BALKANS: ‘Let’s Go to Europe’

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 18 2005 (IPS) - Previously warring countries in the Balkans are uniting now in the common aim of joining the European Union.

“Joining the EU was a long desired goal of the region,” analyst Vladimir Goati told IPS. “But a lot remains to be done to prove to the EU that the countries in the region are ready to change, accept new standards and values, and put the past behind.”

Earlier this month Croatia (pop. 4.5 million) officially started full membership talks with the EU, aiming to join by 2010.

And earlier this week, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn visited Belgrade to announce the beginning of Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) talks with the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, a step that should lead to membership talks.

Serbia and Montenegro are not expected to join the EU before 2015.

“The developments have shown that some profound changes did happen in the area of former Yugoslavia,” sociologist from Belgrade University Vladimir Vuletic told IPS. “This was also a symbolic gesture for Serbia, as this is a kind of the approval of the recent political and economic reforms.”

Serbia started the SAA talks five years after the fall of its former leader Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for wars that tore former Yugoslavia apart at a cost of more than 250,000 lives in the 1990s.

“The start of the SAA talks was one of the brightest days in Serbia and Montenegro’s recent history,” Goran Svilanovic, the first post-Milosevic foreign minister told IPS. “The prospect of EU membership gives enormous impetus to the whole region.”

But Serbia “does not have an Austria up the sleeve,” assistant to foreign trade Minister Milos Lopandic said at a press conference. At the EU foreign ministers meeting earlier this month, Austria dropped its opposition to moves for Turkey’s admission on condition that Croatia was pushed along the road of membership.

The Croatian parliament responded with a law on restitution of Austrian property seized after World War II, a long lasting issue between the two nations. The draft law provides for the return of 70,000 private homes, 58,000 shops and more than 120,000 hectares of arable land to the pre-World War II owners or their heirs.

Serbia is counting on the benevolence of Slovenia, the only former Yugoslav republic to have become a full EU member.

“That’s normal and smart,” Slovenian MP Matjaz Han told journalists in Belgrade. “Slovenia is already investing in Serbia largely, and the business interests can improve other forms of cooperation as well.”

Slovenia has invested dozens of millions in dollars in Serbia in the past five years, returning with fanfare to what used to be its biggest market in pre-war times.

Next in the countries of the region, described as the “Western Balkans” by the EU, will be Macedonia. It is awaiting formal candidate status from Brussels, which would then lead to accession talks. Like Croatia, it concluded its SAA in less than a year.

After that it will be Albania, that has been going through the process for more than two-and-a-half years now.

The only one that has not even started assessment talks is Bosnia-Herzegovina. There has been almost no success despite international efforts to bring the formerly warring ethnic Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs together. They remain divided in two entities – the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic – with little desire for any joint action.

But there are obstacles ahead both for Croatia and Serbia on their road to the EU, analysts say.

“The EU means the future, but there’s no future without solving the problems of the recent past,” human rights activist Natasa Kandic told IPS.

Both countries have been reminded by top EU officials, but also by the United Nations founded International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte that their joining process could be in jeopardy if the most wanted war crimes suspects were not handed over to the Tribunal.

On the Serbian side, those are former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic. On the Croatian side, it is Gen. Ante Gotovina.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told both Zagreb and Belgrade that the EU would suspend negotiations if it judged that compliance over war crimes “was insufficient.” Compliance means the arrest and transfer of the indictees to the Tribunal.