The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans

A Failure of EU Conditionality?

Jelena Džankić, Soeren Keil, Marko Kmezić, Soeren Keil, Jelena Džankić, Marko Kmezić

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319914114
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319914121
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume casts a fresh look on how the political spaces of the Western Balkan states (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania) are shaped, governed and transformed during the EU accession process. The contributors argue that EU conditionality in the Western Balkans does not work 'effectively' in terms of social change because rule transfer remains a 'contested' business, due to veto-players on the ground and strong legacies of the past. The volume examines specific policy areas, salient in the enlargement process and to a different degree incorporated in the accession criteria, as well as EU foreign policy in the spheres of post-conflict stabilisation, democratization and the rule of law promotion.

© The Author(s) 2019

Jelena Džankić, Soeren Keil and Marko Kmezić (eds.)The Europeanisation of the Western BalkansNew Perspectives on South-East Europehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91412-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans

Jelena Džankić¹ , Soeren Keil² and Marko Kmezić³

(1)

Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy

(2)

School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK

(3)

Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

Jelena Džankić (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Soeren Keil

Email: [email protected]

Marko Kmezić

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

At the Thessaloniki summit in 2003, the European Council declared, “the future of the Balkans is within the European Union” (European Council 2003). This political commitment of the heads of state and prime ministers of the EU countries was understood as a strong incentive and a promise that the future of the region, within the EU, will be stable and prosperous. However, apart from Croatia that entered the EU in 2013, ten years after the Thessaloniki Summit, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia are still far away from full EU membership.¹ In the meantime, the contractual relationship between the EU and the Western Balkans, embodied in Stabilization and Association Agreements (SAA), has now entered into force for all six countries, however only Montenegro and Serbia continue their accession negotiations. While Albania awaits the opening of its first negotiating chapters after the end of a deep and prolonged political crisis, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia’s EU bids are facing difficulties due to internal political stalemates, weak statehood, as well as issues with several EU members in the cases of Kosovo and Macedonia.

Contrary to initial hopes that the approximation to the EU will gradually introduce liberal democratic forms of government founded on democracy and the rule of law in six non-EU Western Balkan countries, serious backsliding in terms of democracy and the rule of law can be observed throughout the region over the past decade (Freedom House 2018). The process of EU integration often remains overshadowed by the high number of domestic formal and informal “gate keeper” elites that continue to control the state in an effort to preserve their private economic interests and their grip on political power. Moreover, the Western Balkans are suffering from a development gap. Despite rapid growth recorded in the early 2000s, effective economic reform has often been delayed due to the fact that regional economies are incapable of withstanding the competitive pressures of the EU common market. Throughout much of the Western Balkans, economies have remained undeveloped, dependent on aid, loans and remittances, and prone to high levels of state intervention. With the current average growth rates, it will take these countries at least several decades to converge with the average EU GDP per capita (Sanfey and Milatović 2018). In addition to the democratic and socio-economic setbacks, numerous unresolved bilateral disputes and incomplete process of reconciliation after the 1990s violent conflicts threaten to undermine fragile regional stability (Djolai and Nechev 2018).

In its latest Enlargement Strategy entitled “The Credible Enlargement Perspective for the Western Balkans”, the European Commission (2018) has acknowledged the lack of progress among current EU candidate countries. Going beyond the usual diplomatic language used in the EU Progress Reports, the Commission has established that “the [Western Balkan] countries show clear elements of state capture, including links with organized crime and corruption at all levels of government and administration” (European Commission 2018). Furthermore, the document added that “none of the Western Balkans can currently be considered a functioning market economy nor to have the capacity to cope with the competitive pressure and market forces in the union” (European Commission 2018, p. 3).

So why, after almost two decades of the current enlargement process, does Europeanisation of the region fail to produce more credible outcomes?

The Western Balkans represent a unique laboratory for exploring a wide array of parallel-tracked political processes. Over the past three decades, the region has experienced manifold state disintegrations, violent and non violent conflict between and within countries, as well as a delayed transition to democracy and market economy. All of these experiences have been framed through the concurrent, overlapping, and conflicting dynamics of nation- and state-building and aspirations to join the European Union (EU) (Keil 2013). Subtleties of the interplay between these two processes are therefore crucial to understanding why the carrot of EU membership, which has effectively transformed the political and economic outlook of the Central and East European (CEE) states two decades ago (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005), has had different and differentiated effects in the Western Balkans.

The process of EU accession in the Western Balkans is premised on the adaptation to the EU’s requirements, which entail not only the pooling of sovereignty but also the framing of broader nation-building processes within wider accession dynamics. This implies that for the Balkan states, the interaction between these two processes has a much greater impact than in the countries from previous enlargement rounds. There are two dominant reasons for placing a particular emphasis on their interplay. First, given the conflicts in the region, the link between state-building and national identities is far more socially and politically embedded in these states’ structures. As such, they have a far greater political influence than in other post-communist countries, to the extent that they can negatively affect the country’s aspiration to join the EU.

Examples of this are numerous, from the impossibility of the ethnic communities to change the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and move ahead in the accession process, to Macedonia’s name contestation, to the reluctance of Serbia to accept Kosovo’s independence. Second, the Western Balkan states are required to go through significantly longer transformative periods with far more uncertain results and unclear accession timelines. With the exception of Slovenia that was included in the 2004 enlargement wave, other countries will have had around a quarter of a century between the fall of communism and their EU accession. That is, 22 years elapsed from Croatia’s declaration of independence in 1991 until its EU membership in 2013. For the remaining countries in the line of accession, this time period will be significantly longer, particularly as regards the increasing demands of the accession process attributed to the expansion of the EU’s legislation, the effects of the financial crisis, and the general enlargement fatigue. Hence it is crucial to reflect on what the EU accession process represents and how it interacts with the political systems of the Western Balkan states.

Rationale of the Book

The process of Europeanisation has become central for the understanding of transformative dynamics of norm transfer from states to the EU and vice versa. Initially defined as the adaptation of the political, social, and institutional milieus of the EU Member States to the dynamics of integration, Europeanisation is now largely taken to denote a two-way process. In other words, Europeanisation entails not only the domestic adaptation to EU norms, laws, and rules (top-down), but also the changes in the dynamics of Europeanisation as a result of domestic change (bottom-up). With the latest approach in the study of Europeanisation, the concept can be applied not only to the study of the EU Member States, but also to countries aspiring for EU membership, and third countries. In conjunction with the previous work on this topic (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005; Sedelmeier 2012), taking into consideration a more recent turn in the study of Europeanisation emphasizing the EU’s potential impact on non-EU countries (Börzel and Risse 2012; Schimmelfennig 2012), a three-dimensional rationale behind this edited collection emerges:

1. 1.
   The need to further develop conceptual and normative studies of how Europeanisation plays out in contexts in which the EU has different degrees of leverage;
2. 2.
   The contribution to the literature on the transforming nature of Europeanisation through changes in the domestic context;
3. 3.
   The benefits of exploring the intricate ways in which adaptation to the EU transforms the Western Balkan states, where the effects of Europeanisation are the most pronounced.

The central research question of this book tackles therefore the problem of how effective the EU’s “normative power” (Grabbe 2006) is in transferring “rules, norms and ways of doing things” (Radaelli 2003) to the legal, economic, and political systems of Western Balkan (potential) candidate countries by way of the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) requiring on the one hand the acceptance of conditionality, but also providing financial and technical support on the other. The main hypothesis can be summarized in a nutshell: EU conditionality in the Western Balkans so far does not work “effectively” in terms of social change because rule transfer in the countries of concern remains—due to veto-players on the ground and strong legacies of the past—a “contested” business.

The comprehensive literature review undertaken by the authors of this publication on Europeanisation of candidate countries for full membership, established the following elements: Conditionality has—despite of all the criticism—played an important role by imposing top-down pressure on candidate countries; goals and contents often remain vaguely specified; norm socialization remains inconsistent and ineffective as substitute for conditionality; only a credible prospect of membership is an effective incentive; and finally, the EU’s impact is different across countries and issues.

Drawing on these findings, but also on the comparative training of the contributors to this volume, and their ample knowledge of the Western Balkan states, this book casts a fresh look on how these countries’ political spaces are shaped, governed, and transformed under Europeanisation that takes place during the EU accession process. There has, of course, been a growing body of literature on the topic of this book (Bechev 2012; Bieber 2012; Chandler 2010; Elbasani 2013; Freyburg and Richter 2010; Keil and Arkan 2015; Kmezić 2017; Noutcheva 2012; Radeljic 2013; Rupnik 2011; Trauner 2012). So, one might ask the question why another book on this widely researched topic is necessary and what it can potentially contribute to our understand...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans
• 2. European Union Conditionality in the Western Balkans: External Incentives and Europeanisation
• 3. Chips off the Old Block: Europeanisation of the Foreign Policies of Western Balkan States
• 4. EU Enlargement and State Capture in the Western Balkans
• 5. EU Rule of Law Conditionality: Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ Promotion in the Western Balkans?
• 6. The Europeanisation of Minority Policies in the Western Balkans
• 7. Ethnicisation vs. Europeanisation: Promoting Good Governance in Divided States
• 8. Tolerating Semi-authoritarianism? Contextualising the EU’s Relationship with Serbia and Kosovo
• 9. The Europeanisation of Contested States: Comparing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro
• 10. Economic Integration of the Western Balkans into the European Union: The Role of EU Policies
• 11. Conclusion: Rethinking Europeanisation
• Back Matter