The DPC analysis indicates that BiH should not receive approval for the start of accession negotiations on Thursday. For all the forces that are trying to lead Bosnia and Herzegovina on the path to the EU and NATO, a negative decision will surely be met as a great disappointment. As someone who fully supports BiH’s path to the EU, how do you explain the results of this analysis?

Bassuener: I know we are outliers even in the policy analysis and advocacy realm in viewing the EC’s recommendation to open membership talks with BiH. It puts us at odds with people with whom we normally agree, including several MEPs and legislators – who have been strong advocates in a very helpful way for real progress toward developing accountable democracy in this country, upon which serious pursuit of EU and NATO membership depend.  However, it is because we have followed these issues in deep detail for at least two decades as DPC – and considerably longer individually – that we have been compelled to take the position that such a move is declaring a false dawn, not an open door to real progress.

You refer to those “forces” pursuing EU and NATO membership for BiH who would be disappointed (and perhaps undermined) at a negative decision by the European Council on Thursday. But who exactly are these forces? There are many in the political realm who declare they want to move toward these goals – but how much effort have they expended in this direction, given that the conditions have been clear from the outset – and clarified further with the 14 key reform priorities articulated in 2019? I would argue that the commitment of the BiH political class as a whole, excepting no party or individual actor, has never made progress toward EU or NATO membership a primary goal.

Weber: Our analysis shows on the one hand that formal reform steps undertaken by the ruling elites in BiH, from last year’s amendment to the Law on HJPC, to the recent adoption of the BiH law on conflict of interest, don’t represent true progress, nor are they in line with EU values, principles and standards. On the other hand, the European Comission’s positive recommendation of last week in founded upon avoiding any assessement of that “reform progress.” To sum up, the green light the European Council will give to BiH this Thursday is, again, exclusively based on lowering and dropping reform conditionality. This will only be the latest, grimmest chapter in a two decades-old policy of artificial/fake progress of BiH on its EU path, enabled by concessions. A policy that has long time –definitively– failed. Each new concession only further emboldens and empowers nationalist elites and leaders who truly don’t want into the EU, supporting them in systematically undermining democracy and the rule of law – and enables them to at the same time even present themselves as “champions of EU integration.” While citizens, having long lost any trust in the EU, are fleeing in ever larger numbers from such a BiH state.

For those reasons, anyone who geniously supports BiH’s EU path today has to advocate against green light for opening accession talks, however painful that might be, or sound absurd.

Many people, even in Bosnia, believe that their country really does not meet the conditions for negotiations with the EU. However, there are not a few who think that the start of negotiations would reduce tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and give a tailwind to the process and that it would be a strategically good political decision by the EU with the aim of stabilizing the region and European security cohesion, regardless of the level of fulfillment of the conditions . At DPC you obviously don’t think so?

Bassuener: Regarding the potential catalytic effects of beginning the membership talks regardless of whether the substantive criteria have been met (or even acknowledging that they have been actively undermined in some cases), I think this represents the triumph of hope over experience – a sort of magical thinking. This has been the argument since the SAA was initialed in 2007 – that declaring progress will generate this mythical “momentum” to drive the process forward. Instead, this has only allowed the BiH political elites to set the terms with the EU rather than the other way around. We saw this in the “structured dialogue” on the judiciary, for example. We have also seen it regarding the election law. Instead of compelling BiH elites against their will to change, the EU has become complicit in reinforcing their power. This hardly serves the public interest.

Security is a real concern, but if that is so, the best remedy is – as we at DPC have long advocated – confronting that directly by reinforcing EUFOR’s deterrent capability and posture, including my demonstrating secession is impossible and that instigating political or interethnic violence would be career-ending (or even more final) for those who initiate it from the commanding heights. The reality is – and the West has been dishonest with itself as well as Bosnian citizens and politicians alike – that Dayton BiH will never enter the EU (or NATO, for that matter). Not because these goals are impossible for any BiH, but since the Dayton system a) allows the political elites enormous latitude to abuse public funds and trust without accountability, and b) there is recognition that importing BiH as-is would import inherent, curated instability into their clubs.

Weber: Any reasonable person, whether in EU capitals or in BiH, knows, or can know if he/she wants to, that BiH has not fulfilled the reform conditions for a green light by any means. Even with multiple additional concessions, the country as is will never be able to enter the EU, i.e. be ready for membership, in fact for years is moving further away from that aim. The fact that most of them don’t come to the same conclusion as we at DPC do, I see as an expression of conformism for some, a principle of hope, an expression of despair about the state of the country, and the lack of any perspective for a turnaround for others.

To repeat, the policy of concessions to, appeasement of Dodik and Covic , as we’ve constantly seen in the past, only encourages them, because they see it for what it is, a sign of weakness of the EU, and the West. And emboldens their ethnonationalist, secessionist agendas, thus further destabilizing the country. On the EU side, the latest cooncession does not represent any strategic decision, but is the consequence of the absence of a joint, strategic policy of the EU, and wider West towards BiH for two decades.

If not like this, how should the “real” European path of Bosnia and Herzegovina look like without the support of those you point the finger at – Dodik and Čović, without whom that path certainly can’t exist? Do you think that is possible with two of them?

Bassuener: Your reference to Messrs Dodik and Čović, both of whom have exploited the “EU path” to their own purposes – that is, to strengthen their relative power and security within an already oligarchical, feudal system – inflates them into becoming indispensable people.  For Covic, that was – and remains – the election law. He got rewarded with the High Rep’s impositions, but he wants guarantees that he or whoever he chooses is assured the Croat seat on the BiH Presidency.  For Dodik, it’s the foreign judges on the Constitutional Court (and that’s “original Dayton”), as well as pursuing to short-circuit the appellate level of the Court of BiH, as well as his attempt at a big payday with state property.  And nobody in BiH politics wants strong control over conflicts of interest, since that would cut to the heart of the political business model here. The hope and (unrealized) potential benefit of the EU enlargement process was precisely to pry the fate of this country away from such self-dealing, self-interested elites – not reinforce them. In essence, the idea that BiH can only move toward EU membership should their interests in self-preservation and enrichment be satisfied is a guarantee that the country will never advance into membership. Because such a country is absolutely unsaleable – at least at present and foreseeably – to citizens or political elites of a majority of EU member states.  The illiberal members of the EU, led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, are such vocal champions of a values-free enlargement precisely because they want to make the EU safer for such “illiberal democracy.”  Citizens of BiH would hardly be beneficiaries of such a course of events.

As to what would constitute a real, substantive and honest EU enlargement process, this would entail the European Commission, EU Delegation, and member states – as well as the US, UK, Canada, Norway, Turkey, and other Western powers which advocate BiH’s EU path – working to develop a popular constituency among citizens for a country in which men (and the real decision-makers in this country’s politics all are) like Dodik, Čović, Izetbegović, Nikšić, etc cannot have a stranglehold on development, progress, justice, even peace itself. Such a latent constituency exists throughout BiH, disgusted with both their political elites and the West’s embrace of them. The enlargement process as practiced thus far has strengthened their politicians at their expense.

Weber: The issue is not about political leaders in BiH, but about a missing joint, strategic policy of the EU and the West towards the country. As long as the West had a strategy and the necessary political will in the past, reforms were possible even with the existing political elites and actors. Therefore, it’s high time for the West to get its act together and to pull the plug. To take its leverage and existing instruments, those of the EU as well as its Dayton instruments (OHR; EUFOR), and to develop a joint, comprehensive strategy. A strategy based on the analysis of the real situation on the ground, instead of continuing to adjust the reality to a non-existing policy towards BiH.

In my opinion, such a strategy would have to comprise the following elements: labeling, clearly and publicly, political elites and leaders in BiH what they are – nationalist, anti-democratic and anti-European actors; to openly state that BiH cannot enter the EU with its existing, anti-state constitutional order; for the EU to design a strategic plan for the negotiating framework with a new constitutional order, based on a new, democratic balance between individual and collective ethnic rights at its core, without the West again (co-)writing BiH’s constitution; and finally, that the West labels the ruling elites as partners by default, while identifying BiH citizens as their true, pro-European partners. For such an endeavor, political initiative and leadership coming from key EU member state capitals, starting with Berlin, will be needed.

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Executive Summary

The question of the allocation of state and defense property in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is again on the political agenda; a working group convened by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) is expected to continue its work until fall 2023. As the question of state property touches on corruption, environmental protection, local governance, and the nature of BiH as a state, understanding why it matters is important.

Background

State and defense property refers to territory and objects that are currently owned by the state of BiH – an estimated 50% of the territory of the country. This includes property of the former Socialist Republic of BiH and property falling to BiH under the international succession agreement for the former Yugoslavia – immovable objects but also forests, agricultural land, rivers and other bodies of water, and the resources underneath the land, e.g., mines or yet untapped mineral deposits. The issue of who holds ownership over this property was not explicitly regulated in the Dayton constitution, but has come and gone as a policy priority over the years since.

In 2004, the Council of Ministers of BiH established a Commission for State Property; in 2009 an initial Inventory of State Property was established through the Office of the High Representative (OHR). In 2008, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) included this issue within the “5+2” set of objectives and conditions for the closure of the OHR. In 2012, a decision from the BiH Constitutional Court clarified that the state of BiH is the sole owner of state property; two subsequent rulings in 2020 confirmed this decision. The issue is not mentioned in the EU Commission’s 2019 Avis which lists 14 priorities for opening accession negotiations.

State of Play

Since 2012, in line with Milorad Dodik’s efforts to weaken BiH and strengthen the entity of the Republika Srpska (RS) and reflecting the international community’s unmoored approach to BiH generally, the RS has ignored Constitutional Court rulings, instead illegally and non-transparently disposing of and selling off parts of state property. The issue is once again on the agenda for several reasons.

The key driving force is the critical state of RS public finances, as the entity needs assets and collateral to service past debt and incur additional debt. While most acute in the RS, the promise of new money is appealing to other domestic actors as well.

In addition, Croatia and Serbia, which have increasingly demonstrated their unfinished agendas towards BiH and their interest in a weak state (which would reduce resistance to external meddling), are poised to benefit handsomely from any property sell-off. So are other illiberal powers, both near (Hungary) and far (Russia, China).

The international community over the past several years has demonstrated increasing readiness to support and legitimize dealmaking by the ethnonationalist elites. The US wants to be able to further disengage by claiming Dayton loose ends are tied up. The EU wants to be able to claim that its “soft power” works and to justify the granting of candidacy post hoc, particularlysince Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning to visit the country in October. So there is a premium on signifiers of progress. All claim that beneficial foreign investment would result.

In 2021 Dodik suggested he could curtail his secessionist agenda if state property would be “resolved” to his liking. Rather than reacting to this as the blackmail it was, the European Commission picked up on his offer. In 2022, OHR convened an expert working group that is working in secrecy but is apparently assisting the Parliamentary Assembly in drafting a state law. The working group held its most recent session on July 14, 2023; it will likely continue into October. But the history of the issue suggests that there is no pressing need to try and resolve it now – in fact, the current political climate has produced the worst possible moment for doing so.

Why it Matters

Dodik insists on regulating the issue through an inter-entity agreement; this would feed his agenda of claiming that BiH is not a state but a sort of “state union.” He is therefore using this issue to try to redefine the nature of the state. This also suits Dragan Čović (HDZ BiH) and his backers in Zagreb, as they continue to try to carve out a Croat quasi-entity through “election law reform” and “Federation reform.” While any one of these state-weakening efforts is detrimental to BiH’s future, taken together they amount to dismantling the country. Some suggest that a state law would give the property rights to the level of municipalities. While this would appear to be in line with principles of decentralization, due to BiH’s structure – and the structure’s demonstrated incentives for malgovernance and obstacles to accountability – the long dominant verticals of power will continue to own and strip these assets for the benefits of the parties rather than the communities.

Dealing with this issue without addressing the theft to date would legitimize the corruption that has undergirded Dodik’s project.

Recommendations

1. A solution to the property issue – that is, property apportionment and disposition – should not proceed in the current, increasingly polarized environment. The international community – the EU, the US, the UK, and the other members of the PIC – should not let its priorities be dictated by Milorad Dodik or any of the other incumbents who have their eyes set on state property.

2. A fundamental reset of Western policy is needed to put an end to BiH’s unaccountable ethnocracy and to support development of a new social contract based on real devolution to local government, to finally replace the calcified partitocracy.

Only then should the property issue be tackled, in accordance with the following three principles:

• That it be a state law adopted by the BiH Parliament – not an inter-entity agreement as sought by Dodik;
• That in the division of property among governance layers, a large chunk of property must go to the state and to municipalities, with fail-safes in place to ensure municipalities benefit from these resources free from asset-stripping party agendas;
• That all illegal and unconstitutional (RS) property disposal decisions since the HR’s first disposal ban of state and defense property in 2005, in fact since 1995 – be annulled before any apportionment of the property among BiH’s different layers of government. Any other decision would mean legalizing theft, and irrevocably strangling the authority of the HR/OHR, the Constitutional Court of BiH and Court of BiH, and of the rule of law and constitutionality in general.

Read the full paper – in English

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Negotiations on the proposed deal, also dubbed the German-French proposal, and supported by the US, have been going on since autumn last year in secrecy, leaving observers confused about its content, the character of the proposal, and the political approach behind it. Unlike during earlier stages in the decade-old, EU-led political dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, negotiations have been accompanied by an extraordinary escalation of friction on the ground in the majority-Serb northern enclave in Kosovo. The trigger was a decision by Prime Minister Kurti to finally implement a long-delayed decision to require Serbs in northern Kosovo to register for Republic of Kosovo license plates. This has long been a contentious issue, because the current plates are issued by Serbian authorities. Months of negotiations – and western entreaties not to not implement the decision in the lack of agreement,  led to Serbs erecting barricades in the north. Kosovo Serb employees of the police, judicial, and municipal institutions in these four municipalities (North Mitrovica, Zvečan, Zubin Potok, and Leposavić) resigned from their posts in early November after Prishtina had removed the Serb police commander in the north – reversing the main achievement of the political dialogue to date. To fill the void, Prishtina deployed special Kosovan police to the region, further raising tensions. In December, Serbs erected barricades in the north. These were only removed after a preliminary agreement on the license plate issue was reached in Brussels.

No less confusing, EU negotiators and the lead Western capitals behind the initiative (Berlin, Paris, and Washington) in recent weeks have indentified, and publicly labeled, Prishtina as the negotiating party blocking an agreement – the side that, unlike the leadership in Belgrade, stands for Western, liberal democratic values. The Kurti government has been castigated for its resistance to the proposal based on political positions that were, until recently, held by Berlin and others. These include insistence on a final, comprehensive agreement, or the position that the establishment of the contentious, so-called Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities (ASM) should only proceed within the framework of a final agreement and formal-legal recognition of Kosovo by Serbia.  Prishtina has to a large degree undermined its own negotiating position by the erratic performance of its highest officials on the diplomatic stage and by long-held dogmatic political positions, particularly regarding Kosovo Serbs.

With several more or less authentic draft versions having been leaked in recent weeks, the cornerstones of the proposal have recently come into clearer focus.  The “normalization” proposal foresees what is billed by its advocates as mutual “de facto recognition,” not the de jure recognition which was the predicate for launching the dialogue. The wording of the 1972 German-German basic agreement is essentially replicated. Serbia would commit to cease working against Kosovo applying for membership in international organisations and to undermine Kosovos EU integration path. And the proposal frontloads implementation of all previously agreed agreements, in  particular the establishment of the (still undefined) Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities (ASM). Special legal status for the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo is also a provision. The rationale behind shifting away from the previous goal of the dialogue – a a final, comprehensive agreement – remains opaque.

Since its launch in 2012, the political dialogue has gone through several phases. Seizing leadership, the then-German chancellor Merkel set the framework of the dialogue by insisting the era of border changes in the Balkans was long past, linking Serbia’s EU membership aspirations with accepting the fact of having lost Kosovo. An incremental approach was chosen, with Belgrade gradually accepting aspects of Kosovo as an independent state,  removing its state institutions from the ten majority Serb-inhabited municipalities in Kosovo, and Serbia in parallel progressing on its EU path. The 2013 April Agreement led to the historic first integration of Serbian police and judiciary into the Kosovo state in the north, and the establishment of local authorities following municipal elections. Then-Prime Minister Ivica Dačić explained to his citizens Serbia had to face the reality Kosovo was gone. At the time, this seemed like a watershed.

That approach, however gradually slowed to a crawl, becoming deadlocked after 2015 over the issue of the competences of the ASM, left open in the April Agreement. To rescue the dialogue the EU in 2017 announced the beginning of a new phase, negotiations on a final, comprehensive, legally binding agreement. Western negotiators, however turned that phase into ist opposite, by colluding with the then Serbian and Kosovo leaders, President Vučić and his counterpart Hashim Thaçi in pushing for an ethnonterritorial partition, “land swap” deal (billed as “adjustment of the administrative line” by Belgrade and “border correction” in Prishtina). Negotiations for the first three years were led by the then EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini and her team, and after the end of her mandate in 2019, continued for another year by the Trump administration under special envoy Richard Grenell untill they hit the wall, culminating in a photo op deal in September 2020 that dealt with none of the major outstanding issues. The incoming Biden administration renounced the idea of the land swap, as did the EU.A two-year intermezzo under the newly-appointed EU special representative Miroslav Lajčák followed, focusing on seemingly less contentious bilateral issues, whichled nowhere.

In contrast, the current proposal represents a hard to define, but ill-designed interim agreement. Various complications attend it: the main carrots offered to Prishtina, such as  a change in position of at least some of the 5 EU member state non-recognizers or Kosovo’s membership in international organizations, have to take the form of oral promises, based on the logic of “trust us.” The same goes for Western “guarantees” regarding the ASM, a form of collective governance of the 10 Serb majority-inhabited municipalities agreed on in the April 2013 Agreement, but never substantively defined. The proposal envisions and ASM established outside the framework of a final agreement and prior to formal recognition of Kosovo by Serbia. Kosovo fears, looking to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Republika Srpska, that the ASM will in the future be turned into a tool for ethnoterritorial autonomy, and ultimate secesssion. There are no assurances that a shift in position of part of the non-recognizers (also not assured), would free the way for also Kosovo to progress on its EU path and whether Belgrade would return to a more emollient tone regarding Kosovo, as seen in 2013.

The agreement, if signed and implemented, would most probably lead to substantial, immediate progress, with Kosovo gaining membership in international organizations (e.g. Council of Europe, Interpol, UNESCO), several EU non-recognizers would likely reconsider, and tensions in northern Kosovo and with Belgrade would cool down.

But it would ultimately fail in the long-term perspective, due to the very same reason the original, incremental dialogue approach failed over time:  the lack of a strategic masterplan, a written and public roadmap defining the next and remaing steps up to the endpoint, recognition of Kosovo by Serbia. As proven in the past, the EU and the US lack the will or capacity to play the long game. Instead, over time, with political attention in the capitals shifting to other global hot spots, manuvering space will again open for the local actors to slow down, undermine and ultimately reverse progress.

Back in 2013, the West’s intial, tactical trade of democracy for the dialogue, without a long-term strategy, enabled the rise of the Vučić regime and the authoritarian-autocratic consolidation in Serbia. Exploiting the strategic vacuum in the dialogue, using it as a shield against critique for domestic democratic backsliding, and the weakening of the EU’s enlargement leverage due to rising internal divisions, Belgrade turned from a constructive to a destabilizing regional force. The ideological concept of Srpski Svet, a copy of Putin’s Russkiy Mir has effectively been adopted by Belgrade – without Western resistance. Serbia has escalated  through its massive political, social, and cultrual intervention in fellow EU candidate (and NATO member) Montenegro. There has been no consequence; Vučić is still embraced as a de facto ally of the West, despite this track record.

No less important, the current proposal offers no solution to the Kosovo Serb issue. The failure of the dialogue has turned Kosovo Serbs from its main object into its main collateral damage. In the strategic vacuum, the West’s  tacit approval in 2013 for Belgrade to form a unified political list in Kosovo, the Serbian List (Srpska Lista),  introduced an effective one-party (controlled by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party – SNS) system in the 10 municipalities, merging with the all-pervading organized criminal network. Unlike the general Western perception, the ASM was never designed as a practical instrument for integration of the Serbs into Kosovo state and society, but as a face-saving tool for Belgrade and for Serbia’s need to tell Serbs in the north they will ultimately be governed from Prishtina, de jure. For sustainably integrating Kosovo Serbs, it is necessary to get the Serbian state out of Kosovo and to reverse the authoritarian-criminal transformation in the Serb-majority municipalities. This requirement seems not even an afterthought in the West, where a strategic void prevails.

Finally, the opting for an intermediate step seems to be based of the West‘s self-assessment of possessing  diminshed leverage over Serbia. The conclusion seems to be that it is not commensurate at this point in time with the goal of a final agreement with formal recgonition. This false assumption, follows the EU’s self-weakening due to actors like French president Emmanuel Macron undermining the joint enlargement policy and the Biden administration by and large continuing the Serbia-focused, transactional policy approach towards the Western Balkans of the Trump administration. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy courting of Vučić that will not add up in the long run, not least because under the current regime, an authoritarian-autocratically transformed Serbia will never develop the democratic capacities to ever enter the EU.

Instead, the only real solution lies in directly negotiating on a final, comprehensive agreement, based on the EU and the US getting its act together in the region: that is, for the EU to end its divisions over its enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans, and the West making a profound, strategic U-turn in its Serbia policy, towards one founded in liberal-democratic principles and values. This would require applying the substantial – and now increased – Western leverage over Serbia to decisively pressure Belgrade towards a principled shift in its policy on Kosovo and on Russia. 

The current geopolitical context of the Ukraine war, the revival of the EU’s enlargement policy with the extraordinary granting of candiate status to Ukraine in June last year, provide a unique window of opportunity to do so.

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In the recent local elections, the SDA lost Sarajevo, and Milorad Dodik’s SNDS was defeated in the race for the mayor of Banja Luka. Is this a sign that in BiH bad politicians can be punished, at least at the local level? Or is the importance of local elections in Sarajevo and Banja Luka overrated?

Probably the most important, sustainable post-war reform implemented under the guidance of the international community in the dysfunctional Dayton state was the 2004-5 strengthening of local self-governance, by way of introducing the direct election of mayors and fiscal decentralization. As a result, the local level in BiH today remains the only governance level that doesn’t have an absolute disassociation between the authorities and ruling elites, and the citizens and their needs and interests. Therefore, it is easier to punish a mayor or ruling coalition or party in a way it has a certain impact at the local level rather than in cantons, entities, or at the state level. In addition, the substantial election defeats of the dominant ethno-political parties, because they traditionally lead local election campaigns as if they were general elections, to a certain extent reflects the crisis of those parties. In the case of SDA, this is related to various scandals and internal divisions; the SNSD has been weakened on the one hand by the “Justice for David” episode, and on the other hand by its leader Dodik’s rash move ahead of the 2018 general elections, to after 15 years of absolute power in the Republika Srpska (RS), move to Sarajevo, i.e. the central state level. He has had obvious problems in finding his way there.

On the other hand, the defeat of SDA led to the rise of Dino Konaković’s party Narod i Pravda (NiP), while the new Banja Luka mayor is Draško Stanivuković from the PDP. They present themselves as an honest version of the conservative, nationalist policy otherwise represented by SDA and SNSD. How do you comment on the winners – can we expect a new, better policy from them?

The question is whether these parties and their representatives are more democratic than the ruling parties in the entities and the state. One has to give credit to Stanivuković for the courage he demonstrated in deciding to join the fight with the Dodik regime, in defense of the “Justice for David” movement, at a point in time when it was not clear that it would be politically beneficial for him. The problem in BiH, however, is a structural one – the Dayton institutional order is such that you cannot make substantial changes from within, while changing the constitutional system from outside the political institutions is close to impossible without the support of its international co-authors.

Croatia has recently intensified diplomatic actitivies on BiH, related to the change of the election law, in order to make impossible that the more numerous Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH elect the Croat member of the Presidency of BiH. In your opinion, does the election law need to be changed, and how?

The electoral system needs to be changed, but only in the framework of profound changes to the constitutional system of BiH, which is impossible to accomplish through reform of the current Dayton system, but only through an entirely new constitution. Without constitutional changes, all requests for changing the electoral system are nothing less than hidden attempts at changing the constitutional order. In Croatia, the related requests of the HDZ BiH and its leader Dragan Čović are either not understood, or are something people do not want to understand.

The late Zdravko Grebo, one of the greatest B-H intellectuals, and a good friend of mine, once called the former leader of the Social Democratic Party of BiH (SDP), Zlatko Lagumdžija, the most damaging political personality in the history of BiH. He wasn’t far from the truth. The SDP’s 2006 assault on the destructive ethno-political order of BiH, that is running a candidate for the Croat member of the Presidency, which for the first time left the HDZ BiH without that post, was probably the most damaging political move in post-war BiH. Not for any formal reason – the election of the Croat member, partly thanks to Bosniak votes, was fully legal – but because this step was undertaken without any defined political aim. This way, the SDP delivered a perfect platform and cover to the HDZ BiH for organizing an hysterical campaign, that has already lasted a decade, on the alleged, but non-existing, discrimination of BH-Croats. This (SDP) move did not endanger the equality of “constituent people,” but the position of the HDZ BiH as “constituent party.”

What do I mean by that? Many people in today’s BiH and Croatia don’t know that the origin of the concept of constituent people lies in Tito’s socialist Yugoslavia. It was developed in the context of the 1970s constitutional reforms, in Edvard Kardelj’s kitchen cabinet, the ideologue of Tito’s nationality policy. Copying the Soviet nationality policy was part of socialist “social engineering.” In the framework of the first multi-party elections in BiH 1990, the new national parties pluralized the concept of “constituent parties,” cleansing it of its socialist origin, turning it into a means to establish three, interconnected state-party apparatuses. Ironically, the socialist system of constituent people, though undemocratic, was substantially more liberal than today’s Dayton system. The SDP’s move, devoid of any political strategy, thus endangered HDZ BiH’s position as constituent party. For the party and its leader Čović the only solution lies in legally-institutionally securing the position of constituent party – and those changes to the electoral system equal the establishment of a virtual, third Croat entity on parts of the territory of the Federation of BiH (without territorial continuity and without the Croats in the RS). And what the “benefit” for BH-Croats of such an entity would be, can be observed in the dire state of society, politics and economy in the RS.

The Croatian President Zoran Milanović invited Milorad Dodik, the Serbian Presidency member and informal leader of the RS, to Zagreb. Was this a good move?

It looks like President Milanović since taking office has turned into a far-right extremist, to the detriment of his social Democratic Party and the country as a whole.

The publicly declared aim of Croatia’s foreign policy is change of the BiH election law. Does Croatia have the power to achieve this?

Since entering the European Union, Croatia has unfortunately turned its BiH policyinto the Trojan horse of enlargement policy. This is because it provides the enlargement sceptics within the EU with great arguments, and this is a slap in the face for all of us who back then lobbied for Croatia’s entry into the Union against those same sceptics. Because of Croatia’s unresolved relationship with the recent past, Croatian policy, from the far right to the left, while officially performing as the defender of the interests of BH Croats, in fact remains trapped in the role of the extended arm and spokesperson of Dragan Čović and HDZ BiH, to the huge detriment of the Croatian people in BiH, Croatia’s own reputation within the EU, i.e. in the European Parliament, and in the Council of the EU, where the Croatian representatives are disruptive elements. Croatian government representatives, for example, through years of Council negotiations on conclusions on BiH, request the formulation, “equality of constituent people” to be included, and “equality of citizens,” one of the foundations of the acquis, to be removed. This way, Zagreb actually signals nothing less than that Croatia has smuggled itself into the EU, because it does not support the democratic values of the Union. The embodiment of that awkward, ideologized policy is Željana Zovko, who by shifting between roles such as a BiH ambassador or international secretary of the HDZ BiH and European parliament member on behalf of Croatia, thus in fact undermines the sovereignty of BiH and Croatia.

It is telling that there is less and less talk about the idea of a third Croat entity. Some diaspora lists ran with that promise in recent Croatian parliamentary elections, but failed to achieve substantial support from voters resident in BiH. Instead, the HDZ won again. Is the third entity a dead idea?

As I already noted, the idea to establish a third entity, through the backdoor, stands behind Čović’s political project of the “reform” of the electoral system. It is not promoted openly, because as such it was long time rejected by the West.

How would you comment on the alliance between HDZ BiH and SNSD-a, respectively Dragan Čović and Milorad Dodik?

What links the two is the concept of the ruling of constituent parties by means of patronage and (inter-ethnic) fear, as well as the project of the so-called federalization or confederalization of BiH. This is a kind of copy of Tito’s project to decentralize socialist Yugoslavia, that started in the 1960s, and ended up as authoritarian decentralization in place of democratization.

The leading Bosniak party, SDA, is obviously in crisis. Leading members are leaving the party, it lost Sarajevo, and Sebija Izetbegović is disliked by the public… Will Bakir Izetbegović be the gravedigger of the party that was established by his father Alija? And would the political scene in BiH miss the SDA at all?

I am not sure. He obviously is a weak leader. It is often overlooked that his father in essence was a Muslim, moral-based intellectual, but a weak politician and statesman. Bakir is only a pocket edition of his father. Nevertheless, I would not see the prime reason for the current weakness of the SDA in the party itself, but rather in the weak and inconsistent policy of the international community, of the EU and the US, over the last decade and a half, that has strengthened nationalist Croat and Serb policy and elites, and at the detriment of the state of BiH, and of Bosniak policy. Dodik, too, is only a pocket edition of Milošević, but the weak policy of the West has enabled him to transform into the most powerful figure in BiH.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Dayton agreement, president-elect Joe Biden published a statement on BiH. What do you read out of his statement? Will the Biden administration more actively deal with BiH?

This is what I read out of it. American politics has a certain obligation towards the destiny of BiH that it has not lived up to for the last 15 years, i.e. since it handed Western leadership in the Western Balkans over to the EU, and the EU did not consistently seize that leadership. The US needs to finally find a way to closely and efficiently cooperate with the EU on BiH and the wider region.

Is there a chance for some Dayton 2? Is this at all a good idea?

Neither is there a chance, nor is it a good idea, in fact, it’s a backward-oriented idea. It would again be a conference between the international community and the political leaders and elites of BiH. BiH needs a new constitution, one not built on the current system of fake, authoritarian-anarchic decentralization. The country needs a constitutional order that is neither a unitary state, nor a confederation or federation. BiH needs a system that guarantees a balance between collective, ethnic, and individual rights in a way that safeguards strong democracy and rule of law, and not like the current system, in which there are neither collective nor individual rights, because there is neither rule of law nor democracy. Such a constitution can not be written by the West, let alone in the way it was done in Dayton. I see the solution in turning last year’s European Commission Opinion on BiH, which represented a sort of initial masterplan for comprehensive structural reform, with constitutional reform at its core, into a long-term EU strategy, and strongly supported by the US. Within the framework of that strategy, the West should determine conditions for structural reform as well as their ultimate outcome, i.e. a state, political system and economy of BiH that readies the country for Euro-Atlantic integration. The West would condition basic principles of future constitional reform, and accept B-H citizens as its allies, while the actors in BiH would themselves have to negotiate the future constitutional structure based on those principles.

What is the position of the EU, of Germany on BiH? Can we expect Berlin and the Biden administration to be on the same line?

I believe we will see a joint initiative towards BiH. Berlin over the last three years was fully occupied with defending the region against the extremely dangerous idea of an exchange of territories in the framework of negotiations on a final agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, and idea originally pushed from within the EU, and then the US. I believe that following the departure of Federica Mogherini, and now also the Trump administration, with which the chances to realize that project are also gone, Berlin will have more time and will to more seriously engage on BiH.

Tomorrow, local elections will be held in Mostar, the first after more than 10 years. You have heavily criticized the deal that enabled the organization of elections. What is the problem with it and what kind of deal would be better for Mostar and its citizens?

Western negotiators, being torn between increased political pressure to finally find a solution for Mostar and the blockage of local elections on the one hand, and the the lack of preconditions for a sustainable solution due to the long-term lack of a serious, firm policy of the EU and the US towards BiH on the other hand, found a way out in a dirty deal with the leaders of SDA and HDZ BiH. It’s a bargaining deal. The West got the unblocking of elections in Mostar and the formal implementation of the 2010 Constitutional Court of BiH ruling that annulled the previous electoral system. In return, the parties got two agreements. One ensuresthe tolerating of a new Mostar city statute exclusively negotiated between SDA and HDZ BiH – that after 25 post-war years of international investement into the reintegration of Mostar formalizes the city’s ethno-territorial division.

The second is a political agreement on so-called principles of future reform of the electoral system, which due to its wording entails the project of a third entity, playing into Čović’s hands. This agreement was struck despite the fact that the negotiators at the moment of signing it were aware that neither the West nor the SDA can agree on its implementation. That’s why they are now fleeing from a document that the international representative present at the June 17 signing ceremony in Mostar at the last moment refused to co-sign, in a development that angered Čović. Čović has been trying to hide all of this from the public. That’s why the choice Mostar voters are facing is not between various parties and their programmes, but to either vote in favor of the division of their town, i.e. for HDZ BiH and SDA, or against the dirty deal and its domestic authors. And thus, save Western liberal values in Mostar. After that, the EU together with the Biden administration needs to stop further implementation of that deal and to clean up the inflicted damage

The HDZ BiH maintained its position at the recent local elections in BiH. Why isn’t there real political pluralism among B-H Croats as there is among Bosniaks and Serbs? Has Komšić turned into the perfect excuse for the HDZ BiH and Čović to occupy the position of the outvoted victim and thus assemble the remaining votes of B-H Croats who are slowly vanishing from BiH?

Exactly. Komšić turned into the perfect means for organized hysterics on the non-existent discrimination against B-H Croats, and in this way has done more to secure HDZ BiH’s position as constituent party than the party’sholding of the post in the BiH Presidency could have ever accomplished.

It seems as if in the entire debate within the framework of the ethno-nationalist complex, on state, nation and constituent people, election law and entities, the economic and social situation in BiH is forgotten. People massively emigrate from BiH, kids are educated with the aim to emigrate to the EU. Does there have to be more attention on this?

This in essence presents the Dayton system – ruling by patronage and fear. The losers of this system are all the people and citizens of BiH, most visible in the mass emigration from the country happening over the last 3-4 years. And one of the areas from which people emigrate in masses is Western Herzegovina, including Mostar. It is a public secret that in Mostar Croats in the meanwhile have lost their ethno-demographic majority. One of the reasons for the new ethnic power-sharing arrangement between HDZ BiH and SDA that hides behind the Mostar deal is that the basis of HDZ’s policy towards Mostar so far – that Croats represent the majority in town – has been lost.

How did the Corona pandemic impact the political situation in BiH?

Not too much. At the beginning of the pandemic, we observed a certain, extraordinary readiness for cooperation among the ruling parties and leaders, but not much of that has survived. Besides, the pandemic (even more) laid bare how sick the institutional order of BiH is. One must not forget that the ethno-territorially fragmented, corrupted health care system is one of the biggest victims of Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The original interview can be found here.

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Executive Summary

On October 17, 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron once again pre-empted the launch of European Union accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, forestalling them until further notice. His move was only tenuously linked to the individual merits of either country. Its real rationale was evident at the time and came into fuller relief with his subsequent interview with The Economist: Macron halted enlargement to force other member states – Germany in particular – to engage him on his ambitious – but still only lightly sketched – agenda to reconfigure the EU.

Immediately prior to the November meeting of the EU’s General Affairs Council, France released a non-paper that underscored that the enlargement halt was not really about enlargement at all. The non-paper was rife with contradictions and redundancies. Its main proposed innovation is a rejiggering of the enlargement policy into seven sequential phases. But the document also demonstrated a worrisome elite orientation, and was void of reference to or grounding in the EU’s foundational source code: the primacy of liberal democratic values and standards. This portends ill for Macron’s vision of the EU more broadly.

The non-paper’s focus is on delivering “tangible benefits” in economic matters. Despite the EU’s recent embrace of the term “state capture” and a new focus on corruption, these terms are absent from the French text. In essence, the non-paper proposes throwing more resources at entrenched elites in the countries of the Western Balkans, to rent social peace for them – and a predictable status quo for the EU.

Far from being a sideshow, the struggle for EU foundational values is and must be central to the problems in the Western Balkans today. The illiberal challengers Macron cites – China, Russia, Turkey – are all heavily and increasingly engaged in the region.

While solidarity among the other EU members in response to Macron’s move is laudable, the default inclination seems to be to finesse differences, and to concede an enlargement approach based on minor, largely cosmetic adjustments. This would mean to let a good crisis go to waste, both in terms of a long-overdue recalibration of the EU’s enlargement strategy, as well as orientation toward an equally necessary, but still uncharted, recalibration of the EU to face the internal challenges of nativist illiberal populism, yawning inequality, and the climate emergency.

Recommendations

DPC recommends a different course to EU member states committed to enlargement and the EU-wide reinforcement of liberal democratic values, at a time when they are challenged both within the Union and from east and west. This does not require any major changes to mechanics, mandates, or procedures, but rather a philosophical shift in approaching the countries of the Western Balkans. The 2015-17 breakthrough in North Macedonia demonstrated two things: a) that the EU’s institutional default setting has for too long been on the side of illiberal elites; and b) the reality that in the expansion of a values-focused EU in the Western Balkans, citizens – not elites – are the Union’s real allies.

1) Instead of taking the low road and simply restarting the enlargement policy with cosmetic changes, EU member states ought to take the opportunity to assess the process seriously and self-critically – with criticism of not just the WB6, but of the EU and its member states. The Council should commission an external diagnostic analysis of enlargement in the Western Balkans to date, to understand why genuine reform has been so shallow and lackluster, and with particular attention to the adherence to foundational liberal democratic values (i.e., the Copenhagen criteria).

2) The EU does not play a neutral role when it leaves exponents of its declared values to confront illiberal governments alone. It is complicit, abandoning its natural allies. Lending the EU’s top-down support would help redress this structural imbalance. Placing civic engagement and political accountability at the center of a new enlargement policy would generate the popular traction and credibility that the current EU enlargement approach has long lacked.

3) Annual “Priebe reports” – independent assessments of Western Balkan countries’ adherence to EU foundational values and Copenhagen criteria – should become an integral element of the EU’s engagement, followed by active support to local independent constituencies to address structural weaknesses identified. These would provide connective tissue between civic advocacy to end state capture by corrupt elites to institutional rule of law and democracy and the Union.

These are initial recommendations for what needs to be an ongoing exercise in honest analysis and diagnostics. Yet these are key first principles that, if internalized, could help to strengthen both the EU and future member states.

Download full paper

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Yet Mogherini’s trip got off to a bumpy start in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica. In her speech to parliamentarians, Mogherini addressed a half-empty room. The Montenegrin opposition that has boycotted parliament since the October 2016 elections had rejected Mogherini’s invitation to join her at the Assembly.

However, it was Mogherini’s own comments that called into question the EU’s approach to the region as well as the sincerity of the Union’s commitment to the Western Balkans’ European perspective. Speaking to the press after her meeting with the newly-elected Prime Minister of Montenegro, Duško Marković, Mogherini said, “I was saddened that the opposition was not present today.” Referring to the continuing parliamentary boycott, she stated that “trying to return to the institutions – this requires good will on the opposition side but also on the government side to create the conditions for the situation to evolve into a normal institutional situation.” Mogherini ended her comments by explaining the EU position vis-á-vis Montenegro’s political crisis:

“It is not for the European Union to indicate a solution. I always say that we do not enter into the politics of countries, not even in the politics of our own Member States. We relate it to the institutions of the country and we strengthen institutions.”

Mogherini notably avoided naming the elephant in the room – the reason for Montenegro’s ongoing institutional crisis. On October 16, 2016, in the midst of the election for the Montenegrin parliament, the police announced that they had arrested 20 Serbian citizens the night before who had entered the country planning a terrorist attack on state institutions and high-level officials. Among those arrested was Bratislav Dikić, the sacked former head of Serbia’s infamous special police, the gendarmerie. Montenegro’s mostly pro-Russian opposition, which suffered a narrow defeat at the polls, accused the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) of a stunt aimed at manipulating voters and subsequently boycotted the new assembly. The opposition had campaigned against their country joining NATO (as most other member states have already done); a membership that is currently awaiting ratification by the US Congress and that is fiercely opposed by Russia.

In a country (and region) in which skeptical citizens have a strong predisposition for conspiracy theories, the notion of a Russia-sponsored coup was initially dismissed. The German intelligence agency at first also shared the Montenegrin opposition’s characterization of the incident. It soon became clear, however, that the allegations were more substantial than many had initially believed.

As the investigation progressed, Montenegro’s Special Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, first announced that the incident had been a coup attempt, organized by Serbian and Russian nationalist groups, but without the involvement of the Russian state. Then, in February, Katnić accused Moscow of orchestrating the failed coup, citing new evidence and naming an alleged Russian security services member as the mastermind behind the attempt. A few days earlier, Katnić had accused two leading politicians from the opposition Democratic Front (DF) of involvement in the failed coup, and the ruling coalition MPs lifted their immunity.

In Berlin, diplomats have become critical of their national intelligence agency’s original assessment of no Russian involvement, and the Chancellor’s office has become increasingly worried about rising Russian interference in the Western Balkans. The EU’s Intelligence Analysis Center’s assessment excluded neither possibility. UK and US intelligence agencies that assisted Montenegrin authorities in their investigation have in recent weeks concluded that the coup attempt was real and staged by Moscow, and insist that they possess hard evidence.

Against this background, Mogherini pledged to Montenegro’s ruling coalition and opposition to sort things out through dialogue within the institution of the parliament while adhering to traditional insistence on EU “ownership” in the management of the crisis. This approach missed the mark completely and seemed to reaffirm the weakness of the EU’s policy which sadly has been evident in the Western Balkans for over a decade.

First, a coup attempt aimed at violently overtaking state institutions, particularly one with involvement of high-level opposition officials, can’t simply be sorted out in parliament, but rather must be dealt with in legal proceedings before the judiciary.

Second, Mogherini is to be commended for insisting on the EU’s engagement in strengthening Montenegro’s state institutions. They face an extraordinary challenge in dealing with the coup attempt. Yet the EU itself has in the past contributed to domestic distrust in Montenegro’s rule of law institutions. Several times during the accession process Brussels met resistance to reforming the judiciary but did not trigger the mechanism foreseen in the rule of law chapters – to stop progress in all negotiating chapters when there is a blockage in the implementation of chapters 23 or 24.

Finally, the EU has a strategic interest in a peaceful, democratic, and stable Western Balkans. Russian subversion in the region clearly undermines those aims. And while it is not the EU’s role to advocate for Montenegro’s NATO membership, the Union does have a genuine interest in ensuring that the country’s citizens have the free democratic choice to make up their minds on which alliance their state should join.

In that sense, the EU’s foreign and security policy chief would have better served the Union’s own interests by taking a different, more direct approach. Mogherini should have acknowledged the coup attempt up front, sending a clear public signal to Moscow that the EU won’t tolerate such undemocratic, let alone violent, interventions in the Western Balkans.

At the same time, she should have warned the ruling party against misusing the failed coup to undermine democratic procedures in order to strengthen its own position. She should have offered the Union’s assistance to Montenegro’s judiciary in dealing with the prosecution of the failed coup in a way that guarantees professionalism and independence and that raises public trust in the process. And she should have scheduled bilateral meetings with opposition representatives instead of tying dialogue to the parties ending or at least interrupting their parliamentary boycott.

But Mogherini did none of these things. Doing so would have sent a strong message to political elites and the public alike of the Union’s commitment and full support for the democratic process in Montenegro.

It would also have sent an important signal to Washington where the new Trump administration and Congress have raised doubts about continued US commitment to the country’s NATO membership perspective. It is worth reminding that it was the US under the Obama administration that blocked the decision on Montenegro’s membership application for two years, conditioning approval with the cleansing of the Montenegrin military security services of pro-Russian personnel. US ratification of Montenegro’s NATO membership would bridge the wide gap between Trump’s statements on NATO and those of his cabinet members and draw an important red line against Russian meddling in the Western Balkans. The fact that Mogherini’s visit failed to support such an outcome was a missed opportunity.

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But the Bundestag debate missed the real issue at hand: even though Merkel has been insisting for months she has no Plan B other than to fight for a common European solution, the fact is she and the other EU leaders gave up on a European solution a long time ago.

When Merkel finally took action on September 4, 2015, and negotiated with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to allow tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to move on to Germany (and Austria), she seized European responsibility based on an approach she had tested many times since the beginning of the Euro crisis – reactive leadership, supported by a coalition of willing member states. But this approach hit a wall on September 22, when EU interior ministers voted by qualified majority for a relocation scheme for 160,000 asylum-seekers. The ink was barely dry on the scheme when Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico announced that his government would not implement the legally binding decision. Orban later announced a national referendum on the decision, and so far almost no member state has met its obligations. That day not only represented a failure to move from reactive leadership to a common EU policy – it marked the moment when the Union de facto ceased to function as a values- and rules-based entity.

Despite her unchanged rhetoric, Merkel tacitly shifted during those days in September, avoiding confrontation about the core problem of EU disunity. This was evident on November 18, when the states on the Balkan route decided to let pass only asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – a segregation by nationality in breach of half a dozen international and European conventions and domestic legislation – in order to reduce the refugee flow; the German government remained silent. And now we got the Merkel-Erdogan deal on the table.

Germany’s position inside the EU as the reluctant hegemon has been eroded as the Chancellor’s reactive leadership has reached its limits. Merkel has so far failed to move beyond her standard approach, because it is a perfect fit with her personality and policy style. She is a policy manager, not a strategist or visionary. That’s why her defense of her refugee policy with passionate references to European values – a novelty for her – appeared odd. In essence, Merkel kept that narrative limited to selling her policy in Germany – she did not carry the fight for European values to the EU level.

This is what makes any deal with Turkey at this point wrong – not the fact that she is negotiating with an increasingly authoritarian regime that is rolling back previous democratic and rule-of-law reforms at an accelerated pace. Merkel is trying to outsource the problem of the EU’s internal disunity. And while Ankara is entering into negotiations due to the regime’s own political crisis, the EU is negotiating from an even weaker position because none of its leaders wants to confront its internal crisis.

In an ironic way, the Austrian Plan B-policy forms the other side of the coin of EU refugee policy. Announced as a “chain reaction of reason” that is supposed to increase the pressure for a common EU policy, Vienna’s forcing of the Western Balkan states towards closure of the Balkan route will in the end not lead to a common European policy, but leave Merkel and the EU with no other option than to reach a deal with Ankara – in order to avoid chaos in Greece. But the deal provides no sustainable solution.

The European refugee crisis is in fact two crises. The first is the refugee crisis – serious but manageable. The second crisis – of the EU – is much more serious. In order to sustainably handle the refugee crisis, Merkel and her willing allies need to move out of their comfort zone and start to revive the Union, a Union based on common European, liberal-democratic values. They need to force all member state leaders to put their cards on the table to see who is still committed to these core values. Those member states that lack such commitment need to think hard about what it takes to be a member of the EU and decide if they want to remain. And the rest should seek again to turn the EU into a serious political actor, both internally and externally.

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First, it was regrettable that there were no officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia in attendance, likely a result of domestic political imperatives and distractions in both countries. A human rights activist from Serbia was present, which did ensure that country’s perspective from the civic angle, but there were no BiH citizen civic participants – a missed opportunity. These absences were unfortunate, as it resulted in a regional policy conference with two gaping holes.

Second, geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the West was palpable. One speaker stated that Russia has “pragmatic inconsistencies” in its approach to conflicts (suggesting the same is the case with other countries). He then proceeded to draw tenuous parallels between Kosovo and eastern Ukraine, ending on a paean to overcome “tactical conflict” with the West for the common goal of fighting ISIS and Islamism. Other speakers pushed back at these ideas – in real time and on other panels. One of the most forceful speakers was Albanian Deputy Defense Minister Mimi Kodheli, who stated that, “NATO will always be there to protect values by all means.” This statement was conspicuous in its clarity. Former Portuguese Deputy Foreign Minister Bruno Macaes – who observed that events in eastern Ukraine were “Russian military intervention” and not separatism – and Russian independent commentator Konstantin von Eggert – who stated that Russian foreign policy was primarily about Putin’s maintenance of power and appearing indispensable – were notably impressive and straightforward in their assessments.

Third, migration and the broad impact of the refugee crisis on Europe was front and center, though there were no specific proposals or solutions offered and the conversation focused more on the broader European challenges than on the particular role of western Balkan states. There were some subtle and some not-so-subtle links made between the refugee crisis and terrorism, which, although unsubstantiated, did add to the easily exploitable fear factor. Again, Deputy Minister Kodheli made stark and refreshing statements on the subject, noting that “this shouldn’t be a challenge to the EU – there is enough money and space,” and referencing the Kosovar Albanian refugee crisis of the late 1990s. A suggestion from one participant that the crisis has revealed unexpected fault lines between old and new Europe (in particular among the Visegrad states) was roundly dismissed with examples of the emergence of anti-immigrant policies in Denmark and Germany, foregoing an opportunity to discuss the rise of a real socio-political phenomenon.

Fourth, countering violent extremism was another hot topic, and in some cases was linked to point three above. Again, as the majority of speakers were officials representing their governments, their comments were heavy on action plans and light on facts or drivers. A legitimate question from a noteworthy local journalist about the substantial Turkish investment in mosques and the broader foreign involvement in the promotion of new religious identities was defensively and peremptorily rebuffed by Kosovo government officials, suggesting a defensive vulnerability on the subject. Again, a candid discussion would have been productive.

One of the most interesting elements of the conference was how the breadth of topics allowed Balkan political actors to interact with Western policy actors to pursue their own domestic agendas – effectively amounting to “support us against our opposition and let us in the EU ASAP” – without being challenged about the internal impediments to their integration: democratic crises unfolding throughout the region demonstrate the shallow nature of democratic consolidation over the past two decades. While the geopolitical context has a direct impact on the region, perhaps its greatest impact has been to let local elites off the hook and to allow the EU in particular to deviate from its own values to address the crises du jour. There were exceptions; two speakers from Germany on the final panel chaired by Aspen’s Rudiger Lentz spoke eloquently of democratic values. But most of the official government representatives opted to focus on status without substance. Officials spoke freely from on-message talking points calibrated to demonstrate commitment to reform and EU membership but noticeably failed to delineate the existence of any concrete reforms in place. In the absence of actual change – including in fighting corruption and abuse of office, standard practices among elites throughout the region – it is understandable that citizens are feeling more and more disconnected from the “democratic process.”

Overall, the conference provided a chance for networking and information exchange among journalists, policymakers, scholars and analysts. Two smaller sessions held in parallel provided more intimate fora for additional in-depth discussions which were useful. The most engaging and enlightening panels were those with active moderators and a mix of officials and independent actors; this provided the real value-added of the conference.

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The following article, that looks back at the West’s Kosovo policy in 2015, was originally published on December 30, 2015 in Koha Ditore in Albanian (accessible below).

2015 was perhaps the most intensive political year in the short history of the Kosovo state, both from the standpoint of Western Kosovo policy and from an internal political perspective. The year began with progress in the Prishtina-Belgrade dialogue that had been blocked for basically a full year and with a massive refugee crisis during the ²⁰¹⁴⁄₁₅ winter. Kosovars voted with their feet, expressing their deep disappointment and despair with the country’s political system after their June 2014 vote had been devalued by a politicized judiciary and a Western backroom intervention. Instead of realizing their hope for change, Kosovo citizens created what would later in the year become the Balkan route of the European refugee crisis. The year ended with a Brussels decision on visa liberalization that left Kosovars with mixed feelings about the EU and their own state, and with a Constitutional Court ruling that may unblock the dialogue yet open a Pandora’s box, but definitely will not solve the internal political crisis.

In between these events was the August 25 Agreement on basic principles and elements of the future Association/Community of Serb majority municipalities that led to the country’s deepest political crisis since gaining independence and a failed bid for UNESCO membership.

Since the end of the war in 1999, the West has tried to manage and balance two main challenges in Kosovo – solving the country’s status and putting the country on a successful track towards democratic transformation; in 2015, both aspects were bound together, but in a negative way. Following the initial success of the April 2013 Agreement towards finally securing full sovereignty for Kosovo, the West traded the democratic question for making the dialogue its top priority; it meddled in the coalition formation process in 2014 which brought short-term relief, but contributed to an even deeper internal political crisis in Kosovo in 2015 that endangered the future of the dialogue in its entirety.

As the year comes to a close, the April 2013 Agreement is about to enter its third year of implementation delay – reason enough for a brief review of the dialogue process. After the summer 2011 violent unrest in the north of Kosovo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel shifted Western Kosovo policy in a new direction. From an EU and wider Western perspective, this was a positive development – for several reasons: First, the EU had finally started to become a serious actor despite its internal divisions on Kosovo’s independence. Second, it put an end to Belgrade capitalizing on the EU member states’ split over Kosovo regarding its “EU and Kosovo” policy by turning the game around and telling Serbia it needs the support of the (then) 22 Kosovo independence recognizers, but not the 5 non-recognizers, in order to enter its club. Third, Germany, the EU’s reluctant hegemon, finally took a leadership role on a foreign policy issue. And fourth, Berlin told Belgrade what Serbia’s political elites had known since 2008 – that Kosovo is definitely gone and that they can forget about any ideas of territorial partitioning – and made it the basis of the dialogue policy.

Yet the dialogue approach – helping Kosovo gain full sovereignty through full integration of the Serb minority and removal of Serbian state institutions from its soil via Serbia’s EU-accession process (to be complemented by a political dialogue) – was from the beginning burdened with a multitude of challenges that needed to be addressed:

a. For the EU, the dialogue was a highly sophisticated enterprise unprecedented in the history of the Union’s foreign policy, and particularly of its integration policy, that demanded enduring and consistent German leadership, to be reinforced by UK cooperation and US support.

b. Key strategic issues remained open from the very beginning, especially the question of the end point of the dialogue. What would be the final result of “full normalization” of relations between Kosovo and Serbia – recognition of Kosovo’s independence by Belgrade or something less than that? And how could Serbia’s obligation fixed in the April Agreement – that it won’t block Kosovo’s EU perspective once it becomes an EU member – be guaranteed? This raised the question of whether the EU/the West had a master plan for the dialogue.

c. To pressure Kosovo Serbs in the north into complying with the new course of integration into the Kosovo state, the West needed to allow Serbia initially to gain a greater foothold in Kosovo; but it demanded a strategy on how to later reverse the process and get Serbia out of the Kosovo state for good.

d. The task of integrating police and judicial structures in the north into Kosovo’s institutional system would be difficult enough, but another related key task would have to be tackled later – ending the rules-free environment in the north in which for a decade and a half, Serb policemen, prosecutors and judges basically learned to not do their job.

e. The regime in Serbia upon which the EU depends for cooperation in the dialogue proved early on to be authoritarian rather than democratic.

f. Even if the EU (and the US) successfully handled all these challenges, the fact that Serbia was substantially ahead in the EU-integration process meant that Brussels, Germany and other key players needed to develop an adequate communication strategy that would build trust in the dialogue process among Kosovo’s policymakers and citizens and assure them that it will ultimately produce the desired results.

Looking back at the fate of these challenges after two and a half years of slow implementation, one has to conclude that none of these challenges was met; some were not even attempted. German leadership weakened under the pressure of other major European and world crises, as did UK support following a change of the country’s foreign minister and a move towards an inward-looking obsession with Britain’s role in the EU. In light of the EU’s weakness, the US opted for unilateral actions that either had no effect or made things worse. Serbia was allowed to imbed itself deeply into Kosovo’s political institutions, while zero progress was made on establishing law and order in the north. In addition, with the Srpska lista taking control over the Serb majority municipalities south of the Ibar-river, hard-fought progress in advancing local democracy and local self-governance there was fundamentally wiped out. The EU squandered the chance to build trust in the dialogue process and so while Serbia opened its first accession chapters in 2015, Kosovo citizens don’t know what is to be gained, if anything, with the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA). At the same time, not only does the question about the end point of the dialogue remain unanswered by the West, but it is now evident that a master plan did not (and still does not) exist. Nothing demonstrates this strategic vacuum more clearly than the UNESCO fiasco. In the absence of a masterplan or immediate palpable results for the ruling parties to sell to their voters, the Kosovo government opted for a unilateral bid at UNESCO; as a consequence, the half-hearted support of its main Western allies vis-à-vis Serbia and Russia in high gear lobbying mode resulted in the loss of a few additional votes needed to bring Kosovo a step closer on its path to full international recognition. As German EU-leadership weakened, it naturally fell to the Brussels bureaucracy to fill the policy vacuum – for good reason this has raised fears in Kosovo that “progress” in the dialogue will be made at the expense of the functionality of the state. Finally, on the Serbian end, the Vučić government has undertaken a pro-European transformation of its policy on which it has thrived, yet no democratic transformation of Vučić’s genuinely authoritarian power base has taken place. To the contrary. Serbia has been substantially progressing along the path to EU-integration since 2013, despite the complete unsustainability of the West’s Serbia dialogue policy.

While implementation of the April Agreement has slowed since 2013, Kosovo has seen no progress in a democratic transformation or in economic development, and the West has been all but complicit with its policy of trading democratization for the dialogue. Even as it faced its first obstacle – the Kosovo political elites’ attempt to turn the amnesty law into a general amnesty – the EU and the US demonstrated their priority to keep the dialogue moving forward at the expense of major violations of the basic principles of the rule of law and parliamentary democracy. Taking the side of the grant coalition option in November 2014 after two highly suspicious Constitutional Court rulings constituted a logical continuation of that policy approach. And the EU’s and US’ muddling through with EULEX and the Special Court in effect reinforced Kosovo’s structural disease of selective justice. It’s a sad irony that in trading democracy, the EU and the US have done serious damage to both democracy and the rule of law in Kosovo and to their reputation among Kosovo citizens, but did not prevent further protracted delays in the implementation of the April Agreement, and even endangered the future of the dialogue through their contribution to the current political crisis.

For the West to fix its Kosovo policy and regain the trust of the country’s citizens in 2016, the EU and the US need to accept that the current policy approach is not sustainable. They need to revive the dialogue with a strategic vision that comprises credible answers to the structural challenges that exist. If the West is unable to take on this task, then perhaps it would be better to bury the dialogue entirely and look for a new policy approach. Whatever the solution, both the EU and the US need to immediately stop making compromises on democratic questions with the leaders in Kosovo (and in Serbia). And, just as importantly, they need to develop a principled, consistent strategy on the rule of law problem in Kosovo if they want a chance to regain Kosovo citizens’ trust both in the West and in their own political institutions.

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