EU opinions vary widely in Balkans

BRUSSELS, Nov. 18 – A Gallup poll indicated Albania and Kosova expressed strong approval to the EU membership.
The prospect of joining the European Union strikes wildly varying reactions among citizens in the western Balkan nations.
Approval ratings in Albania and Kosova were at least 83 percent but only 29 percent of Croats said they thought joining the EU would be a good thing though Croatia is the furthest along of the Balkan nations on the road to membership.
Albania is much less advanced in its EU aspirations.
Kosovar and Albanian respondents to the survey felt the most ‘wanted’ by the EU, both by its institutions (respectively 82% and 67%), and by its citizens (75% and 55%).
The strong pro-EU sentiment in Kosova in particular is “a necessary naivety that people need to have in order to go through the difficult process [of EU integration],” Veton Surroi of Kosovo’s Koha Ditore newspaper told a conference on Monday.
The fact that they feel so wanted also “speaks well of the European Union’s PR” and “derives from the lack of knowledge about the whole process,” he added.
Giuliano Amato, former Italian prime minister and former chair of the International Commission on the Balkans, said the pro-EU feelings in the region could only be cultivated in the long run if the countries would be offered something concrete in return for their efforts to carry out the EU-required reforms.
Simply “keeping [them] busy in a bureaucratic way” becomes too long after a while and “a sense of urgency has to be restored somehow” to give the whole process a real meaning, Amato argued.
One way to do this, according to him, would be further relaxation of the EU’s visa policy towards the western Balkan countries.
On the International Crime Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a majority of Albanians (69%) and Kosovars (68%) said the tribunal was helping reconciliation and strengthening peace in the region.
Additionally, in all countries, but Albania and Kosova, less than a third of the respondents thought the court’s proceedings were impartial and their outcome was open.
The survey was carried out in September and October in all western Balkan nations and included 1,000 people per country in face-to-face interviews.