EUROPEAN INTEGRATION OF SERBIA BETWEEN NORMATIVISM AND GEOPOLITICS
EUROPEAN INTEGRATION OF SERBIA BETWEEN NORMATIVISM AND GEOPOLITICS

Summary/Abstract: The issue of stipulation during EU enlargement is a very interesting and, in fact, academically a very poorly researched area of European integration. There are not almost serious and impartial comparative studies of the conditions that Brussels has placed before potential and current candidates.1 Officially and politically correct narration of enlargement seeks to portray it as a process in which individual states are reformed and adapted to existing standards in accordance with the universal normative criteria, so that they can then function as a fully integrated part of the unique European space. Things don’t really work that way in practice. The geopolitical, economic and foreign policy interests of the largest members and the USA as an external country that maintains the balance are often far more important than the proclaimed normative criteria. Thus, for instance, the Mečijer’s case (isolation of Slovakia in the second half of the 1990s) presents as intolerable undemocratic behavior, the tyranny of the majority, etc. while a real geopolitical analysis would point to other sources of its unpopularity in the West: refusal to destroy the domestic metal complex and preserve close economic ties with Russia.

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