Stability First, Development Second, Democracy Third: The European Union's Policy towards the Post-Conflict Western Balkans, 1991–2010

Abstract

This article assesses total EU financial flows towards the Western Balkans between 1991 and 2010. It shows that, in the short term, the majority of support has been allocated to humanitarian assistance and socio-economic development. Although the EU has declared its interest in democracy promotion, democracy assistance ranks only third on the list of its financial expenditures in the Western Balkans. Therefore, although EU financial aid is consistent with official EU programmes, it is inadequate in the post-conflict context of the EU candidate and potential candidate countries that require support for democratisation.

Notes

We wish to thank Franziska Blomberg, Lisa Groß and Gerald Schneider, as well as the members of the research network ‘External Democratization Policies’ for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Generous financial support from the Young Scholar Fund of the University of Konstanz is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are ours alone.

¹ In the process of association, all countries wishing to join the EU must prepare to comply with the Copenhagen criteria, on which the Commission's opinion on any application for accession is based. These criteria were laid down at the European Council meeting in Copenhagen in 1993 and include a political (stability of the institutions safeguarding democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities), an economic (existence of a viable market economy, the ability to respond to the pressure of competition and market forces within the EU) and an aquis (the ability to assume the obligations of a member state stemming from the law and policies of the EU) criterion. The approximation of law means that countries aspiring to join the EU must align their national laws, rules and procedures in order to give effect to the entire body of EU law contained in the acquis communautaire. The acquis communautaire includes the directives, regulations and decisions adopted on the basis of the various treaties which together make up the primary law of the European Union.

² See also, ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the Stabilization and Association Process for the Countries of South-Eastern Europe’, COM 235/1999 final, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/EN/URISERV:r18003, accessed 15 May 2015; ‘Communication from the Commission, 2005 Enlargement Strategy Paper’, COM 561/2005 final, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri = CELEX:52005DC0561, accessed 15 May 2015.

³ ECHO is the European Community Humanitarian Office that holds a programme under the same name for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. PHARE, the Pologne et Hongrie: Aid à Restructuration Economique was later renamed the Programme of Community Aid to the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. OBNOVA was the European Commission's Reconstructing Programme. CARDS is the abbreviation for the Community Assistance for Reconstruction and Development to the Western Balkans that was replaced in 2007 by IPA, the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance. EIDHR, the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, was renamed in 2007 as European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. For more details on time frames, purpose and means of these financial instruments please refer to Table 1.

⁴ Later also called Programme of Community aid to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

⁵ In addition to the EU, which served as the driving force, the Stability Pact for south-eastern Europe further involved the OSCE, UN agencies (such as the UNHCR), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western European Union.

⁶ ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the Stabilization and Association Process for the Countries of South-Eastern Europe’, COM 235/1999 final, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/EN/URISERV:r18003, accessed 15 May 2015.

⁷ See, Regional Cooperation Council, 2005, available at: http://www.rcc.int/pages/6/2/overview, accessed 1 March 2012.

⁸ ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the Stabilization and Association Process for the Countries of South-Eastern Europe’, COM 235/1999 final, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/EN/URISERV:r18003, accessed 15 May 2015.

⁹ As of May 2015, only Kosovo has not yet negotiated an SAA with the EU. Alternatively, the EU established on 6 November 2002 a Stabilisation Tracking Mechanism designed as a specific association process for Kosovo to promote policy dialogue between the EU and the Kosovan authorities on EU approximation matters.

¹⁰ Assistance under IPA is also extended to Iceland and Turkey as EU candidate countries.

¹¹ In most of the EU documents, data for Montenegro and for Kosovo were listed separately even before the state dissolution of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006 and Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008. When we found only one figure, we attributed this solely to Serbia. Thus, some figures for Serbia may also include assistance to Montenegro and/or Kosovo; this could slightly distort the overall figures.

¹² We did our best to utilise this expertise in compiling what is to our knowledge the most complete and thorough overview of expenditures in the region. Nevertheless, gaps in the data may still exist. We are very grateful to those experts who spent time going through the data and allowed us to profit from their wisdom and experience. Expert input was collected with a guarantee of anonymity.

¹³ The year of the contract does not necessarily coincide with the timeframe of the implementation of the project. If the reports mention a two-year time frame, we split the amount of money in half, allocating half to each of the two years.

¹⁴ ‘Anchor countries’ (a term first proposed by Stamm (2004) and then further developed by Altenburg and Leininger (2008)) comprise the largest economies of each of the developing regions as defined by the World Bank (Stamm 2004). The term highlights economic weight in regional and global terms, regardless of the country's level of development. The anchor countries' relative economic weight in the region is expected to generate strong economic and political spill-overs and goes along with a significant regional, and sometimes also global, political role (Altenburg & Leininger 2008, p. 5).

¹⁵ We also calculated aid flows per capita per country over each country's funding period, as not all countries received money over the complete period of 20 years. However, this did not significantly change the differences between the countries.

¹⁶ The Ohrid Framework Agreement was the peace deal signed by the government of Macedonia and ethnic Albanian representatives on 13 August 2001. The agreement ended the armed conflict between the National Liberation Army and the Macedonian security forces and set the groundwork for improving the rights of ethnic Albanians.

¹⁷ ‘Statement by President José Manuel Barroso following his meeting with Hashim Thaçi, Prime Minister of Kosovo’, Speech/11/360, Press Point, Pristina, 20 May 2011, available at: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-11-360_en.htm?locale = en, accessed 15 May 2015.