelligence apparatus to blackmail these politicians with compromising material. So, even if they were willing to comply with demands from Brussels – and especially Berlin – to dismantle the parallel Serb structures, their hands are virtually tied.
Of particular interest is that this account puts the emphasis on things Brussels should worry about: the selective porousness of the boundary between Pristina’s control and Belgrade’s, the pervasive influence of organized crime and the compromised situation of Belgrade’s national leadership.
Some of my readers will object that this concerns only the Serbian side of the equation. They are correct. I don’t have the same kind of inside view of the Albanian side, though I will be glad to publish it if someone reliable provides it. I have no doubt but that there are beneficiaries south of the Ibar river that separates the areas of Belgrade and Pristina control.
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The EU needs a unified polity
The European Union unquestionably deserves the Nobel Prize for its past accomplishments. To cite just a few: peace between France and Germany, post-World War II European economic development and prosperity (no it wasn’t all due to the Marshall Plan), absorbing a reunified Germany and what used to be called eastern Europe into the European architecture, most of the staffing of peacekeeping operations in the Balkans (and many other parts of the world) in the 1990s and 2000s (and most of the aid money)…
The question is whether the much-expanded EU of 27 countries can do for the next generation what it has done for the last two. While I count myself a euro-enthusiast, I doubt it. Without a decisive move towards greater political unity, the EU is hamstrung. And the politics in many European countries–from Germany to Greece–militates against greater unity.
The EU’s current problems arise essentially from its inability to make quick and wise decisions. There is a dramatic contrast between European slowness in responding to the euro’s problems and the American reaction to its 2008 financial crisis. Consensus at 27 is difficult to achieve, even in the best of circumstances. When the decisions involve redistributing big economic and financial burdens, politics in the member states will rarely align.
Europe has created a unified economic space, but it lacks a unified political space. As we happen to be enjoying an American presidential campaign, it should be clear what this means. Even with the archaic electoral college process, which bends the campaign into a focus on the relatively few “battle ground” states, it is clear that Romney and Obama are conducting campaigns that try to appeal throughout the country. Europe is essentially stuck with a political system resembling the one we had under the Articles of Confederation, but its economic system is continent-wide. There are no European officials elected in constituencies that extend beyond the national borders of the member states.
This matters to Americans, because Europe is one of our biggest markets (as we are to Europe), a giant source of investment (also as we are to them), an educational and cultural partner of the first order, and still our most important military alliance, even if EU military capabilities have naturally atrophied with the continental peace its members now enjoy. Slow American economic growth today is due in part to Europe’s current financial crisis and its economic consequences. The NATO mission in Afghanistan relies in part on European contributions, as did the NATO-led effort against Muammar Qaddafi.
I am about to go off to moderate a talk by the Macedonian defense minister, Fatmir Besimi. His troops guard NATO headquarters in Kabul, even though Greece has blocked his country’s membership in the Alliance. That, too, is an example of Europe’s continuing political division and how it hampers a stronger, more effective European Union.
I can offer no solution. The Europeans will have to find it for themselves, as they have often in the past. It is not going to be easy. America did it by writing a new constitution behind closed doors in Philadelphia. That won’t work in the Twitter age. I hope this Nobel Prize, ironically awarded by a committee in Norway (which has declined EU membership), will inspire Europeans to unify their political space.
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