SERBIA: Forget the Obstacles En Route to EU

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Nov 12 2007 (IPS) - Serbia has finally initialled a long awaited deal that could lead eventually to full membership of the European Union (EU).

The attention is now focused on the political conditions Serbia has met, or must, to sign the ‘Stabilisation and Association Agreement’ (SAA) that could set it formally on the path to EU. These conditions include the arrest of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic wanted for war crimes, and a more flexible approach to Kosovo, the disputed southern province of Serbia, where the ethnic Albanian population of two million is set to declare independence.

But little attention has been given to the economic difficulties Serbia must overcome to meet EU demands. That means all that goes with the painful transition to a market economy that still hurts most families.

Deputy prime minister Bozidar Djelic, who initialled the SAA with EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, told Serbian media that the present agreement means that “until 2011 the country will see more than 650 million euros (910 million dollars) of pre-joining funds and an additional boost to our agriculture and economy in general.”

At the same time, absolute poverty seems to have fallen. Official figures say poverty now affects some 700,000 people, compared to 2.5 million in 2000, the last year of Milosevic’s rule.

Official statistics say also that production in the revived industry has risen sevenfold on average since 2000, with a stable gross domestic product growth of 6.5 percent annually.

But such numbers mean little to most people facing high unemployment and only a slow rise in living standards after a communist economy that collapsed in the 1990s switched to capitalism from 2000.

Many Serbs have simply come to believe over decades that the state will take care of them. “We have been relieved of the burden of individual responsibility, the state did everything for us,” Prof. Mladen Lazic at Belgrade University told IPS. “We learned how to live in socialism, not in capitalism. We are yet to learn how to leave the state of acquired helplessness most people live in.”

Over the past seven years of transition, since the fall of former leader Slobodan Milosevic, the white elephants of the former communist state have been sold, and many public enterprises privatised. The privatisation is due to be completed next year.

This process has led to unemployment of about 800,000 people in a nation of 7.5 million. Recent surveys show that only 10 to 15 percent of people are satisfied with their living standards, although the real income of those who are employed has risen tenfold since 2000.

“Macroeconomic indicators mean little to ordinary people,” sociology researcher Zoran Stojiljkovic told IPS. “Most of them still dream about self- government (the system of former Yugoslavia), when you could hold a job for life, and the salary was not related to production.

“That is why our research shows that only 15 percent of people know what capitalism is about, and know how to deal with it. Most of the rest are lost in transition – people with poor education, low material status, the elders and farmers.”

“Serbs are people of many paradoxes,” analyst Misa Brkic told IPS. “On the one hand, they want to live well, as in pre-war times. On the other, they wait for someone else to show them how. That can take a lifetime for many.”

Recent surveys show that two-thirds of Serbs are positive about joining the EU. But only a third are ready to learn or study further to meet job demands and to change their habits.

Svetlana Mirkovic, a training manager at a leading pharmaceutical company, says that “change of working habits, and attitude towards work” are the biggest problems she faces.

“It’s a real challenge to train people who are not positive towards change – they see it more as a potential threat than a good opportunity,” she told IPS. “It’s best to work with the young; with others it can be a problem.”

Transition to the market economy is one of the favourite subjects for discussion among Serbs. Many Internet blogs and sites are dedicated to it.