By Jose Ignacio Torreblanca
I have recently returned from an intense trip to Sarajevo, where a meeting organised by the Spanish presidency of the European Union took place between EU and Balkan foreign ministers.
For those who see the glass half full, the past six months have been the best the region has seen in the past 20 years. Although the doors of Europe have not opened completely, the lifting of visa restrictions on Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, which will soon apply to Bosnia, Albania and eventually Kosovo, have opened the windows to Europe and let in a breath of fresh air.
Croatia is about to conclude negotiations to join the EU, which will be an important signal to the whole region, refuting the idea of an EU “tired”with successive enlargements, reluctant to comply with promises it made ten years ago. Meanwhile, there are hopes that Serbian and Kosovan leaders could soon start direct talks aimed at normalising relations between their countries and improving the lives of their citizens. Thankfully, incidents of inter-ethnic violence are now extremely rare.
The Serbian parliament recently passed a resolution that recognises and condemns the crimes committed in Srebrenica in 1995 by Bosnian Serbs, opening a more ambitious and difficult road: that to reconciliation. In Sarajevo, the Serbian foreign minister agreed to sit down at the same table with his Kosovan counterpart for four hours, and listened to his speech with everyone else.
This called for some deft diplomatic manoeuvring. National flags and names of Balkan countries were removed from tabletop place cards but a similar gathering, organised by Slovenia in Brdo two months ago, failed, so Spain’s success in simply getting the two to meet is undeniable. Two years after Kosovo’s declaration of independence, the EU presidency has given Spain an exceptional opportunity to adopt a more balanced and constructive position between the two parties and contribute to stability in the region.
For those who see the glass half empty, however, the situation is not nearly so good. Many political leaders in the region are still stuck in the short-term and refuse to put the past behind them. In Bosnia, the country is still seized up by a dysfunctional system of government that demands the consensus of the three ethnic communities, each with its own president, before anything gets done. Bosnia has no constitution in the strict sense, only a peace agreement signed in a US military base (Dayton).
Problems also affect Serbia, a country that would be much higher up the EU membership queue if its leaders were more open with its citizens about Kosovan independence; Albania, where politicians show themselves incapable of handing over power in an orderly fashion; and Kosovo, where the government refuses to understand that corruption and poor governance completely undermine its precarious international legitimacy. The message is the same from all the European representatives: Europe can help and facilitate, but it cannot replace local leadership.
A fully integrated Europe, which seemed within reach after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, fell apart in the Balkans. Many mistakes were made and continue to be made: all of them, ultimately, the responsibility of those who in the past sacrificed their future to satisfy their ethnic instincts, and now sacrifice their European future for short-term electoral gains. The EU has spent ten years reaffirming the Balkans’ European future and encouraging reforms, but at the current rate of progress it is difficult to imagine these countries joining the EU by 2020, as many hope.
My metaphor of a glass half full or half empty has been criticised before. “Typical of the political theorist,” one critic told me. “I am an engineer and I see it clearly: their problem is that the glass is too big.” It is a thought the Balkan leaders should bear in mind: many people think they are not capable of filling the European glass simply because it is too big for them.
