4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

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GIS Dossier: The Western Balkans

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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

World War I, 20 years after the Yugoslav wars and 10 years after
Kosovo’s declaration of independence, the region has remained
relatively peaceful.

Democratic institutions, however, are still weak. The path the

region follows will have repercussions for global power plays,
especially between the West and Russia, but also for rising
powers to the east like Turkey and China. GIS expert Dr. Blerim
Reka has thoroughly analyzed the key factors at play in the
region, and what follows is a summary of his reports.

Stalled European integration

In 2014, Dr. Reka noted that the Western Balkan countries were
stalling in their progress toward European integration, saying
that they are “in Europe geographically but out of Europe
politically.” This was the result of their incomplete threefold
transition from war to peace, from communism to post-
communism and from state to market economies. The peace that
was achieved did not eliminate the underlying reasons for
conflict: international models for multiethnic states simply did
not stick in the Balkans and undemocratic regimes took hold.
“Democracy was sacrificed in the name of security, and
authoritarianism was tolerated before liberalism.”

The EU’s failure to deepen political engagement left leaders with

no incentive to abide by the rule of law. The EU claimed
“enlargement fatigue” and a lack of ability to “absorb” the Balkan
countries, even though their combined population would have
come to just 21 million – about the size of Romania, which
entered the EU in 2007. In reality, the bloc was suffering from a
sort of institutional as well as financial fatigue after the 2008
global economic crisis. Then, in 2014, the EU had to shift its
attention northeast, where it was being challenged by Russia in
Ukraine.

All these problems remain on the bloc’s plate.

EU membership for the Balkans

cannot realistically be expected
before 2022
For all these reasons, EU membership for the Balkans cannot
realistically be expected before 2022, predicted Dr. Reka. “This is
because enlargement to include the Balkans relies mainly on
geopolitical explanations, excluding the technical arguments for
membership, which took eight years of negotiations for Croatia.”

Security vacuum

Dr. Reka presciently pointed out that a failure to make EU

accession a real option could create a “security vacuum” in the
region. Tellingly, some leaders in the Balkans had begun calling
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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

EU integration “one of the strategic alternatives” rather than the

only alternative – revealing that they were considering “other
geostrategic orientations,” namely, allying with Russia. “This
could potentially see a new Cold War in the Balkans,” he wrote.

“The 20 years of post-Dayton neglectful, ‘no war, no integration’

EU policies have allowed the volatile Western Balkan region to
remain what it has been for generations – a ticking geopolitical
time bomb,” he added in November 2015. “If the EU and NATO
keep the region on the outside and the policies of benign neglect
continue, Pan-Slavism and Islamic extremism will rather quickly
put the Western Balkans on the Russian periphery … with all the
foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences for the EU and the
Atlantic alliance.”

Merkel’s wake-up call

In 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated a series of

annual meetings between the European Union and Western
Balkan countries with two goals in mind: bringing those states
closer to EU membership and putting the region back on the
bloc’s agenda. Dr. Reka wrote that a show of serious political
commitment toward the Western Balkans from European
leadership was “precisely what has been missing for some time.”

Dr. Reka called Chancellor Merkel’s initiative a “wake-up call to

the EU, which has forgotten about the Western Balkans.” The
German initiative would lead to the “Europeanisation of the
Balkans, instead of the Balkanization of Europe,” Dr. Reka
predicted – though he cautioned that EU membership was not
guaranteed and would be a long, arduous process.

The “Berlin Process” of EU-Western Balkans summits was initiated by

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) in 2014. The latest meeting
took place in Trieste, Italy, in July 2017 (source: dpa)

Part of the reason for that is individual countries in the region

use their veto powers to hold candidate countries in limbo. Dr.
Reka noted how Greece was holding up Albania’s progress

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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

toward EU membership, as well as Macedonia’s membership in

both the EU and NATO. “Greece’s opposition to integrating its
neighbors into the European Union and NATO could create
bilateral tensions and threaten regional security,” he wrote.

Since then, the series of meetings has been dubbed the “Berlin
Process.” Its latest iteration, held in July 2017 in Trieste, Italy,
reaffirmed Western commitment to bringing the Balkans into the
fold, and made an increased EU and NATO presence in the
Balkans the most likely scenario, Dr. Reka noted.

Russia’s role

The Balkans are crucial for Russia as a buffer between it and

NATO, and as a region through which it could access the
Mediterranean. To achieve the latter, it has long courted
Macedonia. Skopje, however, has decided to apply for
membership in the EU and NATO. But its strategic orientation
could change quickly. As GIS founder Prince Michael of
Liechtenstein warned in a December 2016 comment, Greece’s
insistence on blocking Macedonia from joining those institutions
could drive Macedonia into the arms of Russia.

The key to Russia’s strategy in the Balkans, however, is Serbia, a

fellow majority Orthodox Christian country and the only Balkan
country with a Russian military base. The countries formed a
“strategic alliance” in May 2014 and carried out joint military
exercises in November of the same year. Comfortingly for
Moscow, Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin declared
during a trip to Moscow in August 2017 that his country “will
never join NATO.”

With the election of Donald Trump as President of the United

States, many feared that his campaign rhetoric skeptical of
NATO would mean the U.S. could abandon the region. Dr. Reka
rightly predicted however, that Washington’s strategic line on
the transatlantic alliance – and therefore the Balkans – would
remain unchanged, blocking Russian aspirations for a bigger
foothold in the region.

History is back

Developments in the Balkans over the past few years have

provided troubling evidence that history may be ready to repeat
itself. Wracked throughout the 20th century by wars over great
power influence and ethnic groups’ claims to territory, both sets
of tensions are flaring up again, wrote Dr. Reka in July 2016.

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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

Albanians and Serbs are the two biggest nations in the region, and
tensions between them are at the heart of instability there (source:
macpixxel for GIS)

When it comes to ethnic tensions, the biggest is the conflict

between Serbs and Albanians, the two largest nations in the
Balkans. These peoples are scattered across five Balkan states.
“Both nationalities dominate large enclaves in other countries:
the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Albanians in
Macedonia,” noted Dr. Reka. In 2015 Macedonia saw a 40-hour
gun battle in which “intruders” that the government claimed
were from (ethnically Albanian) Kosovo fired on the police, while
a political crisis resulted after a conservative-nationalist party
was unable to form a government due to demands from ethnic
Albanian parties. The interethnic split is delaying the country’s
postwar progress and slowing its momentum toward inclusion in
Euro-Atlantic structures, he wrote.

Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina have their own autonomous

republic, called Republika Srpska, whose leaders have repeatedly
expressed the desire to break away. In September 2016, the
region held a controversial referendum on whether to keep its
national holiday, which the country’s constitutional court had
ruled discriminated against other citizens of the federal state.

At the same time, there is a geopolitical tug-of-war underway.

“The EU and NATO countries will be vying with Russia not just
for military and diplomatic influence, but also to control the
energy corridors that transit the region,” Dr. Reka wrote. China,
Turkey and other states, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, are also
jostling for leverage.

“If the Western Balkans are destined to become a new hot spot,
wracked by ethnoterritorial disputes and great power meddling,
the multiethnic model that has prevailed over the past 10 years
may no longer be viable,” he concluded. “All this suggests that
the Western Balkans are reverting to familiar 20th-century
ground.”

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Pipeline politics

Dr. Reka observed that the rivalry between Russia and the West
was not only playing out in terms of military alliances, but in
terms of energy. In a May 2014 report, he analyzed the two
energy corridors in the Balkans: “Russia’s corridor with Serbia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia; and the Western
corridor with Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro.”

The EU’s opposition to Russia’s South Stream pipeline (which

would have run from Russia to Austria through Bulgaria, Serbia
and Hungary), and Moscow’s subsequent decision to abandon
the project, sent ripple effects throughout the region. As the
possibility for Russian investment and transit payments melted
away, countries started more definitively edging closer to the
West. The move was a blow to Serbia’s ambitions to gain
geopolitical clout by serving as an energy corridor, and it gave a
leg up to Western allies in the region. NATO member Albania,
already a corridor for the Trans Adriatic and the Ionian-Adriatic
pipelines, benefited from new investments in its oil fields and
bilateral electricity transmission agreements with Kosovo and
Macedonia.

Russia did not stand pat, however. It turned east and signed a
30-year, $400 billion agreement to export gas to China. “Russia
is using this deal to replace losses in the European Union energy
market and to reduce its dependence on euro cash flow after the
imposition of sanctions and blocking of its South Stream pipeline
proposals,” wrote Dr. Reka in July 2014. It also began a
diplomatic offensive aimed at using rivers running through Serbia
and Greece to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Regional integration

One way to help ease tensions in the Balkans could be through

initiatives to lift barriers, both economic and political. The
Balkans Area of Free Trade Agreements, which was conceived in
1998 and would have included Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and
Montenegro, was one such proposal. The essence of the project
was “to create a free trade area between the four countries, each
related by natural, historic and traditional bonds. They also have
an approximately equal level of economic, political, cultural,
scientific, technological and industrial development,” wrote Dr.
Reka in 2014.

Creating a ‘Balkans Benelux’ would

serve as a preparatory step toward
wholesale integration of the region
into the EU
He saw the project as a basis for a “Balkans Benelux” that would
eventually create a common market, attract foreign direct

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investment and allow the free movement of people between

countries, defusing the various border disputes within the
region. It would also serve as a preparatory step toward
wholesale integration of the region into the EU.

By 2007, all the countries in the region were part of the Central
European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) – but free trade did not
mean a fully functioning common market. In April 2017, Serbian
President Alkesandar Vucic called for a politically integrated
free-trade zone in the region. That would include the old
Yugoslavia, plus Albania. Due to the different strategic
orientations and ethnic makeups of the various countries
involved, Dr. Reka saw that possibility as unrealistic. More likely,
he said, would be subregional groupings. “This scenario would
divide the region into two large zones: a ‘Serbian’ Balkans (Serbia
and Republika Srpska), oriented toward Russia, and an ‘Albanian’
Balkans (Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro), oriented
toward the EU and NATO.

Serbia’s choice

At the heart of the Western Balkans is Serbia, the region’s largest

country in terms of both area and population. It is trying to
navigate a delicate line between the West and its traditional ally,
Russia.

Officially, Serbia wants to join the EU and has been negotiating

accession since 2015. However, the issue of Kosovo – which
declared independence from Serbia in 2008 – has proven a
stumbling block. Serbia’s constitution calls Kosovo an “integral
part” of the country’s territory, and Belgrade still does not
recognize it as an independent state. In fact, Serbia and Kosovo
have still not signed a peace treaty. However, as Dr. Reka
observed in a September 2014 report, some of the EU’s biggest
members have made it clear that Serbia cannot join the bloc until
it recognizes Kosovo.

Moscow backs Belgrade’s stance on Kosovo, and provides it with

key economic, political and diplomatic support. But if Serbia
were to join the EU, it would also have to impose sanctions on
Russia – ruining the relationship.

This is Serbia’s dilemma: should it

keep Russian patronage or choose
the benefits of EU membership?
This is Serbia’s dilemma: should it continue to try to hold on to
Kosovo and keep Russian patronage, or choose the EU and all of
the benefits membership brings? “Serbia faces a tough
geopolitical choice between being part of the Euro-Atlantic
community or continuing its traditional alliance with Russia. It
could become the key EU member country in the Balkans with
an important geostrategic position and the largest market – or
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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away

be locked out of an EU-Atlantic integrated Balkans,” wrote Dr.

Reka.

Recently it seems Belgrade has begun setting the foundation for

finally making a decision. In 2017, Serbian President Aleksandar
Vucic called for a “broad national debate” on Kosovo, indicating
there could be room for movement. Dr. Reka outlined two
scenarios, one in which Serbia simply recognizes Kosovo and
another in which it demands a territorial swap, exchanging small
areas that are majority Serb and Albanian. The latter would be
supported by Russia, but would be complicated and could lead to
conflict. The former, though potentially hard for many Serbs to
accept, would win Belgrade its release from a century-old
problem and unblock its Euro-Atlantic future, the GIS expert
wrote.

Enter the dragon

As if the region’s geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the

West were not enough, China is now making its presence felt.
But its push will be soft, and based on economics, wrote Dr.
Reka in January 2018. Just as delaying the region’s integration
into Europe provides an opening for Russia, so too for China.
“Beijing’s first step will be to become a key economic player in
the Balkans; political leverage will come later,” he wrote.

18 April 2018
Expert

China has pumped huge amounts of infrastructure investment into

the Western Balkans as it maneuvers for influence in the strategically
important region (source: macpixxel for GIS)

The Western Balkans is the perfect springboard for China’s

expansion strategy, he pointed out. The region directly borders
the EU and its countries enjoy zero customs regimes with the
bloc. China is investing heavily in infrastructure there, including a
high-speed railway line between Budapest and Belgrade and a
$260 million bridge
GIS across the Danube. It loaned Macedonia 580
Feature
million euros for two highway projects and earmarked another
Region:
500 million euros for projects related to its Belt and Road
Europe
Initiative there. It has also been investing in a railway project in
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4/27/2018 The Western Balkans are so close to Europe, yet still so far away
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Albania, while a Chinese company will build part of the Ionian-
Adriatic highway running through Montenegro and Albania.

Next phase

Shoring up the rule of law and rooting out corruption remain the
two main priorities for the West in the Balkans. “The European
Union and United States are pushing for better democratic
governance in the region,” wrote Dr. Reka in a March 2018
report. “This requires stable institutions, efficient public
administration and an independent judiciary. None of that can
materialize, however, without first eradicating the deeply
entrenched culture of bribery and political patronage.”

In February 2018, the EU unveiled a new accession strategy for

the Western Balkans to breathe new life into the stalled process.
The EU initiative, supported by the U.S., aims at a fundamental,
multifaceted democratization within a decade. The program is
strict: “To listen to Brussels, the EU will no longer tolerate
bending the rule of law in the Balkans in the name of security or
granting amnesties to corrupt political bosses. It demands the
big-fish ‘untouchables’ in the region to be brought to justice.”
Countries in the region have begun beefing up their law
enforcement agencies to comply.

Dr. Reka saw an optimistic scenario, where countries tackle

these issues effectively, as likely. This would lead to Macedonia
and Albania starting EU accession talks in 2019, while
Montenegro and Serbia, which have both already begun
negotiations, would move forward in the process more quickly.
The less likely, negative scenario, in which the anti-corruption,
rule-of-law drive fails, would leave them out of the Euro-Atlantic
family. “Left alone, these states are likely to fall into the orbits of
outside, anti-Western powers and, in many cases, succumb to
chaos.”

Related topics

corruption democracy ethnic conflict European Union

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