Bilateral relations in the Western Balkans as a challenge for EU accession

ABSTRACT

Although the European Union pledges to ‘maintain [and reaffirm] the credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans,’ some of the new requirements which it demands the Western Balkan candidate states to meet in order to gain membership seem to be very demanding for the political leaderships of these states. This is particularly the case for the requirement that candidate states solve all their ‘bilateral disputes … as a matter of urgency’. While Montenegro hopes to solve its only remaining (though nearly thirty year old) dispute with Croatia over their maritime border sometime soon, the second regional frontrunner for EU membership, Serbia, and the other remaining Western Balkan states (with the partial exception of Albania) have many more (and more serious) problems to resolve with their neighbours. This article discusses the nature and origins of problems in several most complex bilateral relationships in the Western Balkans and critically assesses the difficulty these problems pose for the Western Balkan states’ accession to the EU.

KEYWORDS:

• Western Balkans
• bilateral disputes
• EU accession

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. By that time Turkey’s accession had effectively fallen from the enlargement agenda. In addition to increased opposition among leading EU member states to further enlargement, the key reason for it were internal developments in Turkey, particularly President Erdogan’s increased authoritarianism and his lack of desire to comply with EU demands and accession conditions.

2. The conditions defined by the Copenhagen European Council of 1993 regarding the establishment of a political democracy, market economy, respect for and protection of human and minority rights ‘as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union [and] the candidate’s ability to take on the obligations of membership’ (European Council 1993, 7.A.iii) that were the ‘only’ ones which the countries that completed the 2004/07 enlargement round had to meet.

3. ‘International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’, established by UN Security Council resolution 827 of 25 May 1993.

4. This was similar to the other two former communist federations – the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent communist Czechoslovakia, both of which also disappeared in the wake of the collapse of communist rule.

5. Although it was included in the original 1993 Copenhagen accession conditions, this criterion did not play any significant role in the 2004/07 enlargement round (see e.g. Lavigne 1999, 228–239; Emerson et al. 2006).

6. These are addressed in the Commission’s annual reports on country developments and other documents and actions of the Commission and the Council in which they recommend to the individual countries (how) to address these issues.

7. It is interesting that this ‘agreement’ was only initialled and never signed by the two prime ministers (see e.g. International Crisis Group 2013). The agreement in full is available at: http://www.kord-kim.gov.rs/eng/p03.php

8. Subject to the condition that these would continue to be run by Kosovo Serbs (as specified in points 9 and 10 of the Agreement).

9. The latter has, however, been differently interpreted by the two parties on some occasions as was the case with the above mentioned visit and arrest of the Serbian official to North Mitrovica in March 2018 (see e.g. Euractiv 2018a).

10. There were earlier differences regarding the demarcation of the borders between North Macedonia and Kosovo and between Montenegro and Kosovo which were resolved with the signing of separate agreements between the parties involved in 2009 and 2015 respectively (see e.g. Morina 2018; Euroactiv 2009).

11. Or more precisely to the Bosniak representatives in it as the Bosnian Croats’ political leadership actually supports Croatia’s argument in the dispute (see e.g. HRTVijesti 2017).

12. Whether the inter-state border should follow the middle of the current course of the river (Serbia’s position) or whether it should follow the cadastral records which were made in line with an old course of the river (Croatia’s stance) which would leave some 10,000 hectares of Croatian land on the Serbian side and 1,000 Serbian hectares on the Croatian side of the current course of the river (Pavlic, 2017).

13. The cadastral records currently leave several small Serbian and Bosnian villages on the ‘wrong’ side of the river, but the dispute over the two hydro-electric plants, whose facilities officially belong to Serbia, but which are partially located on the Bosnian side of the river, is even more complex (Anđelković 2017). Similar to B-H’s dispute with Croatia over the Peljsac bridge (see endtnote 11), the B-H’s position in the dispute is almost exclusively advocated by Bosniak officials, as Republika Srpska fully supports Serbia’s stance (ibid).

14. This war, called in Croatia ‘Domovinski rat [Homeland war],’ lasted more than four years and resulted in about 18,000 dead or missing persons (HINA 2015; Ponoš 2017). It ended in early August 1995 after a military offensive of the Croatian army (so-called ‘Operation Storm’) crashed the Serb forces in the rebel Krajina region and triggered the emigration of some 150,000 Serb civilians to B-H and Serbia (Biondich 2011, 235; Crampton 2002, 266), although the total number of ethnic Serbs who left Croatia during and after this war was much higher (Djuric 2010).

15. A regime which featured massacres, forced exodus and conversion (from Serbian Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism) of hundreds of thousands ethnic Serbs who lived in Ustasha Croatia (Lampe 1996, 206–207; also Tomasevich 2002; Pavlowich, 2008).

16. Although the EU and the Commission have so far found the status of national minorities in Serbia solidly regulated and have not expressed serious concerns about it (see e.g. European Commission 2019, 29).