Western Balkans regress
The EU stalls accession talks with Macedonia over failed reforms and growing ethnic tensions as the situation in the western Balkans reaches a new low point. By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (13/11/07) The EU has announced it will not launch accession talks with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) next year because of the government's failure to undertake major reforms and its poor handling of an ethnic insurgency. Macedonia became an official candidate for EU membership in 2005, but the bloc made clear that it wanted to see progress on judiciary reforms, fighting corruption and improving relations with its Albanian minority. According to an annual European <http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/the_former_yugoslav_republic_of_macedonia/index_en.htm> Commission report, western Balkan countries are showing some progress, but political and ethnic disputes in Macedonia are intensifying and the parliament and administration are not functioning at an acceptable level. The report also warned about high unemployment in the country and concluded by saying that accession talks were not likely to begin before 2009. Despite improvements in the area of economic integration, civil society remains weak in the region. The enforcement of the rule of law, notably through judicial reform, and the fight against corruption and organized crime has not been satisfactory. "Adequate human and financial resources to fully implement the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) are lacking. Large-scale replacement of qualified staff following political changes hampered efforts to improve administrative capacity," the report noted. Also, according to the commission's report, corruption remains widespread, and the Macedonian government has not demonstrated the strength or will to tackle it. "The ongoing political conflicts slightly delay the country's dialogue with the EU. Therefore, this political dialogue needs to improve in order to improve the country's momentum next year in the same period," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said during the presentation of progress report. Speaking to local media, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski described the report as well-balanced, but argued that there were "things that do not depend completely on us, but also on the opposition and other factors in the state, and in this part there are mainly some weaknesses. "What depended only on the government - the economy and the fight against corruption -has been relatively positively assessed in the report," Gruevski said. However, the opposition slammed the prime minister for trying to pin the negative aspects of the report on them. "Due the government's ignorance, instead of moving forward Macedonia is at a stalemate, losing the advantage it had over the others," Jani Makraduli, for the main opposition Social Democrats party, told a press conference. The largest Albanian opposition party, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), also blamed the government for the negative evaluation, saying that all the necessary mechanisms to conduct the requisite reforms had been in place. The name game The report also calls on the Macedonian and Greek governments to resolve the issue of the name of the small Balkan state, even though EU officials say the name dispute is not among the conditions for accession. For nearly 17 years, Greece has denied Macedonia's right to use its constitutional name, saying that it could imply territorial aspirations to the Greek province with the same name. So far, Macedonia has established diplomatic ties with more than 160 countries. A total of 120 countries have already recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name, while the EU and NATO use the FYROM acronym. Greece has threatened to block its northern neighbor's accession to NATO and the EU if it refuses to accept a new name. According to the latest poll conducted in June, more than 80 percent of Greek citizens would block their neighbor's bid to join to NATO and the EU under the name "Macedonia," while some 60 percent would block it regardless of which name it was registered under. Even though Greece objected, Macedonia entered the UN in 1993 under the provisional name FYROM, pending a resolution. Talks between Macedonia and Greece have been ongoing since 1993, with little progress. Over the past several years, some informal proposals have been presented, but none was acceptable to both parties. On 1 November, UN mediators made a fresh draft framework calling on Macedonia to accept an alternative to its chosen constitutional name for international use. That part of the document was rejected by Macedonian authorities. The UN said no date for further talks would be set until the two governments had reviewed the proposals. The closest the two sides came to a deal was in 2001, when they discussed the potential use of "Gorna Macedonia" (Upper Macedonia). But negotiations collapsed when Macedonia was engulfed in an ethnic conflict between security forces and the ethnic Albanian minority, which was rebelling for more rights and greater representation. Ethnic tensions on the rise In the meantime, an intensifying of ethnic animosity has helped to block the work of state bodies, and an upsurge in violent ethnic incidents presents a major concern for EU officials. Six years after an internationally supervised peace agreement prevented further clashes in 2001 between Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian guerillas, which left 100 people dead and 170,000 displaced, renewed violence portends dangerous regression. The first such incident took place in early August, when ethnic Albanians attacked a police station in Gosince. This incident was followed by a similar one on 31 August in which ethnic Albanians clashed with security forces near the mountain village of Tanusevci. The area where the incidents occurred is near the border of Kosovo, the stronghold of Albanian guerrillas during the 2001 conflict. In September, an ethnic Albanian Macedonian police commander was killed and two other police officers were injured in a gunfight in the nearby village of Vaksince. Local Albanian paramilitary commanders at the time had warned Macedonian security forces that they would not be welcomed in Tanusevci, saying that the village was under the control of the inhabitants themselves. Clashes erupted when police chose not to heed the warning and attempted to enter the village. In the latest spate of incidents on 7 November, eight persons were killed and 12 others arrested in the region when Macedonian security forces clashed with Albanian paramilitaries. The Macedonian government still refuses to refer to the incident as ethnic in nature, saying the action was part of a routine police operation targeting criminals crossing the border from Kosovo. However, shortly after the incident, the outlawed Albanian National Army (ANA) issued a statement saying that its forces had clashed with the police and were intent on preserving Albanian territory. The ANA includes former members of the Albanian nationalist movement that spawned the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK/KLA). Among the eight killed, there were Macedonian, Albanian and Kosovo citizens. Police said that the target was Lirim Jakupi, a fugitive from a Kosovo prison and a former member of the ANA. Jakupi, alias Nazi, was wanted by Macedonia and Serbia for alleged participation in attacks in both countries. There have been several reports over the past couple weeks of unidentified armed groups stopping vehicles and patrolling Macedonia's northern and north-western regions. The 2001 clashes saw the ethnic Albanian minority, which comprises around 25 percent of the population, demanding greater educational rights, as well as representation in the government, armed forces and police. Albanian politicians say that the peace framework has not been properly implemented, with the frequent firing of ethnic Albanian officials, including judges and university professors. Whither the western Balkans? However, the lack of reforms, widespread corruption and ethnic intolerance are not problems that afflict Macedonia alone. The EC report said that in general, reforms in the western Balkans have been obstructed by corruption, organized crime and ethnic tensions, indicating that EU membership in the short term was unlikely for most of the region's nations. In short, the report said that no western Balkan nation would be able to join the EU before 2012, with the possible exception of perhaps Croatia. Croatia remains the most optimistic and hopes for full EU membership by 2010. However, even here, the EU is not satisfied with the authorities' treatment of ethnic Serbs. As for Montenegro, the report pointed out money laundering as a major problem. "The police capacities are limited, and there is not yet a proper monitoring of financial transactions beyond the banking system, especially in relation to real estate and foreign investment," the report said. Major corruption has been noted in areas of construction and land-use planning, privatization, concessions and public procurement. The report was particularly hard on Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying that ethnic tensions continued to hinder the work of government institutions. The stalling of key reforms is seen as a direct result of an obstructive political atmosphere and weak domestic consensus on the fundamentals of economic policy. "A complicated administrative structure and nationalist rhetoric have jeopardized the government's reform agenda. Urgent measures are needed to ensure effective functioning of state level institutions," the report said. In Serbia, which initialed an SAA with the EU a day after the report was published, the EC said democratic forces there were dangerously fragile and that the reform process needed to pick up momentum. The report said that Serbia had to improve cooperation with the UN's war crimes tribunal before finalizing the agreement. Despite the signing of the SAA, the EC criticized Serbian authorities for their approach toward Kosovo, describing their handling of the province's pending status determination as unconstructive. Belgrade has rejected all proposals for Kosovo's status presented by the international community. The report also criticized Serbian rhetoric that granting Kosovo independence would have a negative ethnic impact across the region, particularly in Bosnia and Macedonia. And while there is perhaps an element of truth to this warning, it is clearly being used by certain forces, in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy, to foment unrest particularly in Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity. Kosovo has stolen the stage, and key reforms in both Bosnia and Macedonia have been sidelined. Today, the idea of EU integration for some of these western Balkan nations seems more remote than ever, and ethnic issues continue to trump serious economic, judicial and other reforms necessary for EU integration. _____ http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=18346 Anes Alic, based in Sarajevo, is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent in Southeastern Europe and the Executive Director of ISA Consulting <http://www.isaintel.com> .
