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Publisher: DPC Democratization Policy Council e.V.

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DPC – EUROTHINK POLICY NOTE: Macedonia Had an Electoral Sea Change – Now for the Hard Part
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DPC – EUROTHINK POLICY NOTE: Macedonia Had an Electoral Sea Change – Now for the Hard Part

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Ljupcho Petkovski,Andreja Stojkovski / Language(s): English

It is difficult to overstate the scale of the electoral sweep of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) party in the October 15th municipal elections. Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), lost power at the local level across the country. Zaev’s victory, and that of his SDSM, following the June assembly of the coalition which included all ethnic Albanian parties, will reinforce the Zaev government’s control – and political responsibility. What Does This Mean? – The Chance for a. Democratic Reset

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DPC POLICY NOTE 14: Constitutions on Ice: Iceland’s Stalled Reform Effort and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Nonexistent One.
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DPC POLICY NOTE 14: Constitutions on Ice: Iceland’s Stalled Reform Effort and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Nonexistent One.

Author(s): Hannah Fillmore-Patrick / Language(s): English

As angry Icelandic citizens prepare for early parliamentary elections this autumn, a bill to adopt the world’s first crowd sourced constitution sits on ice in Reykjavik. The bill, already approved by national referendum, has lain dormant since parliamentary elections ousted its sponsor parties back in 2013. The six-year history of Iceland’s constitutional bill, with all its twists and turns, is a practical case study for Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter BiH). Not only does Iceland provide workable models for the drafting phase, it, realistically, confronts the political setbacks inevitable in any constitutional reform effort. Both Iceland and BiH adopted their existing constitutions in wartime (World War II and the Bosnian War, respectively). While these wars and the constitutions of Iceland and BiH differ vastly, the political environment in which Icelandic lawmakers adopted their constitution, the constitution’s durability thereafter, and the country’s bottom-up reform process hold valuable lessons for BiH.

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DPC POLICY NOTE 15: Osvrt na napore prevencije i borbe protiv radikalizacije i nasilnog ekstremizma na Balkanu
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DPC POLICY NOTE 15: Osvrt na napore prevencije i borbe protiv radikalizacije i nasilnog ekstremizma na Balkanu

Author(s): Valery Perry / Language(s): Bosnian

This essay considers the “new” efforts aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism and argues that they are quite often the same kind of actions taken to establish the basic elements of democratic, resilient societies. Efforts aimed at post-war democratic consolidation or European enlargement support - ranging from strengthening local communities, working with youth, improving education systems, strengthening the independence of the police and justice sector and more – are becoming more overtly securitized. While such efforts in support of democratic reform have been viewed as a laudable goal in their own right for two decades, now they are linked to terror prevention. After an introduction on efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism, specific nuances in the Balkan region are explored. Three sets of challenges that limit genuine reform in the region – identity politics, the state of civic values and civil politics, and pervasive broken governance systems – are examined as both byproducts and drivers of unresolved conflicts.

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DPC POLICY NOTE 15: Reflections on Efforts to Prevent and Counter Radicalization and Violent Extremism in the Balkans
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DPC POLICY NOTE 15: Reflections on Efforts to Prevent and Counter Radicalization and Violent Extremism in the Balkans

Author(s): Valery Perry / Language(s): English

This essay considers the “new” efforts aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism and argues that they are quite often the same kind of actions taken to establish the basic elements of democratic, resilient societies. Efforts aimed at post-war democratic consolidation or European enlargement support - ranging from strengthening local communities, working with youth, improving education systems, strengthening the independence of the police and justice sector and more – are becoming more overtly securitized. While such efforts in support of democratic reform have been viewed as a laudable goal in their own right for two decades, now they are linked to terror prevention. After an introduction on efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism, specific nuances in the Balkan region are explored. Three sets of challenges that limit genuine reform in the region – identity politics, the state of civic values and civil politics, and pervasive broken governance systems – are examined as both byproducts and drivers of unresolved conflicts.

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DPC POLICY NOTE 16: The West’s Dirty Mostar Deal. Deliverables in the Absence of a BiH Policy
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DPC POLICY NOTE 16: The West’s Dirty Mostar Deal. Deliverables in the Absence of a BiH Policy

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Last June, the ambassadors of the European Union and the US to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), together with the UK ambassador to BiH, struck a deal on Mostar with the main Croat and Bosniak parties, the Croatian Democratic Union of BiH (HDZ BiH) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). The agreement ended a ten-year deadlock on implementation of a Constitutional Court of BiH (CC BiH) ruling that suspended the Election Law of BiH and provisions in the Mostar city statute that regulated local elections on the grounds they were discriminatory, and returned the right to vote to the Herzegovinian city’s citizens, who on December 20 will vote for the first time in 12 years to elect their local representatives. The deal was praised by the West as a major breakthrough, a long-awaited return of local elites to a policy of compromise, and even an expression of a “thriving democracy.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

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DPC POLICY NOTE 17: “Doing Democracy” at Home and Abroad: A Two-Way Street
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DPC POLICY NOTE 17: “Doing Democracy” at Home and Abroad: A Two-Way Street

Author(s): Valery Perry / Language(s): English

In the week after the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol I reached out to seven American friends and colleagues who are in or have recently lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) doing various kinds of democracy, human rights, and development work over the past 25 years. I asked the following broad questions: (a) What were you thinking while watching the events unfold on January 6? (b) Based on your experience in democracy promotion abroad, what do you think is needed in the US to move forward? (c) What do you think US democratization policy and support – globally – should look like moving forward?Our one-on-one conversations included a number of themes summarized below, and together offer food for thought on reconstituting democratic practices, institutions, and norms in the US, and also on US democratization policy abroad.

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DPC POLICY PAPER: Time for a Plan B: The European Refugee Crisis, the Balkan Route and the EU-Turkey Deal

DPC POLICY PAPER: Time for a Plan B: The European Refugee Crisis, the Balkan Route and the EU-Turkey Deal

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Over the course of 2015, an estimated 1.5 million people – the bulk of them refugees from Syria – made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route. The shift to this previously marginal route for irregular entry of refugees and migrants into the EU led to the collapse of the EU’s external border in the Aegean and turned the long-standing problem of the EU’s deficient common asylum policy, which disproportionately affected the southern member states, into a full-fledged crisis. This crisis was of the EU’s own making and could have been avoided with sufficient political will. If the international community had fully funded UNHCR’s Syria refugee response plan rather than providing just 35% of the requested budget in 2015, and if a few EU member states had been willing to resettle 2- 300,000 Syrians from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, the EU most probably would not have seen more asylum-seekers in 2015 than in previous years. Instead, the Union’s Dublin system broke down. Following the reinstatement of internal borders in half a dozen member states, so did Schengen, amplified by additional ingredients: the weakness of Greece’s public administration; the fragility of asylum systems, administrative capacities, and democratic policing in the Western Balkans; and the authoritarian transformation of Hungary’s political system. As late as early autumn 2015, the refugee crisis was still fully manageable. The EU’s immediate response followed the playbook used in various crises from the eurozone crisis onwards – a combination of reactive German leadership supported by a coalition of willing member states. On September 4, Chancellor Merkel, supported by her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann, arranged with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the transit of refugees and migrants from Hungary with the aim to avert an escalation of the situation in that country. Merkel assembled a coalition of willing states that accepted to receive the bulk of refugees and migrants and worked with the countries on the Balkan route to avoid regional tensions over the wave and to achieve an initial smooth transit free of major human rights violations. However, unlike in previous crises, Merkel’s attempt to shift from crisis management to a joint European policy failed. Merkel and the EU got stuck when a relocation scheme for 160,000 asylum seekers, approved later in September by a weighted majority of member states, provoked dissent from Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister. Fico’s announcement (supported by other Central European countries) that Slovakia would not implement the scheme marked a turning point: with it, the EU in effect ceased to function as a rules-based entity in the field of refugee and asylum policy. A rise in subsequent unilateral measures by member states led to the gradual erosion and ultimate collapse of the coalition of the willing, with France, Sweden, and Austria defecting from it and abandoning their liberal asylum policies. Yet giving in to populist pressure still proved unsuccessful in mobilizing support from electorates: even in Slovakia, Fico’s party subsequently saw substantial losses to right-wing forces from which it had taken its antimigration rhetoric. At the same time, Merkel also came under domestic pressure for her liberal approach. In the absence of joint EU action, the receiving countries instead turned their attention to ways to reduce the flow of refugees and migrants through the Balkan route, even if that meant that the countries along the route would have to breaching domestic and international legal obligations. The countries on the Balkan route were now being held hostage by individual EU member states, first and foremost Austria. Vienna’s policy led in time to the complete closure of the route. The failure of the EU’s established crisis management revealed the core problem behind the refugee crisis: the EUs own unresolved internal problems which turned a manageable migration emergency into an existential issue for the EU. Merkel’s policy style – managerial, and averse to risks, broad strategies, and vision – had seen the EU through a decade of crises, but at the same time camouflaged the core of the Union’s weakness: the reluctance to address its structural challenges. In the end, this failure contributed to the erosion of internal legitimacy and joint action which greatly contributed to the UK’s sleepwalking out of the EU. In this change-averse environment, Merkel’s only remaining option was the desperate outsourcing of the EU’s refugee management to Turkey, sealed by the March 17 EU-Turkey refugee deal. There is both an irony and a political logic in the fact that the deal, which tied the refugee issue to the reanimation of Turkey’s EU accession and visa liberalization process, was a product of the policy of two member states – Germany and Austria – that for years had blocked Turkey’s EU bid. The deal stopped the flow of refugees and migrants across the Aegean Sea practically overnight. But in the medium and long term, it will inflict more collateral damage than it delivers in short-term benefits. First, by declaring Turkey a safe country for asylum-seekers – a legal sleight-of-hand to enable the return of those arriving on the Greek islands to Turkey – the EU has damaged its internal legitimacy as a Union based on liberal democratic values and rules, and endangered the internal enforcement of decisions and rules in all policy areas. Second, by offering Ankara progress on EU accession without internal agreement on Turkey’s eventual membership, the EU severely diminishes the transformative power of its enlargement policy and undermines pro-European, pro-reform Turks. Third, by outsourcing the management of the European refugee crisis to an increasingly authoritarian regime in Ankara while continuing to avoid addressing its own structural problems, the EU has made itself dependent on Turkey. This bodes ill for the EU’s ability to deal with future crises. The coup attempt in Turkey of July 15 and resulting political tensions between Ankara and Brussels have not substantially affected the refugee deal. But the Turkish government’s threat to re-open the gates to Europe and the hypocritical demands from within the EU to freeze Turkey’s EU accession process have highlighted some of its core deficiencies. In order to prevent long-term damage to the EU and mitigate the risk of a purely reactive response should the deal collapse, it is high time for the EU to develop a more sustainable Plan B for handling the refugee crisis, and to address the core structural problems which openly lurk behind it.

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Erratic Ambiguity: The Impact of Trump’s Unpredictable Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans
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Erratic Ambiguity: The Impact of Trump’s Unpredictable Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Valery Perry / Language(s): English

Donald Trump has broken with almost seven decades of unwavering US commitment to Europe’s defense – to ensure a “Europe whole, free, and at peace” – by refusing to commit to NATO’s Article 5 – that an attack on one is an attack on all. The unreliability of that backstop will increase tensions and amplify the potential for continued escalation and dangerous miscalculation by Western Balkan actors. Doubt has crept into the transatlantic relationship from multiple directions, not least from the still murky, but highly disturbing, Trump-Russia relationship. American officials and legislators – especially those Republicans willing to put the interests of country before party – must demonstrate steadfastness in the face of destructive and erratic ambiguity at the top. But EU leaders cannot afford to leave Europe’s interests and the future of the Western Balkans to chance. The EU has the potential leverage and the capability to reverse the negative dynamic in the Western Balkans, both for its own benefit and for that of the peoples of the region. But to do so, it must acknowledge the vacuum its policies have enabled – and act decisively to fill it. If ever there was a real “hour of Europe,” it is now. In this context, DPC is presenting in this report a list of recommendations.

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EUFOR: In Urgent Need of a Plan B
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EUFOR: In Urgent Need of a Plan B

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

The EU’s foreign ministers last week reaffirmed their support for EUFOR/Operation Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), overcoming reluctance on the part of a number of EU members – France and Germany in particular – to extend the executive aspects of the mission. On November 11, 2014 the UN Security Council (UNSC) is scheduled to vote on extending EUFOR’s executive mandate, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, allowing it to use force to ensure international peace and security. The disposition of Russia, a veto wielding member of the permanent five members of the UNSC, is in question.This policy brief reviews the continuing need for EUFOR’s executive mandate in BiH and assesses concerns as to Moscow’s position prior to next month’s vote. It then considers the West’s potential fallback options.

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House of Cards: the EU’s “reinforced presence” in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Proposal for a new policy approach.

House of Cards: the EU’s “reinforced presence” in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Proposal for a new policy approach.

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

For seven years running, international actors have obsessed over their posture, structure and responsibility in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The assumption that led to the shift to an “ownership” approach – that BiH would propel itself into the Euro-Atlantic mainstream – has long since foundered on the shoals of BiH’s systemic realities. Deep divisions opened within the Peace Implementation Council Steering Board (PIC SB) and among EU members as the hopelessness of the current approach became increasingly evident. No systematic analysis was conducted on why the EU’s inducement of potential membership failed to deliver traction, as it had elsewhere. Paralysis set in. The arrival of a “reinforced EU presence” under the unified leadership of EU Special Representative Peter Sørensen in September 2011 gave the EU the undisputed lead international role in BiH. London and Washington de-emphasized their misgivings with the EU approach in the hope of a fresh start. Yet the political situation has reached an all-time low. BiH currently seems ungovernable – and the international community seems at a complete loss as to what to do about it, other than call upon Bosnian politicians to behave and for citizens to hold them to account. The international community’s primary problem in BiH is not one of conflicting philosophies, but rather of a lack of political will to deal with reality. Unwillingness of bureaucrats to tell their political masters the truth – that their chosen policy has failed and cannot succeed – is to blame. As a result, bureaucratic instrumentalism and finger-pointing predominate. Political resistance to the “European path” on the ground has been met with lowered benchmarks or their abandonment altogether. This policy leaves domestic political elites with the strong impression that far from entailing adoption of non-negotiable standards, EU integration is an à la carte process in which the EU itself is often the supplicant – an open invitation to undermine existing rules and regulations, rather than work on adopting new ones. The EU is and will remain an actor stuck in the morass of BiH politics. Yet it refuses to even recognize itself as a political actor, unable to admit the limitations of its approach in BiH. The EU eschews applying the potential leverage in its existing “toolbox” to drive democratization and reform. Until this potential is developed and employed, the “reinforced” EUSR/Head of Delegation will be as unsuccessful as his last three double-hatted predecessors. Now is the time to develop a real, integrated strategy toward making BiH a self-sustaining state.

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No Stability without Accountability – The West’s Responsibility in Macedonia
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No Stability without Accountability – The West’s Responsibility in Macedonia

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener / Language(s): English

The Republic of Macedonia, once considered an island of relative stability in a troubled region, is now once again in the news, for the first time in almost a decade and a half, on account of internal turmoil. The hostility or opportunism of Macedonia’s neighbors has in the past decade abetted the degeneration of an already clientelistic domestic political culture into one in which neo-authoritarianism has taken strong hold. The Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), the political opposition to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his ruling party, the nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), has for months been releasing voice recordings which appear to record internal government deliberations – and demonstrate widespread (and widely believed) malfeasance. Public dissatisfaction with malgovernance has led to demonstrations, while an ethnic separatist narrative which had been in remission for over a decade has been revived with a bloody – and still opaque – security operation against armed ethnic Albanians in the northern town of Kumanovo in early May.

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Not Yet a Done Deal: Kosovo and the Prishtina-Belgrade Agreement
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Not Yet a Done Deal: Kosovo and the Prishtina-Belgrade Agreement

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

The agreement between Prishtina and Belgrade, brokered by the European Union in April 2013 opened the door to resolution of the status dispute between Serbia and Kosovo and unblocked both countries’ path toward integration in the EU. This unprecedented development was made possible by a re-ignition of a previously frozen conflict, reactive but consistent German leadership – with strong British and US support – and political change in Serbia. The Prishtina-Belgrade dialogue holds out the promise as a vehicle which, in conjunction with bilateral pressure and a tailored EU enlargement process, could ultimately lead towards full normalization between Kosovo and Serbia. But this is not a done deal yet – as events following the signing of the agreement in April and an implementation plan in May have demonstrated. Due to developments since the summer, the process has reached a point at which it could go seriously awry, threatening the hard-won functionality of the state of Kosovo and the peaceful integration of the majority of Kosovo’s Serbs, as well as perpetuating the status dispute with Serbia. Now is the time to shut down such threats once and for all. In order to get there a number of key steps are necessary in the aftermath of the local elections scheduled for November,

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Progress Undone? Trading Democracy for Solving the Status Dispute in Kosovo
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Progress Undone? Trading Democracy for Solving the Status Dispute in Kosovo

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Through their single-minded focus on the Dialogue, driven by tactical, short-term and short-sighted considerations, the EU and the US have directly and consistently contributed to worrying trends in Kosovar politics. Less than a year after the EU supported the coalition deal designed to get the Belgrade-Prishtina Dialogue back on track, Kosovo is again in the throes of an institutional crisis with recent opposition protests and blockage of the parliament’s work. The irony is that the damage inflicted on Kosovo’s already-fragile democracy by the EU and the US now threatens the very progress achieved in the Dialogue. In order to prevent a further deterioration of the situation and strengthen democracy and rule of law in Kosovo, the EU and the US must undertake a number of policy adjustments.

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Retreat for Progress in BiH? – The German-British Initiative

Retreat for Progress in BiH? – The German-British Initiative

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Toby Vogel,Valery Perry,Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

On the heels of the October general elections, representatives of Germany and the United Kingdom announced a new initiative to engage with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and re-shape its European integration path after years of stalemate or even reform regression. The initiative includes all of the off-the-shelf ingredients of previous efforts to jump-start the reform process in BiH, such as written commitments (applied in the past to police reform, constitutional reform, etc.) and a reform agenda (as in the Partnership Document). But it lacks the specificity or leverage of these past efforts. The aim seems to be to steer around all contentious issues and focus on socio-economic development without associated “political” reforms. To this end, it postpones and substantially weakens the condition that the European Court of Human Rights’ Sejdid-Finci ruling be implemented. But the economic pillars of power of the BiH political elites are just as sensitive for them as the ethno-nationalist ones. The initiative builds on the shaky foundation of the EU’s prior behavior in BiH, which has led local political leaders to rightly discount the Union’s seriousness on conditionality. Unless this perception is changed, this initiative is likely to fail just as those which preceded it.

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Substantial Change on the Horizon? A Monitoring Report on the EU’s New Bosnia and Herzegovina Initiative.

Substantial Change on the Horizon? A Monitoring Report on the EU’s New Bosnia and Herzegovina Initiative.

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

In November 2014, Germany and the United Kingdom launched a new policy initiative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). One month later, the European Union adopted the initiative as its own new EU initiative for BiH. Earlier, in February 2014, violent social protests had broken out in BiH and marked the failure of the EU’s previous policy approach in catalyzing real change in the country. At the same time, the protests drew new attention in the West to continuing problems in BiH. This enabled Berlin and London, whose dispute over the correct course of action to take in BiH had blocked the Union from having any meaningful policy, to get together behind a joint initiative. The focus of the new initiative was on structural socio-economic reform. Sensitive political issues like constitutional reform were pushed aside – for consideration at a later stage in enlargement – in order to unblock BiH’s long stalled EU integration process. From a distance, the initiative may appear successful; in September 2016, less than two years after the start of the new initiative, the Union’s General Affairs Council (GAC) referred BiH’s membership application to the European Commission to prepare an Opinion. This marked the last of three steps in the EU integration process, originally foreseen as a reward for the fulfillment of certain reform conditions. This was followed by the entering into force of the long-delayed Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) and BiH’s official application for membership. In addition, the centerpiece of the initiative, the so-called Reform Agenda was agreed and implementation initiated. However, close examination of the state of reform within the scope of the EU initiative challenges this positive impression. The reality is that the limited reforms achieved so far are fragile, sustainability of the reforms is highly questionable and the long-term socio-political outlook remains tenuous.

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The EU Must Shift Out of Neutral in Its Enlargement Strategy: Championing Liberal Values Means Choosing Sides
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The EU Must Shift Out of Neutral in Its Enlargement Strategy: Championing Liberal Values Means Choosing Sides

Author(s): Kurt Bassuener,Valery Perry,Toby Vogel,Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Immediately prior to the November meeting of the EU’s General Affairs Council, France released a non-paper that underscored that the enlargement halt was not really about enlargement at all. The non-paper was rife with contradictions and redundancies. Its main proposed innovation is a rejiggering of the enlargement policy into seven sequential phases. But the document also demonstrated a worrisome elite orientation, and was void of reference to or grounding in the EU’s foundational source code: the primacy of liberal democratic values and standards. This portends ill for Macron’s vision of the EU more broadly ... DPC recommends a different course to EU member states committed to enlargement and the EU-wide reinforcement of liberal democratic values, at a time when they are challenged both within the Union and from east and west. This does not require any major changes to mechanics, mandates, or procedures, but rather a philosophical shift in approaching the countries of the Western Balkans. The 2015-17 breakthrough in North Macedonia demonstrated two things: a) that the EU’s institutional default setting has for too long been on the side of illiberal elites; and b) the reality that in the expansion of a values-focused EU in the Western Balkans, citizens – not elites – are the Union’s real allies.

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The EU’s Failing Policy Initiative for Bosnia and Herzegovina
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The EU’s Failing Policy Initiative for Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

This Policy Paper is a Reform Agenda & Questionnaire Monitoring Report. The new EU BiH initiative did yield some initial successes in 2015 and 2016. BiH authorities agreed a ‘Reform Agenda 2015-18’ with the EU and International Financial Institutions (IFIs), a broad blueprint for socio-economic reform that, if fully implemented, could have broken the country’s patronage system. Some initial implementation of the Reform Agenda and the formal fulfillment of some additional EU conditions prompted the EU’s General Affairs Council in September 2016 to grant the final reward in EU integration envisioned in the initiative – a referral of BiH’s membership application to the European Commission for its Opinion on granting candidate status. In December 2016 the Commission took the next step and handed over its Questionnaire to BiH. More significantly, the International Monetary Fund signed a loan arrangement with BiH in September 2016 designed to support the Reform Agenda, based on exceptionally strict financial conditionality and prompting the governments in BiH to concede on some previously unimaginable reforms. However, these successes were short-lived, limited and superficial. From early 2017, it became evident that the initiative would be a failure when it formally concludes at the end of 2018. Throughout 2017, implementation on all fronts came to an almost complete standstill, although EU representatives and other international officials continue to pretend the initiative is still alive.

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The Western Balkans and the Ukraine crisis – a changed game for EU and US policies?

The Western Balkans and the Ukraine crisis – a changed game for EU and US policies?

Author(s): Bodo Weber,Kurt Bassuener / Language(s): English

Well before the ongoing Ukraine crisis began in late 2013, Russia had asserted itself in the Western Balkans politically, often using economic leverage to that end. A lack of Western unity has enabled Moscow’s efforts. Russian interests are in play throughout the region, but are most problematic in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the latter through the Serb entity, the Republika Srpska. The full extent and nature of these relationships are shrouded in opacity. Yet both are increasingly problematic for Western interests, and even European security. The conflict in Ukraine, and the resulting impact on the relationship between Russia, the EU and the US, has affected developments in and around the Western Balkans in different ways. The Ukraine crisis has drawn Western policy attention away from Balkans. Yet the region has become an additional proxy battlefield in this new geopolitical conflict, symbolized by intensified Russian diplomatic and propaganda activities aimed particularly, but not exclusively, at Serbia. The various international and Western Balkan actors have occupied different policy positions. The EU among its 28 members, the EU as a corporate body and the US, have struggled to articulate a joint policy position to counter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, often based on varying levels of economic – and especially energy – interdependence with Russia. Security perceptions vary according to both distance from Russia and the historical nature of the relationship, with Baltic states and Poland most adversarial in their posture toward Moscow. In parts of the Western Balkans where a joint Western policy had already coalesced, such as with the Serbia-Kosovo dispute, the EU and the US have maintained a common policy despite the differences in confronting the challenge posed by the Ukraine crisis. Yet in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Western reactions mirrored the existing policy divide. It remains to be seen whether the roles and opportunities of European and American energy companies in the Western Balkans will be affected by the Ukraine crisis or whether they will influence individual Western countries’ policies towards the region. Yet at present, the Ukraine crisis has added substantial resolve to the European Commission’s already standing existing objections to the South Stream pipeline in Bulgaria (and Serbia) for its breach of EU regulations, to the dismay of the six EU member states participating in the project.

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Time for a Plan B: The European Refugee Crisis, the Balkan Route and the EU-Turkey Deal
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Time for a Plan B: The European Refugee Crisis, the Balkan Route and the EU-Turkey Deal

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Over the course of 2015, an estimated 1.5 million people – the bulk of them refugees from Syria – made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route. The shift to this previously marginal route for irregular entry of refugees and migrants into the EU led to the collapse of the EU’s external border in the Aegean and turned the long-standing problem of the EU’s deficient common asylum policy, which disproportionately affected the southern member states, into a full-fledged crisis. As late as early autumn 2015, the refugee crisis was still fully manageable. The EU’s immediate response followed the playbook used in various crises from the eurozone crisis onwards – a combination of reactive German leadership supported by a coalition of willing member states. On September 4, Chancellor Merkel, supported by her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann, arranged with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the transit of refugees and migrants from Hungary with the aim to avert an escalation of the situation in that country. Merkel assembled a coalition of willing states that accepted to receive the bulk of refugees and migrants and worked with the countries on the Balkan route to avoid regional tensions over the wave and to achieve an initial smooth transit free of major human rights violations.

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Western Collusion in Undermining the Rule of Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina: An Overview
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Western Collusion in Undermining the Rule of Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina: An Overview

Author(s): Bodo Weber / Language(s): English

Three legal cases/political scandals during 2018-19 grabbed the attention of the domestic public and the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The first two concerned the unresolved deaths of two young men, Dženan Memić in Sarajevo and David Dragičević in Banja Luka. The improper investigative conduct of the police and judiciary regarding their deaths raised suspicions of cover-ups and political interference. The third concerned corruption allegations against Milan Tegeltija, then president of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HJPC), the BiH judiciary’s self-managing body. The three cases marked the nadir of a steady decline of the rule of law institutions in BiH over the last decade and a half, and stand in stark contrast to 2005 when BiH was a frontrunner among Western Balkan countries aspiring to European Union (EU) membership. Rule of law achievements until then had been the result of substantial and systematic judicial and (to a lesser degree) police reform carried out during the immediate post-war period under the leadership of the international community. This paper serves as an introduction to a policy paper/note series entitled “The Decline of the Rule of Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Role and Responsibility of the International Community” that constitutes a central component of a project launched in 2019 by the Democratization Policy Council (DPC) with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation office in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is aimed at initiating a dialogue among Western diplomats and officials on the international community’s co-responsibility for the decline of the rule of law in BiH – with each subsequent paper covering one of the key episodes stated above – focused on how the damage done can be repaired, and how international actors can contribute to a re-strengthening of the rule of law institutions in BiH.

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