The cross : Bosnia and Herzegovina finally accedes to the status of candidate for membership of the European Union. How can this progress be explained?
Florent Marciacq : We should not be blinded by the granting of this status. The geopolitical context of the war in Ukraine was decisive, that’s for sure. But we can all the same welcome this progress on the part of the European Union, which thus wishes to signal that it is more involved in the region.
Even if this candidate status is not an acknowledgment of progress that Bosnia and Herzegovina would have accomplished. On the contrary. The country is blocked and it is very difficult to reform it. Its constitutional architecture, inherited from the Dayton agreements, is a nightmare.
The EU seems very hesitant in its approach, often favoring stability over democracy. What political scientist Johanna Deimel describes as “stabilocracy”…
F. M. : In 1993 the EU defined very demanding membership criteria. And it makes them more and more demanding. Taken literally, countries joining the EU are expected to be fully democratic, relatively prosperous and committed to EU goals. As a result, the prospect of integration is constantly postponed. In the meantime, this leads the EU to prioritize the status quo.
To overcome the deadlocks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU has taken up the American plan by supporting an electoral reform which strengthens the nationalist parties. The underlying idea is that, insofar as the country is organized in an ethnonational way, it is better to rely on the nationalist parties which dominate the political scene, with the hope of obtaining from them a certain consensus of stability. Which, concretely, disadvantages the parties that seek to transcend these ethnonationalist divisions.
This European arbitration, illusory and very short-termist, harms the transformation of the country and is at the very least very unfortunate. It is explained by the absence of a united front, by blockages due, in particular, to the very particular interests of certain Member States, such as Croatia which supports the Bosnian Croats, or Hungary close to Serbia and the Serbs from Bosnia.
This choice of stability in the region does not seem very profitable given the renewed tension in recent days between Kosovo, neighboring Serbia and the Serbian minority living in the north of the country.
F. M. : Kosovo is very worried about the risk that the war in Ukraine will contaminate the Balkans. Especially since Serbia maintains close relations with Moscow. Serbia, always quick to nurture pockets of instability in northern Kosovo, is blowing on the embers. This makes the situation very volatile. And we can fear a real degradation.
However, when we seek, like the EU, to privilege stability rather than democracy, we obtain in the end neither one nor the other. Unfortunately, this illusion still prevails, for lack of unity and a common horizon of the Member States.
Kosovo is structurally disadvantaged compared to other countries, in particular because five Member States do not recognize it. It is the last country not to have candidate status – even though Ukraine and Moldova have obtained it – or even the lifting of visas – unlike Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. The country is seeking to rebalance the situation and intends to submit its application these days to also become a candidate for membership.
In June 2023, we will be twenty years after the Thessaloniki summit which promised a European perspective for the Western Balkans. Will this integration process continue for decades?
F. M. : Everything will depend on the EU’s ability to reform its enlargement policy and to think of European integration both in terms of enlargement and deepening.
Otherwise, there is the risk that we will lose the Balkans and that other powers will gain a foothold there. This is already the case, with very negative consequences for the local populations, but also for the EU. Russia and China are already very present in Serbia where disinformation is massive, where Beijing is not content to build bridges and roads, but is investing heavily in digital to make the country the showcase of Chinese technological leadership and to import there a model of civilization – a “social harmony” – distant from that of Europe. Nefarious influences in the Balkans will seep into the EU and undermine our own European project.
We are too often tempted to see the Balkans as countries that benefit from the EU. However, we are linked to each other, and we Member States have a privileged position which we abuse at the expense of these countries. The people there are paying the price. The massive depopulations in the Balkans will continue to increase, as long as the European prospects are not credible.