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IntroductionFlorian Bieber aa Karl-Franzens Universität Graz

Available online: 10 Nov 2011

To cite this article: Florian Bieber (2011): Introduction, Europe-Asia Studies, 63:10, 1775-1781

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Introduction

FLORIAN BIEBER

SINCE THE EARLY 2000S THE EUROPEAN UNION HAS become the prime political actor

in the Western Balkans. After its failed involvement in the early 1990s, the

establishment of the Stability Pact in the context of the Kosovo War in 1999, and

the launch of the Stabilisation and Association process, the EU moved from being the

paymaster of the region to a more substantial engagement. From providing police

officers, judges and prosecutors in Kosovo to managing peacekeeping in Bosnia &

Hercegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina, BiH), and from overseeing political reform in

Macedonia to pushing governments of the region to cooperate with the International

Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), no other external actor has had

a comparable impact on political life in the region. Yet, much of this engagement is

often invisible and not embraced by grand symbolic gestures. While two main streets

in Prishtina are named after recent US presidents—Bill Clinton and George W.

Bush—the only monument to the EU is an ironic monument in Sarajevo in the shape

of a tin can labelled ‘canned beef’, recalling the food aid of the EU during the Bosnian

war when military intervention was needed.

Despite widespread support for EU membership in most countries of the Western

Balkans, there are also strong opponents. While support for membership of the EU is

strong overall in the region, especially considering that reaching this goal is still far

away, in 2010 87.4% of Kosovo’s citizens considered EU membership a good thing;

in Croatia, at the other end of the spectrum from Kosovo, sceptics outnumber

supporters of EU accession, despite or perhaps because EU accession has become

tangible since accession talks were concluded in June 2011.1 During anti-government

protests in early 2011, EU flags were set ablaze and demonstrators regularly carried

anti-EU banners and slogans. Similar anti-EU voices can be heard in protests

and among nationalist and populist groups in the Western Balkans. In Kosovo, the

nationalist movement and party Vetevendosje (Self-Determination), rejects the EU rule

of law mission (EULEX) through slogans such as ‘EULEX. Made in Serbia’. In

Serbia, nationalist groups such as 1389 and Obraz protested against the arrest of

Ratko Mladic in May 2011 by setting EU flags on fire. Despite nationalist and

populist EU sceptics in the Western Balkans, few significant political parties in the

1See data at Gallup Balkan Monitor, available at: http://www.balkan-monitor.eu/, accessed 29 July

2011.

EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES

Vol. 63, No. 10, December 2011, 1775–1781

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/11/101775-07 ª 2011 University of Glasgow

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2011.618677

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region have openly challenged the regional consensus on EU membership. The strong

political consensus for accession and popular scepticism in parts of the former

Yugoslavia is largely a consequence of the multiple roles the EU has been playing

there.

The EU has been engaged both in assisting post-conflict reconstruction and in

building future EU member states. While these two policies are enshrined, at least

nominally, in the Stabilisation and Association process, there has not been a single

policy by the EU towards the region but rather a number of different policies carried

out by a host of different institutions and ad hoc bodies of the EU. Especially in

post-conflict state-building in BiH and Kosovo, the EU has been present through a

plethora of different institutions, often forming a cacophony of voices. In BiH, for

example, the EU comes in four different shapes: it is present through the peacekeeping

operation EUFOR (Operation Althea), the EU Police Mission (EUPM), the EU

Special Representative (linked with the Office of the High Representative until 2011)

and the Delegation of the Commission (since 2011 the EU Delegation in the

framework of the External Action Service).

Despite the difficulties in forging a single policy out of these different institutions

and policies, there has been a key underpinning assumption of the EU’s efforts in the

Western Balkans: the transformation of the countries into stable democracies with

a functioning rule of law, and an ability to become EU member states is built on the

premise that the EU can successfully induce change through conditionality. This

process is largely understood to be twofold: first, transforming institutions and

adopting EU-compatible legislation, and second, socialising elites through EU

conditionality. These conditions extend from transforming state structures in

Macedonia, Kosovo and BiH to undoing the effects of mass violence in the post-

war regions, including in Croatia and Serbia, to transforming governance throughout

the region. The central significance of conditionality in the Western Balkans rests on

the offer of full EU membership, first clearly articulated by the EU when it opened the

Stabilisation and Association process to the countries of the Western Balkans in 2000.

Unlike during the previous enlargements, however, the states of the Western Balkans

for the most part have lacked consolidated state structures and continue to face

‘statenesses’ problems. Some countries lack a broad consensus among their citizens

over the structure of the government or even the country’s existence. In addition, the

legacy of the wars has not only had a long term impact on the economy and social

structure, but continues to burden interethnic and interstate relations.

The effectiveness of EU conditionality remains contested. Schimmelfennig (2007)

has argued that only a credible promise of membership allows for conditionality to be

effective; however, conditionality has often set ambitious targets at a stage when EU

membership was either not yet credible or just a remote prospect. Moreover, the EU

policy of conditionality has been ever expanding from enlargement to enlargement.

While before 2004 conditions focused on the ability of the country to become an

effective member state and to implement EU rules, democracy, market economy

and democratic governance have become central criteria, enshrined in the 1993

Copenhagen criteria. Their implementation has led to new normative requirements,

such as the protection of minority rights, which is not even shared by all EU member

states (Sasse & Hughes 2003, pp. 1–38). In the case of Cyprus, the EU attempted for

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the first time, albeit unsuccessfully, to become the midwife of a state-building project

(Tocci 2004). Overall, the expansion of conditionality during the 2004 and 2007

enlargements remained limited to core competences of the European Union and the

EU acquis (with the two aforementioned exceptions). In the case of the Western

Balkans, the EU has pursued a much broader agenda of conditionality. Conditionality

was not only applied earlier, during the Stabilisation and Association process, and

prior to granting countries candidate status, but also had a broader scope. These new

conditions were drawn from the international obligations the countries had under-

taken, such as the peace agreements (the Dayton Peace Agreement and the Ohrid

Framework Agreement) and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for

the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and additional requirements in the field of peace-

building and state-building (Anastasakis 2008). While scholars have been sceptical of

the EU’s ability to project its normative power into the region (Noucheva 2009), there

is limited understanding of the effects of EU conditionality in the Western Balkans.

Conditionality has been extensively studied in the countries that joined the EU in 2004

and 2007 (Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier 2005; Vachudova 2005), but the Western

Balkans have received less attention from scholars working on EU enlargement. EU

conditionality in the Western Balkans is not, however, a mere extension of previous

policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Both the conditions and their impact on the

countries have differed significantly from previous enlargements. Thus, the existing

literature on EU conditionality cannot be readily transferred to the Western Balkans,

and there is a need to understand the particular effects caused by the interplay of

additional conditions and contested states and political systems.

It is in this light that this collection both explores the mechanisms through which the

EU has expanded conditionality in the Western Balkans from previous enlargements,

and assesses its performance.2 While the contributions express a considerable degree

of scepticism towards the ability of the EU to initiate profound political changes

through conditionality, the collection by no means seeks to dismiss conditionality

outright. Instead, contributions highlight the causes of the weakness and why some

conditions have been met while others remain elusive.

The first study by Bieber explores the tensions between the EU in state building and

preparing the countries of the Western Balkans for future membership in the Union.

In Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro and BiH, the EU either inherited or designed

state-building projects. The minimalist states which sprang from these efforts were

initially designed to contain and manage conflict, not to join the EU. This stands

in contrast, however, to the prospect of EU integration, offered by the EU to the

countries of the region. In fact, EU integration as a transformative process is not only

the single most important shared political project across the region and the ethnic

divides, it is also widely seen as the best mechanism to prevent the resumption of

2The contributions in this volume (except Aybet & Bieber) were first presented at the annual

convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Boston in 2009. I

would like to acknowledge the support and patience of Terry Cox and Sarah Lennon, as well as the

financial support of the British Academy for my research and the joint research with Gulnur Aybet

through the British Academy Large Grant for the project ‘From Peace to State Building: An

Assessment of NATO and EU Conditionality in Bosnia and Herzegovina’.

INTRODUCTION 1777

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conflict and address the legacies of the most recent wars.3 The gap between minimalist

states which are ineffective and display significant structural weaknesses in terms of

legitimacy and ability to strengthen their own institutional structures, and the

requirements of the EU of its future member states, lies at the centre of the text. The

EU has sought to overcome these tensions through conditionality, but has struggled

amidst the contested nature of these states. The inability of the EU to formulate

consistent conditions as to what kind of state structures are required for EU

membership and the tensions between different EU actors (such as EC delegations in

the past and EU special representatives) has not only weakened the EU’s ability for

state building, but also undermined EU conditionality.

A similarly sceptical view of EU conditionality is taken by Vedran Dzihic and

Angela Wieser. Their text identifies the inability of EU conditions to substantially

advance democratisation in BiH. Even though the EU has developed clear conditions

in this sphere, unlike in regard to state building, since the adoption of the Copenhagen

criteria its conditionality has been based on the premise that standards are transposed

by political elites committed to democratic governance and EU integration.

Alternatively, populations support EU enlargement in order to restrain and control

their own political elites, which they distrust. In BiH, Dzihic and Wieser argue, neither

dynamic is successful. The ethnonationalist cartel in power remains formally

committed to EU integration and democratic governance, but in practice it often

prioritises nationalist and populist policies. Although populations are sceptical

towards these elites—expressed in low voter turnout and low levels of trust in

institutions, irrespective of ethnic composition—the dynamics of the political system

prevent clear lines of responsibility that would put pressure on decision makers from

either above (the EU) or below (citizens). As a consequence, BiH remains trapped,

not just in a weak state, but also with a weak democratic system of government where

EU conditionality has only limited traction.

A third direction, along which EU conditionality significantly expanded beyond

the scope of conditions required of future member states during the most recent

rounds of enlargement, was the requirement to cooperate with the ICTY. After some

US conditionality linking ICTY cooperation to US funding—as in the case of the

arrest and extradition of Slobodan Milosevic in 2001—the EU became the prime

institution penalising countries for non-cooperation by delaying the accession

process. Marlene Spoerri argues that this form of conditionality has been successful

if measured in terms of the arrest and surrender of indictees to the ICTY. There is

little doubt that few of those on trial would have been arrested without EU

conditionality; however, this success has been a source of weakness at the same time.

As Spoerri explores in the case of Serbia, the strong link between cooperation and

financial and symbolic rewards has shifted the debate on the ICTY from

responsibility for war crimes to rewards and punishments. The intended effect, that

conditionality would not only lead to the fulfilment of particular requirements but

also to a socialisation and learning effect where particular practices are challenged,

has largely failed. This was demonstrated once more following the arrest of Ratko

3This has been a central argument by a number of think tanks, such as the European Stability

Initiative and not least the EU itself (see Guisan 2011).

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Mladic and Goran Hadzic in Serbia in May and July 2011, respectively, where the

arrests were widely portrayed, not as coming to terms with the past, but rather as

opening the door to EU accession.4

Whereas the deliberate efforts of the EU to advance the creation of state structures

and democratic governance, or to encourage societies to deal with the past, have met

with considerable difficulties, the indirect transformative effect of the EU has been

more significant. As Andrew Konitzer highlights in his study of the transformation of

the Croatian and Serbian party systems, the prospect of EU accession has led to a

reconfiguration of party systems. Until the early 2000s, key parties in both countries

rejected EU integration, either formally, such as the Serb Radical Party (Srpska

radikalna stranka, SRS) in Serbia, or de facto, such as the Croat Democratic

Community (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ). The emphasis on national

interests and state sovereignty subordinated not only EU integration, but also

democracy, to this larger goal. Konitzer tells the story of how the HDZ first moved

towards the centre and endorsed both EU integration and basic democratic rules.

Even though the key actor of this transformation process, Ivo Sanader, was arrested

in Austria on a Croatian arrest warrant for alleged corruption and abuse of office in

2010, the shift is no longer in doubt. In Serbia, the shift took place through the

break-away of the more moderate Serb Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka,

SNS) from the SRS. The SNS, under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolic, has emerged

not only as the most popular party in Serbia together with the Democratic Party

(Demokratska stranka, DS), but has also endorsed EU integration as a strategic

goal and has abandoned radical nationalism as its primary political project. This

transformation highlights the effects of the EU beyond progress reports and formal

instruments. As an uncontested political goal, the EU has been able to transform the

political party systems to lead to a marginalisation of nationalist, EU-sceptic parties.

The effectiveness of conditionality can also be ascertained at the micro-level. Adam

Fagan, in his study of the EU’s Environmental Impact Assessment for the

construction of key roads in BiH around Sarajevo and Mostar, and a highway from

Banja Luka to Gradiska, shows that the weakness of EU conditionality at the state

level need not be replicated at the local level. Even if the process through which road-

building projects need to be discussed with local communities and environmental

organisations does not constitute a ‘hard’ condition of the EU, and non-compliance

would have been possible, the authorities did engage in consultative processes and

Fagan detects a learning process over time. As a result, one can argue that the

effectiveness of conditionality does not only hinge on the degree to which these are

enforced by external actors, but on the degree to which they change processes in a

manner that does not fundamentally threaten existing institutions or elites. In

addition, the nexus between conditionality and the ‘Europeanisation’ of the particular

project appears to be essential: the roads built formed part of European networks and

funding was provided by international financial institutions.

4Following the arrest of Mladic, the state broadcaster RTS, however, did devote more space to war

crimes and the screening of documentaries on Srebrenica and other war crimes from the Bosnian war

than following previous arrests (Sadovic 2011).

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A similar emphasis on technical expertise and external assistance, not just

conditionality is placed, in the study by Aybet and Bieber of EU and NATO

conditionality, in the sphere of police and defence reform in BiH. Here, the contrast

between the largely successful integration and professionalisation of the Bosnian army

under NATO auspices stands in sharp contrast to the agonisingly long and eventually

unsuccessful efforts of the EU to reform and centralise the police forces. NATO, with

clear conditions and a convincing logic underpinning conditionality, and acting as a

professional interlocutor with high-ranking soldiers, was able to first abolish entity

ministries of defence, and eventually oversee the merger of the armed forces and their

drastic reduction in numbers. Police reform, on the other hand, failed despite the fact

that EU integration is more widely accepted as a political goal than NATO

membership.5 The reason for failure was thus not the distance to EU membership,

but instead, the process ran aground amidst the inability of the EU to formulate

convincing conditions which were derived from either the acquis communitaire or

shared practice among its members. Also, lacking technical expertise, it was unable to

provide a professional interlocutor as NATO did with the armed forces.

Altogether this collection highlights that EU conditionality has had limited success

in the Western Balkans; however, the more the EU has sought to set conditions in

those policy areas that are concerned with symbols and the fundamental structure of

the state, the more its transformative power has been limited. Support for EU

accession among citizens has been strong in most countries of the region, but when

EU conditionality linked accession to symbolically charged demands, such as the

extradition of generals in Croatia to the ICTY, support for EU membership

dropped.6

Karl-Franzens Universitat Graz

References

Anastasakis, O. (2008) ‘The EU’s Political Conditionality in the Western Balkans: Towards a MorePragmatic Approach’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 8, 4.

Guisan, C. (2011) ‘From the European Coal and Steel Community to Kosovo: Reconciliation and ItsDiscontents’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 49, 3.

Noucheva, G. (2009) ‘Fake, Partial and Imposed Compliance: The Limits of the EU’s NormativePower in the Western Balkans’, Journal of European Public Policy, 16, 7.

Sadovic, M. (2011) Mladic Arrest Marks Watershed for Serbia, Institute for War and Peace Reporting,TRI 694, 27 May, available at: http://iwpr.net/report-news/mladic-arrest-marks-watershed-serbia,accessed 29 July 2011.

Sasse, G. & Hughes, J. (2003) ‘Monitoring the Monitors: EU Enlargement and National Minoritiesin Central and Eastern Europe’, Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 1,available at: http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus1-2003_Hughes_Sasse.pdf, accessed 12May 2011.

Schimmelfennig, F. (2007) ‘European Regional Organizations, Political Conditionality, andDemocratic Transformation in Eastern Europe’, East European Politics & Societies, 21, 1.

5BiH is divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia & Hercegovina (Federacije Bosne i

Hercegovina, FBiH), populated mostly by Croats and Bosniaks, and the Serb Republic (Republika

Srpska, RS), with an overwhelming Serb population.6See data at Gallup Balkan Monitor, available at: http://www.balkan-monitor.eu/, accessed 29 July

2011.

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Schimmelfennig, F. & Sedelmeier, U. (2005) The Europeanisation of Central and Eastern Europe(Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press).

Tocci, N. (2004) EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution. Catalysing Peace or ConsolidatingPartition in Cyprus? (Aldershot, Ashgate).

Vachudova, M. A. (2005) Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, & Integration After Communism(Oxford, Oxford University Press).

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