"We, the leaders"
"We, the leaders of the European Union (EU) and its countries" - this is how the Brussels Declaration published last week begins - conclude that we are in favor of expansion to the Western Balkans, but we are not. The royal we with which European leaders begin the Declaration is irresistibly reminiscent of the irritating form with which rulers used to communicate with their subordinates: We, Francis Joseph - this is how the emperor of Austria and the king of Hungary and other territories used to begin official letters a little over a hundred years ago. The hook for expanding the EU to the territories of the Western Balkans was thrown 20 years ago, when the Thessaloniki summit on the Western Balkans confirmed unequivocal and clear support for the European perspective of those countries. But it seems that in the meantime - and twenty years is a long enough time frame to state that something is obviously stuck with enlargement, that fundamental instrument of the EU's foreign policy. The countries of the Western Balkans, to paraphrase Tolstoy, are all unhappy in their own political way. It was not enough for Macedonia to change the name of the country by adding the designation "North" to speed up the process. Montenegro has opened negotiations, but political upheavals and accompanying instability in recent years have made the process itself stagnate. Serbia fails to regulate relations with Kosovo despite - as it only sounds technical and pompous, the EU - facilitated high-level dialogue - and the problem is also the geopolitical and strategic alignment, which is far from synchronized with EU practices.
Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a special challenge, primarily due to the state architecture, which is anything but compatible with the usual European postulates. The political calamity we have mentioned is mostly reduced to what experts call democratic regression or erosion: a context in which the rule of law is reduced, media freedoms and other public freedoms are reduced, institutions are weakened and para-institutions are strengthened, and the almost eternal threat of conflict of one kind or another. These are phenomena to which the citizens of those countries are exposed in the first place and to which, logically, their home countries should pay full attention, so it is quite logical why the mentioned social problems can never be the main priority of the EU bulky block of states, created by 27 members.
However, at the same time, the development aid that the EU directs towards the Western Balkans is not negligible primarily as a breath of new material and other resources, ideas, creativity and examples of how to innovate, at least a little, social and regional architecture. The EU is helping us to abolish roaming in the region - we couldn't think of it ourselves; they finance infrastructure projects that, if it were domestic actors, would remain in the sphere of mental nouns; they facilitate high-level meetings between neighboring countries as if they need them more than we do; it invests in higher education, giving at least a foretaste of European project architecture; liberalize the visa regime. Every type of cooperation is more than desirable - although perhaps most of all it testifies to our own political and social deficits - but raising this strategic cooperation to the political level seems impossible. So, where did it get stuck?
Everything is possible, except institutions
The EU itself was trying to find new ways to expand not only towards the Western Balkans but also towards the European periphery. The European Neighborhood Policy, which has been implemented since 2004, targeted 16 eastern and southern neighbors, mostly non-European countries, including Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine - with which negotiations were recently opened and granted candidate status - and other countries with which need to nurture good technical and cooperative relations, cooperate in common security issues, democratize these societies a little, but keep them away from joint political decision-making. Romano Prodi, then president of the European Commission, whom his Italian compatriots called "Mortadella", spoke of creating a "circle of friendship" and promised those countries "everything but institutions", i.e. opportunities to participate equally in the EU institutions. Geopolitics made the process of expansion towards the peripheral parts of Europe speed up, while the one towards the Balkan political space remained in a kind of limbo, eternally waiting for a convenient and opportune moment for expansion.
Although the area of the Western Balkans has been predicted to join the EU relatively quickly since the Thessaloniki summit in 2003, it seems that the enlargement policy has intended for the mentioned region the status of an eternal periphery with which it is possible to cultivate only good but paternalistic technical relations, which, as we know, are , yet of a much lower order than comprehensive political relations. But if we drop the ball on the home court, then it really seems completely logical to ask why the consolidated EU democracies would sit on an egalitarian basis at the same political table with a constellation of politicians whose agendas are outdated, anti-democratic, immature and accompanied by violent rhetoric adorned with minimal willingness to compromise. . And who are absolutely convinced of the legitimacy and justification of their own political goals. We can hardly find a relevant reason why the 27 EU member states would reach a consensus to allow countries whose politicians purposefully reject, minimize or undermine everything that this European mastodon has been successfully fighting against for years to come to the same table. Perhaps the only relevant reason could be found among the citizens of all those countries who deserve a more prosperous and politically peaceful life, but, realistically, they find it, with or without association, in this or that European country, thus showing that we are realistically also a human part European community, but not politically.
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