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1/ Two days before his semiannual report to the UN Security Council, High Representative Christian Schmidt announced that he would be resigning his post as international High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). However, he also stated he would remain in post until a successor is chosen.

https://www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/bih/christian-schmidt-odlazi-sa-funkcije-visokog-predstavnika-u-bi-h

2/ The move comes after months of speculation that the US wanted Schmidt to leave and applied pressure. It follows the marked American shift in policy in BiH beginning last October, with the blanket lifting of sanctions on convicted former RS President Milorad Dodik, who remains the de facto leader of the entity.

3/ This shift was also manifest in reported US admonitions against using the executive Bonn Powers, which the US had previously assertively supported – including their application during Schmidt’s near five-year tenure.

4/ @DPCGlobal has been highly critical of some of Schmidt’s actions. But it is important that Schmidt remains until a successor is named and can arrive – otherwise, the US will be able to seize control of OHR by default, if American Principal Deputy High Representative Louis Crishock has the helm as acting High Rep.

5/ Schmidt’s announcement also notably follows the passage of legislation in the Federation regarding the Southern Interconnector project, as well as an interstate treaty between BiH and Croatia – moves aggressively pushed by the US.

6/ The EU has made its misgivings on the SIC known in a letter by EU Head of Delegation Luigi Soreca to FBiH officials. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/eu-risks-fallout-with-us-trump-linked-balkans-pipeline-plan-intervention

7/ Dodik has been clear he wants state property fully under his control in the RS. Diplomatic sources relate to DPC that the US and Italy would be fine with a Dodik-friendly arrangement for their own interests.

http://www.democratizationpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/DPC-Policy-Note18_State-Property-in-BiH.pdf

8/ While the US may be playing for simple transactionalism and opportunity for profit, the confluence of these deals in the present environment are a recipe for even more state-weakening and ethno-territorial division of BiH, reinforced by foreign malign influence.

9/ So now the pressure is on Europe+ to come up with a Bosnia – and wider Balkan – strategy to protect its values and interests from all geopolitical challengers, starting with the US.

10/ The first step needs to be to resist the selection of a Schmidt successor who will accommodate the Trump administration’s transactionalist interests in BiH.

11/ Europe+’s members in the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – the UK, Canada, Japan, and EU members France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain need to propose a strategy to the Union as a whole, and soon, to avoid a vacuum the US could exploit in the short-term, but with long-term consequence.

12/ Europe+ needs to ensure that it chooses Schmidt’s successor that will be ready to wield a strategy to continue to employ the Bonn Powers in the service of the Annex 10 mandate, to insure BiH’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,…

13/…protect institutions built since Dayton, and to help citizens of BiH make confident moves to a post-Dayton social contract that would enable meaningful progression towards EU accession.

14/ This will need to entail a commitment to cover the entire OHR budget – as it may well be that the US makes its displeasure felt at not getting its way by not paying its contribution. While many Europeans may balk, this is relative pocket change when compared to the influence that can have in BiH & the region.

15/ Furthermore, and just as crucially, Europe+ needs to reflect a “coalition of the willing” in maintaining a capable EUFOR by reinforcing it to brigade strength prior to October 2026 elections to demonstrate resolve to outside actors seeking to permanently destabilize the country and region.

16/ BiH is the central conflict generator and reservoir in the Western Balkans, having dragged both Croatian and Serbian democratic development backwards by being allowed by the EU-led “West” – now a term devoid of geopolitical meaning – for 20 years.

17/ Calls for Schmidt not to be replaced and OHR closed are deeply irresponsible – and either highly cynical or deluded in light of the facts on the ground and current trendlines.

18/ BiH’s Dayton political economy and operating system makes the political class gatekeepers for external actors seeking to benefit from public goods.

19/ Despite the clamor for state property to be resolved to promote “investment,” it is clear that until the country’s constitutional system is replaced with a new social contract, no resolution in the public interest is feasible.

20/ Appointing a US-approved High Rep to “resolve” state property would only enrich a handful of political spoilers and further undermine the country’s sovereignty, integrity, and declared aim of EU membership.

21/ Despite hopes in Brussels and member state capitals that they could simply do more of the same in the Western Balkans, Europe+ will have to upshift in BiH if it wants to prove itself a potent actor in its own “courtyard,”…

22a/ …and not allow a US in its own state of democratic decline to destabilize the country and region for its own short-term gain.

22b/ Sidestepping confrontation with Trump’s US by ceding influence would constitute appeasement, yielding permanent instability not only in BiH, but regionally.

23/ And nowhere on earth is Europe+ more potent collectively than the WB6, BiH in particular. If it doesn’t draw the line here, it is advertising it will not do so anywhere.

24/ Schmidt’s announcement oughtn’t have caught Europe+ completely flatfooted; succession had to be discussed, at least within foreign ministries.

25/ But this moment demands rapid strategic evolution for Europe+ members in a situation where they are relatively more empowered than elsewhere. They need to demonstrate that they can rise to the occasion.

The post Following High Rep Schmidt’s announced departure, it’s not a time for Europe+ to be timid in BiH appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

The Munich Security Conference in 2025 was notable for a number of reasons. It was during that period of time when people were wondering whether or not Elon Musk was really going to be allowed to dismantle and defame USAID and the rest of the soft power foreign policy establishment that had served the United States so well for decades. And MSC 2025 was the platform where US Vice President Vance stood in front of a room full of leaders who he should have viewed as his allies and instead unleashed a disrespectful and arrogant tirade demonstrating that the US was pivoting away from its long-term trusted allies, and instead was prepared to curry favor with autocrats, petrostates, the extreme political right in Europe, and anyone willing to facilitate a deal that would enrich the current presidential administration and his allies.

As 2025 continued to unfold, it became clear that the United States was no longer the same country, either in terms of its democratic practice at home, nor in terms of its role on the international stage. Whether considering the damage to the international trade system through unpredictable and often petty tariff levies or threats of tariffs, the pardoning of a former Honduran leader found guilty of narcotrafficking in American courts, followed shortly thereafter by the military action in Venezuela that resulted in the extraction and some would say kidnapping of the current leader, or the threats to “take” Greenland to somehow make it a colony or adjunct to the United States, it is clear that the US is determined to destroy an international system that has worked quite well for it. The implication of its published National Security and National Defense Strategy is one of a US seeking hegemonic power for itself, while accepting its pursuit by Russia and China – a Yaltified world with all others “on the menu,” as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it in his memorable Davos speech last month.

In its self-interest, European Union and other democratic states need to firmly demonstrate in Munich that they have no illusions that the world is now a very different place. While many countries, including EU member states, had hoped that they could lay low and see if the United States comes back to its senses in the next presidential election, the damage done has been so thorough, and the division and polarization in the United States itself is so considerable, that it will be a generation before the country can be considered trustworthy and predictable again. We think the cover charge for reentry should be high. The democratic world should neither hide from this reality, nor think that they should jettison their commitment to democratic values and a rules-based order; if democratic countries think they can beat authoritarian systems at their own game, it will be a race to the bottom that everyone will lose.

Instead, these countries should embrace the notion that they are offering something different in this newly emerging world. While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used the term “middle powers,” and we at DPC have suggested the term “Europe Plus”, it’s clear that this constellation of countries should recognize that their value-added in an increasing rules-free world is in fact their values. They need to begin to act with the same confidence that their non-democratic peers have demonstrated. To be effective, they need to do so collectively, in a coordinated fashion. Since the end of the Second World War, the US served as the center of gravity and universal connector of the democratic world. The center of gravity is now the EU/Europe+; yet it is clearly having difficulty recognizing it has inherited that role, let alone that it should be prepared to exercise it.

While referring to these countries as middle powers is useful in terms of contrasting these countries with an unpredictable and increasingly undemocratic United States, a rising authoritarian China, and a socioeconomically weak but militarily formidable nuclear Russia, the word “middle” undersells the power and suasion of these countries. Beyond their considerable economic heft as a collective, these countries offer a vision of hope and an ideal towards which other countries and individuals still do aspire.

DPC has therefore outlined in broad terms what we hope we will hear these leaders say and confirm while together in Munich on the stage, or in side-bar conversation. While the damage that the United States is doing to itself economically and to a world facing climate peril is incalculable, science and economics are on the side of those who recognize that the era of petrochemicals and fossil fuels is over. The EU and anyone who believes this reality should work together, countering the harm, and self-harm, the US is committing.

The EU and its allies can also be in the front ranks of preventing the total anarchy of technological and AI pressure and subversion that is the desired end-state by many who desire to profit from tech markets or even the social disruption that unregulated technology can enable. They can take the experience they have in at minimum monitoring and at best preventing misinformation and disinformation from flooding their social spaces; experience they have learned through the experience of dealing with malign actors like Russia, but which can be applied to others such as the United States. They can be a voice to ensure that countries not to mention individuals have a say in whether or not their children are sent personalized revenge porn on their phones, or whether the intellectual property theft of AI further shuts down voices and proper reporting in terms of journalism by offering instead the never-ending polluting doom scroll. It is worth remembering that one of the reasons that some would like to see the destruction of the European Union is because then there would be no GDPR, no Digital Service Act (DSA) an no future regulation to prevent the will to power of Silicon Valley technologists and nihilists. The fact that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be coming to Munich, and has announced plans to only visit two of the most reactionary countries in the EU, Slovakia and Hungary, shows once again that the US, as articulated in its National Security Strategy, is prepared to destabilize and  disrupt the European Union in order to bring its own social and political polarization to the continent.

European Union participants in Munich can also use the time to continue to determine how the EU can best strengthen itself as a geopolitical bloc, among its current members (including the weakest links), but also in terms of its enlargement agenda. This has been slow and disappointing in the Western Balkans, largely because the EU has pursued lacking any vision or strategy, instead pursuing it through the presumption that its partners are the regional leadership class, rather than citizens who express consistent desire for the Union’s declared values for rule of law, democracy, and accountability, and human dignity writ large. The forces which hold sway in that region are a microcosm of those gaining traction in the wider world, exemplified by Washington and Moscow. An enlarged EU rededicated to being an assertive community of values, employing all its levers of influence, is one that could naturally enlarge. This is not a matter of charity, but an urgent matter of collective self-defense against the global forces of unaccountable power and their local allies and partners.

To refer back to Canada once more, MSC 2026 needs to be an “elbows up” moment for Europe+, in which it recognizes its collective strengths, strategizes to remediate its vulnerabilities, and projects a collective self-confidence to potential partners and adversaries alike.

The post The Munich Security Conference 2026: Will the middle powers show they can punch above their weight? appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party will return to power for a fourth straight term. This despite having been down double digits in polls just months ago against the opposition Conservatives, led by challenger Pierre Poilievre. Trump’s levying tariffs and open advocacy of annexing Canada as “the 51st state” were decisive for Canadian voters, who deemed Carney, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor, the safer pair of hands, given the nature of the threat to the country’s economy and independence.

This electoral result has wider implications, being the starkest popular reaction thus far in the democratic world to Trump’s performative cruelty and assault on democratic norms at home, together with his direct confrontation with steadfast allies, partners, and the international system which the US previously championed. The tectonic ruction of Trump’s disruption-by-design has generated adjustment throughout the democratic world, but Canada’s has been deepest, most resolute, and profound. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly demonstrated this three weeks ago at a NATO meeting.

Voters have now reinforced her conclusion. Nowhere in the democratic world has the breach – driven by Trump – elicited so clear a response. This includes a redoubled commitment to Canada’s ties to Europe, but also Pacific democracies, those in the Western hemisphere, and Africa as well. Canada has demonstrated it’s possible to resist and adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining the values that have consistently made it a global magnet. This can provide a boost to Europe+ and hopefully provide momentum for resistance against the illiberal spasm that is doing so much harm to so many. Europe+ needs now to demonstrate a similar recognition of this changed world.

The will to straddle and hedge remains strong, as NATO SG Mark Rutte demonstrates. This is unequal to the moment. Europe+ should take this opportunity to maintain and strengthen the values that have enabled economic and social development for decades, in the face of a tide of self-dealing authoritarianism worldwide.

Countries that recognize the importance of democratic values for not only prosperity and rights, but individual dignity, would do well to recognize the need for far greater coordinated action to withstand the multifaceted threats to liberal movements and the kleptocracy that comes with them. The call for solidarity from Canadians is one that Europe+ – the remaining democratic world – must heed. This will demand creativity, popular solidarity within and among democracies, and crucially leadership.

The opportunity for Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin and others to rally to the challenge is clear. At the moment those with the most to lose from authoritarianism – Canadians and Greenlanders, along with Ukrainians – have demonstrated the strongest clarity of vision.

As Foreign Minister Joly underscored, the people with the power to stop Trump are Americans. After his first 100 days, it seems increasingly clear that they are recognizing the danger as well, not only to their neighbors, but themselves and their rights. Unless and until Americans brake and reverse his agenda, Europe+ has to make its own arrangements, wrenching though that may be. Canada leads the way.

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It’s difficult to know for certain whether the rapid-fire escalation was intentional sabotage or the inevitable result of thin-skinned and unserious people thinking more about TV ratings than the matter at hand (as Trump said, “this is going to be great television”).

There is a reason diplomacy is typically done in private, with any agreements announced afterwards in a news conference. This time around, Trump carried out his diplomacy in full view of the global media. As with domestic issues, Trump evidently viewed this as just another episode of the reality show that is his presidency.

He gambled that he could bully President Zelenskyy into giving him a critical raw materials deal without security guarantees on live TV. But then the accusatory question from a pro-Trump journalist “why aren’t you wearing a suit” and Vice President Vance’s signature servile sanctimony showed that humiliation was also part of the agenda.

Zelenskyy was put in an impossible position; any pushback to the bullying would have been – and was – interpreted as “disrespect,” insubordination. Signing the framework deal might have bought Ukraine some time, but the evident unwillingness of the Trump administration to offer Ukraine security guarantees for the immediate ceasefire that they seek leads us to believe an acceptable outcome for Ukraine was unlikely from the beginning.

Inability to trust Washington to fulfil any agreement or promises also constitutes an existential risk for Ukraine or any other ally. In light of Trump’s affinity for Putin it’s difficult not to imagine that this deal would have been a way to formalize a sort of US/Russia extraction racket in a subjugated Ukraine.

The reactions from Europe were swift. It is commendable that European leaders closed ranks and sided with Zelenskyy. However, action is needed more than ever. This needs to include continued delivery of weapons and support to Ukraine, jumpstarting Europe’s own defense manufacturing capacity, and continuing to keep up pressure on Russia economically to inflict costs on Moscow’s actions. This would be the moment for Germany – as soon as a new government takes office – to deliver Taurus cruise missiles.

More broadly, since the end of WWII, the US has served as the universal connector of the democratic West. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is right to say that that mantle needs to move to Europe – or more precisely, Europe+. This needs to include wider Europe – non-EU members UK and Norway and fellow democracies in Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Oceania as well. They need to strategize for a world in which the US can shift from friend to abusive adversary in the span of six weeks.

Europe undeniably needs its own security – including nuclear – umbrella, independent of the US influence which was woven – with good reason – into NATO.  It needs to ensure that any peace process seats Kyiv at the table. The outcome must also serve wider European security and geopolitical interests.

One example is trade. Tariff talks actually give the EU leverage, especially if the UK resists the temptation to seek a separate deal with the US – driving a wedge between the EU and the UK is evidently a goal of the Trump administration. Coordination is also needed with NATO allies such as Canada that have also found themselves on the receiving end of Trump’s sucker punches.

Yesterday’s surreal display – a failed attempt by Trump & Co to assert dominance over a besieged, valiant erstwhile ally – delivered a lesson of existential import to a Europe already reeling from the messaging it heard at the Munich Security Conference. Ukraine must be defended for wider European security.

Acting on that lesson will require the EU and other allies to leave their comfort zones in radical ways, discarding prior boilerplate presumptions, deviating from established practice, confronting entrenched interests, and building the popular constituencies to sustain these moves for survival.

34 years ago, “The Hour of Europe” was declared in response to the unfolding war following the disintegration of Yugoslavia; this proved to be a moment of hubris for a Union which proved unequal to the task of stopping (and preventing) a series of wars which killed 130,000 over ten years. Today, the EU faces an aggressor which does not hide that it actively wishes to change the very operating system of European democracy – its values – from the east (Russia), west (the US under Trump), and within.

European defense begins with the front in Ukraine, but extends to the home front, both with illiberal governments inside the EU such as Hungary and Slovakia and those in the political space of other members who espouse reactionary values. It therefore is not just a political and military (and therefore economic) struggle, but a societal one.

A long road lies ahead; tomorrow’s London meeting may be decisive in embarking on the path to European and democratic security – whether this can truly be the Hour of Europe after all.

The post The Twilight of the West and the Need for a Europe+ appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

From Munich to Yalta

The annual Munich Security Conference (MSC) was even more eventful this year than it has been in the past, due mainly to the disposition of the administration of US President Trump, who in less than a full month in office has demonstrated a willingness to “run fast and break things.” The messaging from the Riyadh summit between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov amplified fears of a carve up – and not only of Ukraine. Trump’s subsequent verbal assault on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and saying that he needed to “act fast” (e.g., accede to Russian demands) or “you won’t have a country” (a line he used on the campaign trail) amplified the cognitive dissonance and panic in Europe. 

The implications are existential – and not just for Ukraine, the EU, and its democratic neighbors and allies. The EU’s foundational values and security are being directly and actively threatened. They can only be defended together.

Et tu, America?

American democracy is in peril. The systematic attack on the US Government bureaucracy by Elon Musk’s DOGE, beginning with the attack on USAID and domestic good governance guardrails, its aggressive posture towards friendly neighbors Canada and Mexico, and Trump’s real estate fantasy for Gaza by means of US-sanctioned ethnic cleansing, were unthinkable enough.

But Trump’s call with Russian President Putin and their plan to meet for negotiations to bring Moscow’s imperial war to an end (perhaps by the end of February) – without consulting Ukrainian President Zelensky or planning to include him (or European allies) – ominously tops off a mere month of the Trump regime. The aggressive speeches by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance in Brussels and Paris earlier in the week further shocked Europe in both tone and message, and in the clear disdain they reflected. Hegseth effectively demanded European commitment to enforce a peace deal which remains ethereal, but would involve Ukrainian territorial concessions.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas correctly framed the American push for a “negotiated settlement,” together with ruling out Ukraine’s membership in NATO, as “appeasement.” European leaders asserted that no peace could be agreed without Ukraine – and Europe.

In his speech to the MSC, Vance sidestepped the central issue of Ukraine and European security to assert in a show of Orwellian doublespeak that the main security challenge to Europe was internal, claiming it was Europe’s democracy that was at risk.

His language was specifically aimed at support for the far right in Germany and beyond, whilst claiming “shared values” – leaving one to wonder what might be the values he claims to want to share.  Expressing such hubris in Germany, which is facing elections in a week, was particularly pointed. As if to add emphasis and clarify the values he is espousing, he met with far-right Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel – directly engaging in the final stages of an election on the side of the AfD. What he claimed are “shared values” are in fact a new manifestation of the nationalism, imperialism, exclusion and hate that underpinned two world wars in the 20th century.

Curiously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the cabinet member most known to MSC denizens over the past decade, and among Trump’s cabinet and advisors the most “normal” – was the least visible and audible member on the administration’s European tour.

European Cognitive Dissonance

The European reaction was properly swift, demonstrating a broad sense of betrayal and anger. French President Macron called a meeting with a select group of European leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, on Monday, Feb. 17 to discuss European defense. Ukraine’s President Zelensky in a speech and interview advocated an “armed forces of Europe,” along with common defense production and foreign policy, to ensure that Europe could defend itself. 

The need for Europe to prepare to go it alone (with as much support as it can muster from democracies further afield – Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) seems vital, wrenching though this may be. If Europe manages to rise to the occasion – far from a given – its greatest vulnerability will be in the buildup period. To begin to get there, it must successfully confront and prevail over its real “enemy from within:” its illiberal, Russia-friendly member governments, led by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who was pointedly excluded from the February 17 meeting, and is a darling among many in Trump’s orbit.

A broader concern is that Trump and much of his team see not Europe, but Russia’s Putin and company as values allies; their talking points share numerous similarities. Both prefer to act unilaterally, with contempt for weaker neighbors – and a preference for short-term transactionalism that enables the enrichment of cronies without regard to the broader social and economic stability that has enabled growth for decades. In addition, there is a school of thought which seeks to separate Russia from China – a relationship which tightened immediately before the full-scale invasion was launched three years ago. Yet the effect of the new US policy seems to place the world, including an alliance spanning four generations, on the drafting table of a new three-way Yalta – or 2.5, given Russia’s increased dependence on China.

The emergence of the US as a malign actor and aggressive disruptor already has had global consequences (potentially condemning millions to starvation and death from disease); these will metastasize. In addition to these unconscionable foreseeable impacts – which Europe and other democracies will need to address – there are more immediate security and defense implications for the EU’s neighborhood, particularly its enlargement area. These countries, in terms of their reliability as allies, risks they pose (and harbor), and assets for collective defense, need to be taken into account as Europe scrambles to recalibrate its common defense.

Europe’s Soft Underbelly

When it comes to the Western Balkans – the region in which the EU and the collective West has the greatest leverage – the EU’s policies remain locked on an autopilot. The events of the past week demonstrate that the EU must shift into fifth gear, for its own survival as a community of independent democracies. This requires a fundamental recalibration of its posture in the region.

In no country is this self-defeating dynamic clearer than in Serbia. Aleksandar Vučić faces the most persistent and determined challenge to his nearly 13-year rule from a statewide student-led protest movement demanding accountability and rule of law after the Novi Sad railway station roof collapse in November 2024. 

In a February 6 open letter, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos encouraged Serbians to have faith in the accession process to resolve institutional deficits, ignoring the role of the Serbian regime in creating the conditions for the kleptocracy and kakistocracy (governance by society’s worst – see also pathocracy) that enabled the Novi Sad collapse. 

It was received – correctly – as tone-deaf and out of touch. Informed observers have shared that the letter’s text was toned down by Commission President von der Leyen, who feared endangering equities with Vučić – an assertion we cannot confirm, but which would be far from surprising given her engagement to date.

In addition to being offensive to the young people who are showing their commitment to the EU’s professed values and simply seek dignity after decades of dysfunction and rising autocracy, this approach shows the willful ignorance of some in the EU; the accession process will not solve the demands of the protesters; the protesters’ demands need to be met so that the accession process may credibly begin.

Instead, the demonstrations continue undeterred by attempts by the Vučić regime to paint them as a foreign plot. The relative sizes of a substantial protest gathering in the central city of Kragujevac (to which thousands marched from across the country), and a spare and minimally energetic regime-organized Serbian unity rally in Sremska Mitrovica supported by Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik and busloads of people from Republika Srpska, was illustrative. The leaders’ tightening relationship seems compelled by their domestic circumstances. Vučić’s efforts to paint the student-led popular movement as financed by USAID and use of the term “color revolution” sounded increasingly desperate and ridiculous. Both hope that Trump & Co’s moves will buoy their sinking fortunes. 

Actors from across the region seek to profit from the transatlantic turmoil for their standing agendas. On the final day of the MSC, a panel provided a chance for Prime Ministers Rama of Albania and Mickoski of North Macedonia, as well as EU Enlargement Commissioner Kos, to look forward for the region from what was felt by attendees as a tectonic shift in the global order. 

Rama demonstrated that he is the premier transactional opportunist in the Western Balkans. He attempted to instrumentalize US officials’ statements, calling them “a gift from God” for the EU, advocating that the Union launch a phased accession process and that the “merit-based approach” should only apply to voting in the Union, not membership.

Mickoski made valid points about North Macedonia’s accession having been stunted repeatedly by bilateral disputes led by EU member state pursuing their own narrow agendas. Both leaders engaged in long, self-serving explanatory answers, Rama being far more aggressive, going so far as to chide the moderator for “inviting Balkan men” if she didn’t want long replies.

Kos’ explanation that the enlargement process is confined by the technical structures of the acquis and member state prerogatives was tone-deaf and seemingly untouched by the past decade of lived experience. 

Moderator Majda Ruge’s question on security threats in the region given the shifting American position, for example against secession efforts by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, received no direct answer. And this highlights the failure to date of the EU, as well as its potential to redefine its European security posture. If a geopolitical actor, as it must become to defend itself, it must be capable of implementing area denial – the capability to deny access in a given territory to malign actors. It already has this legal responsibility in Bosnia. 

The EU’s failure to date to convince Bosnian political actors of its commitment was highlighted days after the MSC closed. Following closing arguments in his case before the Court of BiH on February 19 for noncompliance with international High Representative orders, as per the Dayton Accords, Dodik stated that “I’m not threatening anyone, but I’m ready to go all the way” – a clear implication of his long-mooted secession threat. Vučić chimed-in as well, framing Dodik’s violations of the Dayton Accords as a free speech issue, as well as implying that “uncertainty” would follow a guilty verdict. Vučić’s own campaign slogan – “peace and stability” – implied the threat that failure to maintain him in power would precipitate conflict and instability, in true mafia style.

Regional Security – and Democratic Progress – Demands European Leadership

DPC has long advocated closing the deterrence gap in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 20 years ago the EU took on the peace enforcement mandate articulated in the Dayton peace accords. 

No other single act would have greater impact on the political and social dynamic of Bosnia and the region, robbing Dodik of his sole and central prop of his 19-year role – the threat of secession – than if the EU finally took its peace enforcement mandate seriously and engaged in area denial. 

It would also put paid to Serbia’s irredentist regional ambitions, manifest in the Srpski Svet (Serbian World) concept. These ambitions are useful to and aided by Moscow. As Vučić and his centralized rule face a citizens’ movement growing in popularity in Serbia and the region, he relies increasingly on the link with Dodik, his regional agenda, and hostility toward a host of neighbors, especially Kosovo. He has nothing to offer; which is why Serbia’s young people are on the streets.

Given that threats of US withdrawal from NATO’s KFOR were made by envoy for special missions Richard Grenell both in the first Trump term and during the Biden administration, the EU needs to prepare to fill that gap at short notice. Disinformation that the US had activated plans to withdraw its contingent from KFOR circulated widely on February 20, mainly propagated by media connected to Russian, Chinese, or Serbian governments. The possibility of such a withdrawal has indeed been made in the past by Richard Grenell, former US Ambassador to Germany then Balkan envoy in the first Trump administration, now Trump’s envoy for special missions, as well as Donald Trump Jr. But they have not been made since he undertook his new role. 

The EU faces at present Western Balkan leaders who are either committed illiberals or transactionalists. None currently holding the reins of power are genuine exponents of EU foundational values.

It is untenable to rely on such leaders when Europe is simultaneously under existential threat from both East and now West, but also from among illiberally led member states and growing reactionary threats in established democracies. Far from ensuring stability, they profiteer from curated instability as a reliable extractive tool. Europe must disable their capacity to do so. 

Popular Democratic Impulses on the EU Frontiers

The potential for a different Western Balkans has been underscored by Serbia’s student-led nonviolent mobilization – and the broad and heartfelt moral and material solidarity being provided by the broader Serbian and regional populations. This represents a reassertion of collective self-respect after two generations of misrule, with all its aspects of societal degradation.

When Croatians demonstrated in numerous cities – including Vukovar(!) – in support, taxi drivers from Sarajevo, Podgorica, Skopje and elsewhere offered to travel to Kragujevac to transport Serbian students should their Serbian counterparts be overwhelmed by demand, a phenomenon worthy of support. The EU should show similar resolve.

The EU, institutionally established to deal with institutional interlocutors (and whose enlargement process is predicated on the sincerity of their professions of shared values), has been caught flat-footed by this growing civic self-confidence.  But they should not squander this opportunity to support a mass movement in support of its own declared and besieged values.

The performance of US officials in Munich could one day be viewed as the second bookend of the demise of liberal democracy and the trans-Atlantic relationship – with the first being Putin’s performance there in 2007.

However, it does not have to be this way. The sole good outcome of Munich is that Europe’s leaders see that they cannot count on the US as they have for so long. A geopolitically enabled EU can no longer afford to stray from its values. It must defend them materially, both at home and in the enlargement area, while supporting those beyond who share them.  

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There are increasing signs that the links between polarization, endemic corruption and democratic struggle and decline are trends threatening weak states, hybrid regimes, non-democratic states and states long considered to be stable or “consolidated” democratic systems. Widespread popular dissatisfaction with economic options, economic decline and the attendant social pressures has been effectively exploited and weaponized by opportunistic spoilers, to date mostly from the right. This has fueled interest in right-leaning and far-right narratives, disinformation, and state and institutional capture, to the detriment of accountable, rights-based, democratic governance.

In 2021, the Democratization Policy Council (DPC) and Eurothink published, Sell Out, Tune Out, Get Out, or Freak Out? Understanding Corruption, State Capture, Radicalization, Pacification, Resilience, and Emigration in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia. This initiative was inspired by Sarah Chayes’ book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.  Chayes made the contention, based on her experience on the ground in Afghanistan and her study of other countries, that systemic corruption and self-dealing as practiced by governments (commonly referred to as state capture) fuels popular resentment. The DPC/Eurothink initiative was grounded in the question of whether this thesis could help in understanding the social, political, and economic dynamics of Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.  The answer was yes, and the team developed three conceptual models to describe a) the problem set; b) citizen response options; and c) avenues to effect systemic change in these two countries, and beyond. The book and the models and diagrams are available here.

The panel organizers are interested in additional application of these models to other case studies. There are many possible relevant questions to explore. How can these models help to understand Serbia, Lebanon, Georgia, or other countries? What can people awaiting the second Trump administration in the US learn from these models and experiences? How can values-based organizations and alliance like the EU, Council of Europe, OSCE and others learn from this kind of analysis to ensure that their engagements have positive impact for the people in these countries?

In addition to participating in ASN, the panel organizers intend to prepare an edited volume based on submitted papers and cross-cutting framing chapters. Curious minds at all stages of their academic and professional careers are encouraged to submit a proposal.  If the panel is successful, all participants would be responsible for identifying their own travel funds to participate. However, all proposals may be considered for the volume.

If you are interested in applying please send your paper proposal (max. 400 words) and a short biographical statement (max. 250 words) to valeryperry@yahoo.com by December 4, 2024.

The post Call for Papers: Freaking Out…. Positively – Resisting Corruption, State Capture and Radicalization in a time of Democratic Decline appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

1/ After months of hesitation on an announced imposition of a so-called integrity package, @OHR_BiH Schmidt yesterday finally decided to amend Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election law.

2/ Contrary to @ExtSpoxEU’s accusations, Schmidt neither misused his mandate nor undercut “local ownership,” quite the opposite – he only acted …

3/ … after ruling parties over the last few months demonstrated their rejection of integrity reforms, as manifested by the HDZ BiH’s recent proposal for anti-integrity election law amendments, or the SNSD’s secession threats should the package be adopted.

4/ Unlike the mostly substance-free formal reforms (conflict of interest law, HJPC law amendment) that brought #BiH the green light for opening EU accession talks, @OHR_BiH’s extensive amendments demonstrate what real reform for democratic practice can look like.

5/ The amendment provisions address almost all of the core neuralgic entry points for the traditionally widespread election fraud in #BiH, thus making HDZ BiH and SNSD justifiably nervous: professionalization/depoliticization of the polling station committee presidents; …

6/ … beginning of the introduction of electronic voter identification and ballot counting technology; more transparency in the voter registry; expansion of the ban of convicted war criminals to run for office, etc.

7/ However, by introducing a provision limiting the membership in the Central Election Commission (CEC) by retirement age, while leaving unchanged the procedure for selection and election of the CEC members – already demonstrated to be ripe for political capture – Schmidt…

8/ … has thrown the ruling coalition a lifeline to seize control of the CEC and to undercut or neutralize most of the other, positive elements of his decision before the next general elections in 2026.

The post High Rep Integrity Package Imposition appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

1/ Last week’s @EUCouncil decision to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina (#BiH) could be interpreted to require ONLY completion of the subset of 8 goals instead of all of the 14 key reform priorities of the May 2019 Avis to actually start talks.

2/ Celebrating from Brussels the EU’s green light for BiH, foreign minister @DinoKonakovic Thursday night in a strikingly open way signaled that his ruling coalition had been handed a (almost cost-free) gift – with a smoother path ahead.

3/ He noted: “The conclusions say that negotiations are opening, that is the most important thing, that the Commission is tasked with preparing a negotiating framework based on the 2022 recommendations…

4/ … This is a confirmation that there is no question of all 14 priorities and that what awaits us is not so demanding. We have a smaller part of the work ahead of us compared to these 13 months.”

5/ Wasting no time in exploiting the EU’s open retreat on reform conditionality, a letter sent Friday by Council of Ministers chair @KristoBorjana in a letter to @OliverVarhelyi telegraphed her real priorities…

6/ …including a BiH election law amendment entered into government procedure that day. The law, proposed by HDZ BiH, continues to take advantage of the EU’s willingness to avert its eyes from the pursuit of divisive and self-dealing agendas. In this case, …

7/ … to scupper any @OHR_BiH imposition of the so-called integrity package to limit election fraud. The new law would change the method of electing the Croat member to the BiH Presidency, to further strengthen the HDZ’s position and harden structural ethno-national gerrymandering.

8/ Bottom line: now that the Council has decided to open talks, the struggle to uphold standards will rest heavily on member states to fight hard to interpret their own conclusions expansively.

9/DPC will advocate specifically on this score in the near future.

The post EU Council Green Light Aftermath appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

1/ On Wednesday, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state-level coalition reached agreement on a draft law on conflict of interest, which was adopted by the Council of Ministers.

2/ As we point out in a separate thread posted today, the politics of greenlighting accession negotiations are fraught and will play into the hands of incumbent elites in the country.

But beyond that, the law is highly problematic on substance.

3/ It formally replaces the existing conflict of interest commission, composed of a majority of MPs, by an independent body of 7 expert members. However, through a composition mirroring the ethnic power-sharing model of Dayton BiH, …

4/ … with two members coming from each of BiH’s three constituent peoples, and one from the “others” (article 18), combined with their appointment by the BiH parliament by simple majority (article 19), …

5/ … the commission in reality will remain under the total control of the ruling coalition, with the Dodik-Čović tandem controlling a majority that will prevent the commission from taking any decision against their party interests (article 22).

6/ Such a body will certainly do nothing to push against endemic corruption and nepotism unless it is in the service of their narrow party agendas. It encapsulates the mutually assured destruction – and defining deviancy down – at the heart of BiH’s #PeaceCartel.

7/ In addition, the new law opens the possibility for entity and cantonal legislation to annul the ban on state-level officials to simultaneously hold office at lower levels of governance (art. 6 (2)).

8/ Further, unlike the existing law and earlier drafts of the new law, the final version removes the unrestricted obligation of institutions, bodies and legal persons in the entities and cantons to provide financial and property data of a public official …

9/ … when requested by the commission, i.e. it (art. 17 (3)) enables entities and cantons to adopt legislation blocking such an obligation; which history shows they will certainly do to reduce transparency.

10/ Finally, the new law removes a provision in the existing one that entity laws on conflict of interest are not allowed to contravene the state law, meaning that lower-level laws will be able to be even weaker than this already weak state law.

11/ To sum up, the law scheduled for passage today will not fight conflicts of interest, but rather change the law to make such conflicts easier to pursue – and hide.

12/ It also furthers Dodik & Čović’s aim of further weakening state primacy in favor of levels of govt over which they exercise singular control. In giving an EU seal of approval to the law, the EU is helping BiH politicians consolidate feudal dominance in “their” domains.

The post BiH’s New Conflict of Interest Law: the bad and the ugly – nothing good appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

1/ Next Tuesday (March 12), the @EU_Commission is scheduled to decide whether to recommend the opening of accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina to EU leaders, who meet as the European Council on March 21-22.  

2/ The decision is but the latest episode in downgrading reform conditionality and declaring progress in a long history of EU concessions to BiH’s political class. Advancement in the “membership perspective,” began in 2007, when the SAA was initialled. But it’s Potemkin progress.

3/ When the @EU_Commission recommended candidacy for Ukraine & Moldova in October 2022, it successfully lobbied the @EUCouncil to do the same for BiH without it fulfilling ANY reform conditions, kicking that conditionality to the opening of accession talks.

4/ Following @EUCouncil’s conditional green light in December 2023, EU officials in recent months further eroded the set of more than two dozen reform conditions listed in the 2019 EC Opinion down to a mere 4 laws & decisions, of which 2 were passed in recent weeks.

5/ They then signalled that the Law on the Courts of BiH – one of the two remaining conditions – could be dropped when it became clear that RS leader @MiloradDodik would not give in even on a problematic compromise.

6/ Dodik demanded a law that would not only have weakened instead of strengthened the state judiciary, but removed the possibility of legal prosecution of any future RS secession.

7/ This focus on the remaining Law on conflict of interest in state-level institutions, to the detriment of the Law on the Court, was evident for example in a joint news conference of BiH foreign minister @DinoKonakovic and @ABaerbock on Tuesday.

8/ While Konaković stressed the ruling coalition’s “commitment to the fight against corruption,” Baerbock declared this fight and adoption of the law as “crucial” and “important for us.”

9/ On Wednesday, the state-level coalition reached agreement and the final draft was approved by the Council of Ministers, signaling that the ploy had worked.

10/ A close inspection of the draft text, however, reveals an entirely different story: Not only does it not meet the conditions and standards set by the EU, it even retreats from current standards in the fight against political corruption and nepotism.

11/ We will analyze the highly problematic draft text in a separate thread, to follow.

12/ After enlargement commissioner @OliverVarhelyi immediately praised CoM agreement on the law draft …

13/ … both chambers of the BiH parliament are scheduled to adopt the law today by expedited procedure, an instrument excessively used in all WB countries, criticized by the EU for undermining parliamentary democracy by preventing public debate.

14/ With last holdouts Berlin and The Hague signaling readiness to give in to the @EU_Commission’s script, all seems to be set for the upcoming European summit to declare “success”.

15/ As this latest chapter on the conflict of interest law demonstrates, the surrender of self-declared defenders’ of the EU’s liberal democratic values such as Germany and the Netherlands …

16/ … to the agendas of illiberals and transactionalists in the EU institutions and among member states with regard to BiH and the wider WB region shows the hollowing-out of the enlargement process, and also the EU itself.

17/ It also shows the fragility of a values-free enlargement policy as a geopolitical tool following the Russian aggression on Ukraine. And the intended audience seems to be the EU itself. Citizens of BiH will not be fooled – nor will the Kremlin.

18/ In BiH, giving the green light on accession talks at the European summit will only embolden the corrupt & undemocratic ruling elites, encouraging @MiloradDodik & @Dragan_Covic to continue their ethnically divisive & secessionist agendas as “champions of EU integration.”

19/ It is high time for Berlin and The Hague to bridge the huge gap between announced policy and practical performance – by blocking a positive decision on BiH at the European Council, and subsequently work on a long overdue comprehensive EU strategy towards BiH.

The post Latest Episode of Pantomime Reform: BiH and the Conflict of Interest Law appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.