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Foreword /
Report of the International Commission on the Balkans
In 1996, the Aspen Institute Berlin and
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published
Unfinished Peace, the report of the International
Commission on the Balkans which had been established at
the initiative and with the support of European and American
foundations in 1995. In his foreword to the report, former
Prime Minister of Belgium Leo Tindemans, who served as Chairman
of the Commission, stated that the objective of the Commission
Members was "peace, a durable one, to pave the way to democracy,
prosperity, well-being and a humane society". Dayton, which
had been signed in November 1995, was only the point of
departure as it "marked the end of the war, but only the
beginning of the peace". The task for the international
community at that point was to "help transform the proverbially
chaotic, bloody and unpredictable Balkans of the past into
a stable, peaceful and dependable Southeastern Europe of
the future".
Two years before the establishment of the
Commission, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
had republished the results of its 1913 Inquiry into the
Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 (The
Other Balkan Wars, 1993), the first International Commission
on the Balkans presided over by the French Senator Baron
d'Estournelles de Constant. Reports of atrocities occurring
in the Balkans had prompted Nicholas Murray Butler, one
of the Endowment's leaders and president of Columbia University
to send a commission of six individuals for "an impartial
and exhaustive examination" of the hostilities in the Balkans.
It was much in the same spirit that the second Commission
was created under the impression of the violent break-up
of former Yugoslavia and the ferocity of the wars.
During its visits to the Balkan states
during the second half of 1995 and the first half of 1996,
the Commission was struck by the parallels between their
impressions and the insights of the first Carnegie Commission
of 1913/1914 as its haunting question was still pertinent:
"Must we allow these Balkan wars to pass, without at least
trying to draw some lessons from them, without knowing whether
they have been a benefit or an evil, if they should begin
again tomorrow and go on for ever extending?" The second
Commission's report concludes "that turning a blind eye
on the Balkans is no less a recipe for disaster at the end
of the twentieth century than it was at its outset."
In the difficult context of the mid-nineties
and the muddle of international efforts directed at the
Balkans, Unfinished Peace was a remarkable document
analyzing the causes of instability and conflict, assessing
international responses and the lessons to be drawn, and
suggesting a process and a framework for defusing and overcoming
the conflicts in a broader regional context. We commend
Leo Tindemans, Lloyd Cutler, Bronislaw Geremek, Lord Roper,
Theo Sommer, Simone Veil and the late David Anderson for
raising their voice in the cacophony of the time and offering
their far-sighted analysis when the international community
was still approaching the Balkans with a piecemeal approach.
Unfortunately, the Commission's warnings were largely left
unheard, and the international community had to undergo
another painful lesson with the war in Kosovo and a more
successful short-term conflict resolution in Macedonia before
a more stable peace could be established.
Today, almost a century after the creation
of the first International Commission on the Balkans, a
third Commission on the Balkans is publishing its report.
Different from the first two, this report is the first that
is able to reach beyond war and peace. Almost ten years
after the Dayton agreement, and almost five years after
the fall of the Milosevic regime, the Western Balkans are
a relatively stable region, the danger of war is no longer
imminent, and the countries of the region have proven stable
enough not to be thrown into chaos by political turmoil.
Moreover, the European Union committed itself to integrating
the countries of the region at the Thessaloniki Summit in
June 2003. Why then, the reader might ask, do we need a
third International Commission on the Balkans?
Despite the achievements to date, the stability
of the region still rests on weak feet. Reform processes
are hindered by the legacy of the past: immense structural
challenges, constitutional problems, open status issues,
a dire economic situation and political instability. Unprecedented
amounts of reconstruction and development aid poured into
the region could not lead to the desired results because
of the chronic political instability and doubts about the
future. How fragile even the peace is in some parts of the
region was demonstrated by the violence which erupted in
Kosovo in March 2004 - and the helpless response of the
international community. Preserving the current status
quo will not suffice to achieve lasting
peace and stability, economic prosperity and to pave the
way for European integration. Additional efforts and a shift
in international and Brussels thinking in particular are
required in order to solve outstanding issues and accelerate
the transition process.
In order to induce these developments with
new momentum, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the King Baudouin
Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States
and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in a concerted transatlantic
effort of private foundations decided to establish a new
independent International Commission on the Balkans. We
thank them for their inspiration and continuous support
of our endeavor. Our task was to present results which will
stir the debate on the future of the region and to ultimately
develop a vision for the integration of the countries of
Southeast Europe into the European Union.
The composition of our Commission reflected
the changed situation in the Western Balkans and the different
quality of cooperation that should guide the relations between
the so-called "international community" and the region.
It was a great pleasure and enrichment for me to work with
18 distinguished individuals both from the region and from
outside the region who assembled such an array of expertise
in matters Balkan, European and Transatlantic. In trying
to understand the current situation in the countries of
the Western Balkans, we relied on the analyses of experts
who are familiar with the changing nature of challenges
facing the region. We are especially grateful to James O'Brien,
Srdjan Bogosavljevic, Jovan Teokarevic, Srdjan Darmanovic,
Gerald Knaus, Stevo Pendarovski, Remzi Lani, Antonina Zheliazkova,
Damir Grubisa and Josip Kregar whose contributions helped
shape our opinions. Our intellectual and practical journeys
through the region were prepared and guided by a conscientious
and highly motivated staff.
Over the course of one year, we undertook
four Study Tours to the countries of the Western Balkans
which gave us the opportunity to exchange views with many
individuals whose time is gratefully acknowledged. Unlike
our predecessors, we did not have to face the immediate
suffering and destruction caused by war. However, in many
parts of the Balkans, the smell of violence is still in
the air, and the distrust and hopelessness of people in
view of the insecurity and dire economic and social situation
is depressing. We left enclaves in Kosovo with the conviction
that they will stand out as shameful symbols of the failure
of international policy if the international community will
not succeed in securing the basic rights of these people
and establishing conditions for a better life.
During all of our visits, whether in Belgrade,
Kosovska Mitrovica, Pristina, Sarajevo, Skopje, Tetovo,
Tirana or Zagreb, the most memorable encounters were those
with the youth and students, impressive young individuals
who are trying to shape their future against bleak economic
prospects in societies which have only begun to come to
terms with their past. All of them see the future of their
countries within the European Union. Understandably, most
of them envisage their own immediate future abroad even
though they are very attached to their homelands. We regard
our recommendations as reaching out to these generations
of potential leaders who are the future of the region and
its hope for reconciliation. If the international community
does not remedy the damage that some of its policies have
done, we will see these young people leaving their countries
in search of a better life.
Many will argue that the governments and
the citizens of the region are responsible for the future
of their own societies, and should bring their own houses
in order. In view of the political and financial engagement
since the beginning of the nineties and the responsibility
the international community has assumed, such arguments
are nothing short of cynical.
We do not cherish any illusions about the
current political will among the member states of the European
Union to make major new commitments. Enlargement fatigue
hovers over the European capitals these days, the looming
referenda on the European constitution question the future
of the European project. In the absence of headlinegrabbing
violence, many European politicians and civil servants hold
on to the hope that the status quo is working just fine.
However, if the reform and transition process fails, the
Western Balkans will become even more of an isolated ghetto,
and loom as a threat to stability and peace. The international
community and the European Union in particular have been
engaged in the Balkans to an extent which is unprecedented
so far, and should see this engagement to a successful end.
It will take more than symbolic gestures and rhetoric to
build the pro-European constituencies in the Balkans who
will translate their dreams into votes for political elites
to carry forward the reform processes. And it will take
no less of an effort to communicate the Balkans as a future
part of the European Union and the sense of urgency to the
public in European Union member states.
If the EU chooses success over failure
in the Balkans, the next two years could see the beginning
of a long-term solution to the problems that would enable
all parties to close the book on the Balkans' bloody twentieth
century and to win the peace which has been established
at such high human and financial cost. It would also mean
that this was the last International Commission on the Balkans
which had to be initiated.
Giuliano
Amato
Chairman
of the International Commission on the Balkans
April
2005
It was in Sarajevo in the summer of
1914 that Europe entered the century of madness and self-destruction.
The founding fathers of the European Union, Robert Schuman
and Jean Monnet, were respectively 28 and 26 years old.
But their dream of a united Europe, founded on shared values
and institutionalised interdependence, can easily be traced
back to that summer day in Sarajevo.
Eighty years later, in the early days
of the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, a photo of a
half-ruined post office with three items of graffiti written
on its wall captured the imagination of the world. The first
graffito read "This is Serbia!"; the second stated "This
is Bosnia". And someone scrawled underneath, "No, you idiots,
it's a post office!" But a European historian of the present
added a line of his own, "This is Europe". Because all of
the destruction in the Yugoslav wars has been done by Europeans
to other Europeans in Europe. The line "This is Europe"
(Timothy Garton Ash, Bosnia in Europe's Future,
New York Review of Books, December 21, 1995.) embodies
the European Union's moral imperative when it comes to overcoming
the legacies of war and destruction in the Balkans. There
is also a security imperative. Political instability in
the Balkans threatens Europe with the prospects of never
ending military conflicts, constant flows of immigrants,
flourishing of Balkan-based criminal networks and the erosion
of the EU's credibility in the world.
It is in Sarajevo in the summer of 2014
that Europe should demonstrate that a new European century
has arrived.
INTRODUCTION
Almost a decade after the Dayton Agreement,
and almost five years after the fall of the Milosevic regime
in Belgrade, the Western Balkans (Since it first
came into use at the turn of the 19th century, the Balkans
have always been a fluid concept with countries being excluded
and included regularly and not always for any discernible
reason. The past fifteen years have seen the region go through
more contortions of geographic definition. For the Commission's
report, we have reduced the Balkans to include Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro.
Where we also wish to include Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria
or any combination of the three, we have stated so explicitly.
As we were working on this report, we had good reason to
believe that Croatia was preparing to open negotiations
with the European Union on the conditions for its accession.)
are a relatively stable region with no military conflicts,
no ongoing ethnic cleansing, where elections are free, if
not always fair. In Thessaloniki in June 2003, the European
Union committed itself to integrating the countries from
the region. But what does this commitment really mean?
The region is as close to failure as it
is to success. For the moment, the wars are over, but the
smell of violence still hangs heavy in the air. The region's
profile is bleak - a mixture of weak states and international
protectorates, where Europe has stationed almost half of
its deployable forces. Economic growth in these territories
is low or non-existent; unemployment is high; corruption
is pervasive; and the public is pessimistic and distrustful
towards its nascent democratic institutions.
The international community has invested
enormous sums of money, good will and human resources here.
It has put 25 times more money and 50 times more troops
on a per capita basis in post-conflict Kosovo than in post-conflict
Afghanistan. But despite the scale of the assistance effort
in the Balkans, the international community has failed to
offer a convincing political perspective to the societies
in the region. The future of Kosovo is undecided, the future
of Macedonia is uncertain, and the future of Serbia is unclear.
We run the real risk of an explosion of Kosovo, an implosion
of Serbia and new fractures in the foundations of Bosnia
and Macedonia.
The Commission acknowledges that there
are no quick and easy solutions for the Balkans and that
ultimately it is up to the people of the region to win their
own future. But we are convinced that the international
community and the European Union in particular has a historical
responsibility to face and a decisive role to play in winning
the future for the region.
The starting point of the International
Commission on the Balkans is that the status quo has outlived
its usefulness. There is an urgent need to solve the outstanding
status and constitutional issues in the Balkans and to move
the region as a whole from the stage of protectorates and
weak states to the stage of EU accession. This is the only
way to prevent the Western Balkans from turning into the
black hole of Europe.
At the same time, we are also convinced
that the EU possesses the mechanisms and the requisite political
skill to face up to the challenge which the region will
present over the next three years in particular. There is
no doubt that Kosovo and the resolution of its final status
will be at the core of the political process in the months
to come. However, it is essential to bear in mind when addressing
this and other unresolved status issues that they must be
placed within a broader context of the EU's explicit commitment
to include the entire region as defined at the Thessaloniki
Summit in June 2003.
Getting Incentives Right
The Balkans needs a new strategy if it
is to translate Brussels' stated political aim to integrate
the region into reality. Despite the commitment made at
Thessaloniki, the dream of European integration has not
yet proved powerful enough as a force for transforming the
societies of the Balkans, especially if we agree that the
basic indicator of success is the progress of each country
on the road to the EU.
Of course, the EU itself faces a significant
dilemma as it has the capacity to absorb only reasonably
functioning and legitimate states. But now that Croatia
appears on the verge of the full accession process, there
are no more of these left in the region. The classical enlargement
model that worked for Central and Eastern Europe in 1990
simply does not fit the conditions prevailing in the Balkans.
If this region is to become part of the EU, it needs to
undergo significant changes. But success also requires a
concomitant shift in policy thinking towards the region
in Brussels.
As a matter of common sense, the international
community must now address the unresolved status issues
with the greatest degree of urgency and look for new constitutional
solutions within the framework of European accession.
The question today is no longer, "What
should be done?" We should clearly bring the region into
the EU. Rather we need to establish the sequence of policy
steps to be undertaken and the structure of the incentives
that will make them work. We need policies so that the region
can get on, get in and catch up with the rest of Europe.
I. THE DANGEROUS STATUS QUO AND THE
EU'S
BALKAN DILEMMA
The absence of headline-grabbing violence
in the Balkans has persuaded many in the international community
that the status quo is working just fine. This illusion
of stability governed international perceptions of the Balkans
until the spring of 2004. But the March events in Kosovo
in 2004 brought home to some in the international community
what has
been common knowledge in the Balkans for
some time: that the status quo is not only unsustainable,
it also might drive the region towards a new period of highly
dangerous instability.
Whether one views it with trepidation or
with enthusiasm, the process of final status settlement
in Kosovo has already begun. We have entered a most delicate
phase in the struggle for a peaceful and prosperous Balkans.
There is a good possibility that the international community
and local political actors will succeed in this difficult
quest to solve the status issues. Such an outcome would
almost certainly break the logjam that is blocking political
progress in the region, representing a major achievement
of international diplomacy as well as conferring immense
credit on local political forces.
But everyone should be aware that failure
is also a very real prospect and that the consequences of
failure could be grave indeed. If the EU does not devise
a bold strategy for accession that could encompass all Balkan
countries as new members within the next decade, then it
will become mired instead as a neo-colonial power in places
like Kosovo, Bosnia, and even Macedonia. Such an anachronism
would be hard to manage and would be in contradiction with
the very nature of the European Union. The real choice the
EU is facing in the Balkans is: Enlargement or Empire.
The signs of such a debilitating future
are already visible in the quasiprotectorates of Kosovo
and Bosnia. With no real stake in these territories, international
representatives insist on quick results to complex problems;
they dabble in social engineering but are not held accountable
when their policies go wrong. If Europe's neo-colonial rule
becomes further entrenched, it will encourage economic discontent;
it will become a political embarrassment for the European
project; and, above all, European electorates would see
it as an immense and unnecessary financial and moral burden.
There are three major reasons that make
us believe that the status quo is the problem and not part
of the solution.
1. Expectations Gap
The status quo is a problem in part because
the citizens of the region perceive it as such. A survey
commissioned by the International Commission on the Balkans
and conducted in November 2004 demonstrates that people
in the region are overwhelmingly negative about the status
quo and that there is an alarming distrust towards both
government and the opposition. The public rejects
the status quo but has yet to see any credible alternative
being offered in its place.
When we compared our survey to a similar
poll conducted in 2002, we observed a growing trend of public
pessimism and dissatisfaction with the direction of political
and economic developments. A loss of hope and perspective
is the political reality of Western Balkans. And it is a
dangerous one.
2. The Development Gap
The status quo is also a problem because
it has widened the gap between the economic and social performance
of the region on the one hand and of the new EU members
and Bulgaria and Romania on the other. The years lost in
wars and half-baked reforms have widened the gap between
the winners and losers in Balkan societies, making the demand
for fairness and development stronger than ever.
As others have noted, if the status quo
were to prevail, a new European ghetto would arise in the
heart of an integrating continent. This ghetto would comprise
most of the Balkans' peoples, herded behind a wall of visa
restrictions that blocks a desperate population from seeking
work elsewhere. There is a risk that, instead of catching
up with the rest of the continent, the Balkan countries
will fall further behind. The goal of integration which
holds the key to regional stabilization will become even
more distant.
3. The Integration Trap
The consensus uniting governments and people
in the Balkans is that the region cannot achieve prosperity
and stability outside the process of European integration.
At the same time, it is quite clear that the dysfunctional
states and protectorates that characterise the region actively
hinder the inclusion of the Balkans into the European mainstream.
In this sense, the status quo is a problem because it is
blocking the road to EU accession…
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