The EU risks losing Bosnia and a lot more

By Daniel Korski - 25 Jun 08

The mirrored, twisted skyscraper reaches into the Sarajevo sky like a Balkan version of London's gherkin. When completed, it will be the region's tallest building.But despite the appearance of progress and a decade of internationally-supervised peace implementation - which has seen the government initialing a Stabilization and Association Agreement (the first step to joining the EU) the country may no longer exist in a few years.

Its three ethnic groups hold conflicting views of the past and the future. In the Serb-dominated part of the country, one-time basketball star Milorad Dodik reigns supreme. Having defeated the Serb nationalists and supported the EU's candidate for President in Serbia, he holds Brussels over a barrel.

His long-term policy seems clear: peaceful secession of the Serb province like Milo Djukanovic did it in Montenegro. For now, he tears strips of the fledgling Bosnian state, gradually transferring power to his provincial capital while he bides his time. Last year, he forced the EU to back down over its demands that the country reform and centralize its police. "Why", his deputy Igor Rodojcic asked me while on a lobbying tour in London, "should Scotland be allowed to secede and not Republika Srpska"?

The Serb cause is helped by a dead-lock between Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the other part of the country: Bosnian Croats still look towards Croatia proper while Bosnian Muslims - led by war-time leader Haris Silajdzic - cling to a pre-war dream of a centralized, multiethnic country.

With the three ethnic groups at odds, economic and administrative reforms are stymied and the political discourse is now more reminiscent of the rabble-rousing pre-war 1990s than that of a modern European country.

Stuck in the middle is Europe and its man on the ground, Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajčák. With no clear orders from Brussels, little interest in major capitals and caught between the U.S and Russia, he struggles to find a way through. His immediate mission is to close the Office of the High Representative (OHR) - the protectorate-style office he leads - and give way to an EU-led mission, which can assist the country pass through the hoops required for EU accession.

But the country has become used to living with the international community as the final arbiter of decisions. Closing the OHR will mean Bosnia's politicians have to take charge and begin making compromises.It would also mean Bosnian politicians preparing the electorate for rigors of the EU integration process, which can produce short-term set-backs as the public sector is slashed and customs revenues cut.

Free-market policies and ensuring the rule-of-law are key to get through. So is having an effective state. But support for these polices is limited on all sides. To date, the Bosnian Prime Minister has only met his EU Minister three or four times. Even more tellingly, Bosnia's international helpmates are preparing to extend the terms of expatriate officials inside Bosnia's courts; no Bosnian is yet willing to prosecute high-profile criminals.

For the international community, moving towards an EU-led operation presents problems as well. A new EU set-up would see Mr. Lajčák's role as EU Special Representative merge with that of the EU Commission.

But with the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, the merger of the Council Secretariat and the Commission's DG Enlargement into a new External Action Service is on hold. This may slow-down efforts to ‘double-hat' Mr. Lajčák, or his successor, as both EUSR and Head of the EC delegation.

Besides hiring a few secretaries, little preparation is underway for the EU to build-up its role; there is even talk of closing down the EU military and police missions in 2009 and 2010. Officials in the European Commission, in turn, look forward to seeing OHR's back. Only then, they believe, can the rules of the EU's technocratic, apolitical enlargement process be made to do their magic.

But even if Bosnia's problems could be solved by adopting the Active Implantable Medical Devices Directive, given the state of Bosnian politics time may not be on the EU's side. It can certainly not be on both the EU's and Milorad Dodik's side. And many analyst worry that the SAA process - unlike the process for candidate countries - does not paint a realistic picture of what Bosnia needs to do, while preventing the country from moving forward.

To prevent matters from getting worse and the EU from proving that it cannot, as Mort Abramowitz wrote a few years ago in Foreign Affairs, "hack the Balkans", things need to change.What is needed is more EU, not less.

In Kosovo, following the March 2004 riots Norwegian NATO ambassador Kai Eide was asked to recommend changes needed to make NATO more credible. The same is now needed in Bosnia, but before rather than after any crisis. As the Council Secretariat, OHR and the Commission seem unable to supersede their bureaucratic concerns, Javier Solana, the EU's perspicacious foreign policy chief, should ask an independent official - for example Giuliano Amato - to propose a new EU set-up, which can lead to a post-OHR phase of deeper and broader EU involvement.

It should also examine a new EU Balkan set-up in Brussels, and what adjustments are necessary to the EU's accession process: would it, for example make sense to have Bosnia submit a candidate application and move to the screening process?

The independent report could be discussed by EU foreign ministers under the Czech EU Presidency, which begins in 2009. Prague could also form a "Friends of Bosnia" among the EU-27 - liek the EU group that guides Ukraine policy - who can drive the Union's Bosnia policy and keep the necessary attention on the country. Such a set-up would be well-served by including the U.S and Russia too.

As its first tasks, the group could re-examine the possibility of replacing the Bosnian currency with the Euro, as British peer Paddy Ashdown sought to do when he ran the OHR; and of lowering the bar Bosnia has to jump over to get visa-free access to Europe. Nothing would make the EU prospect more tangible to ordinary Bosnians and change the country's centrifugal politics. Neither policy will damage the EU: Bosnia's Marka is already tied to the European currency and it is hard to believe that Bosnians would represent a greater security and immigration threat than, say, Bulgarians.

Post-Irish referendum, the EU's foreign policy will be, above all, a Balkan policy. And while attention has recently been on Kosovo, Bosnia remains a key challenge. To solve the problems, more not less EU is needed. New thinking is needed to figure out what form this takes. The tallest building in the Balkans will one day be a symbol of progress. Today it is the exception. The difference can only be made up by Bosnians. But only with the European Union's help.

Comments for this entry are closed.

Good post, Daniel - I think you’ve got a lot of this nailed down.

There is no evident planning at the Sarajevo level for the EC-EUSR convergence, and that ought to be happening NOW - well in advance of OHR’s eventual closure, which is tied to this box-ticking exercise of objectives and conditions. At least the PIC yesterday held to those. But there is absolute opacity on what comes next. It’s not just stupid to go headlong to closure without a plan for what follows, it’s potentially self-defeating.

There seems to be a delusion that the EU’s usual SAP/accession toolbox will do the job here too. No way will that fly.

In theory, an EU-led international process could be as robust as needed - and could draw support from non-EU players like the US, Norway, and Turkey. There is a lot of potential leverage that goes to waste. But it seems that Brussels is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope - defining the mission from what makes sense in Brussels rather than what makes sense in the BiH context. It seems to be adhering to a simplistic formula: presence + visibility = success. It will haunt them unless the trajectory shifts, and soon. It could even kill the credibility of CFSP - if they can’t do it here, where can they? But I am not sensing any urgency. They need to tailor the approach specifically to the problem here, and leverage their key advantage - as gatekeepers to a club BiH politicians say they want to join - to their advantage. But there is a lot of theological self-handicapping going on, esp. with EC’s idea that somehow the technical is apolitical. That’s not really true anywhere, and especially not here.

Dodik “reigns supreme” not just in RS, but in BiH as a whole, and even beyond in the sense that HE dominated the international agenda, and everyone is working around what he will and won’t accept. He runs the show. Coming to a solution on state property - one of the five “objectives” - doesn’t look hopeful - he’s not inclined to budge from his position that theRS owns all the fomrer SFRJ and RBiH property on RS territory. So the international community will either have to find a way to make him budge, or do another humiliating climbdown, a la police reform.

I am all for a friends of Bosnia group - but who would the friends be? Almost all the CEE members have bent over backwards to accommodate Serbia, regardless of the non-fulfillment of standards, and this has hurt BiH and the EU’s credibility as an organization that will adhere to its own standards when there is a compelling imperative for “progress” on the “European path.” Bosnia is always treated as an afterthought by the external actors, and I fear it will remain so until things definitively hit the wall.

Kurt Bassuener | Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina | 26 Jun 08, 26 Jun 08 EST | www

Excellent work, I am both impressed and delighted to see such a well organized piece of work. Indeed, I agree with most of your comments, particularly in relation to those which speak of a greater and more proactive European position in the Balkans. Nonetheless, I would be surprised to see concrete EU actions in the region, particularly in BiH, on their own initiative. History has revealed that both international and European communities have taken their time to respond to the Balkans and have done so only in the wake of war.

The SAA? Well, we in the “Balkans” are observing the SAA with less strength. Certainly, it is important and a key benchmark in order to even begin to dream of joining the EU, however it has become lacklustre owing to the disorganization of Brussels (Nice, the Constitution, Lisbon, enlargement fatigue, etc). The carrots are quickly turning rotten and the EU27 needs to renovate its campaign and solidified interest in turning the Balkan into European.

Odlicno Daniele.

Tomislav Ivancic | Bilbao, Spain | 27 Jun 08, 27 Jun 08 EST | www

Dear Daniel,

I like your article and agree with its general thrust: the IC is going to lose BiH within a decade if it doesn’t get its eye fixed on the ball again soon.

However, I would propose the following for your further consideration

(1) The Commission’s feverent belief in the apolitical or technical nature of the enlargement process is badly misplaced, I believe. I’m not sure the mandarins magic rulebooks will have the usual effect: Bosnia’s is an atypical application on a number of levels. Things that appear to be purely technical - establishment of GDP per capita by 2013, for example, as required by the Interim Agreement, may turn out to be not: it implies a census. [of course, the EU may accept estimates etc.] In the european partnership document alone we have ‘technical’ examples of where the RS will not play ball - establishment of a single economic space, with requirements that laws be passed at state level on obligations and banking supervision.

(2) The idea of some external ideas-influx as to the post-OHR landscape is not of itself bad. Its very much the case that people on the ground often cant’ see the wood for the trees and analysis at arm’s length throws up a different perspective. Whoever might fulfill such a role, the time to anticipate the time to come is now.

(3) There are very high numbers currently supporting supporting EU accession in the latest opinion polls, especially in the RS [around 80%]. This great news, and is to be welcomed. But I believe this is because the SAA was signed at practically zero cost for them. They didn’t have to give up the RS police or do anything else particularly difficult. So I worry about going directly to the screening process - it is a reward for doing nothing, indeed for intransigence and roll-back on reforms previously agreed.

However, if we can expect continued lowering of the bar on current requirements, we might as well save ourselves an awful lot of grief and just admit BiH to candidate status right away.

(4) You’ll have seen that the Russians failed to subscribe to the PIC communique this week. So I’m not sure though that establishing a ‘Friends of BiH’ group under the Czech Presidency would have any added value. It would be too vulnerable to becoming another platform to replicate the divisions amongst PIC members.

Two other brief points: (a) It shouldn’t be, but it is, quite stunning (and a bit scary) that Igor Radojicic demonstrates no sense of why the RS could so easily secede (its monoethnic character) and that it is just like Scotland.

(b) I wouldn’t write off Tihic as the leasder of the Bosniaks just yet - he still leads the largest party in the country, and Haris’s poll ratings have been plummeting for months now.

I think the bottom line is that the EU needs to keep a very close eye on this place and understand it is an applicant like no other.

Ben Harrington | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 27 Jun 08, 27 Jun 08 EST

Congratulations, nicely put. Such creative thinking outside of the box is regretfully absenting in the recent EU policy. Whether this is a product of protracted internal debate on the EU structural reforms or a consequence of wide divisions between the member states? publics and the Brussels technocrats or combination of both, should be addressed somewhere else, but echoes of Irish ?No? in the Balkans are inevitable, as echoed in the text.

Couple of points on the article at hand:
- Instead of the special envoy for Bosnia, I would rather recommend to create and to appoint the EUSR on the Balkans, and make him/her a deputy to the commissioner for the EU enlargement Oli Rehn.
- I share the view that so far the EU has not been very successful in using the leverage of ?the gatekeeper?. This, however, leads me to reiterate my belief that in order to enter into the final stage of stabilization of the Balkan region still suffering from the years of inter-ethnic wars, the EU and the US should combine their efforts and use wisely and timely set of tools available. International environment in Europe to a large extend based on the balance between the West and Russia has been changed and it has been reflected in particular on the no longer existed unanimous support by the key players to the processes in the Balkans. Therefore, in particular now, it is critical for the EU and the US to be consistent in their messages towards the countries in the Balkan region. The whole region could be easily pictured as a matrix of interconnected volumes. Events in one country have ramifications or echoes in others and vice versa. Therefore it is of utmost importance to reward those forces and the countries playing by the democratic rules and not to give in to those who think that what really matters in terms of the European and Euro-Atlantic integration are rather negotiation skills. This is even more relevant after the Bucharest summit unfortunately had sent a signal that performance based approach on is no longer the only measure by which the Alliance rewards the aspiring countries and the NATO membership could be postponed due to/held a hostage to unsolved bilateral issues.
- The year of 2008 might as many years with ?magic 8? before offer a difference/bring a new challenge upon us. With Russia now publicly calling for ?a new world order? to be set out in a fashion of new Yalta process, the EU should not take any chances by demonstrating hesitations vis-?-vis the Balkan agenda. Moscow has offered opportunistically almost unconditional support to the Serbs throughout the Balkans, just as Russians believe, the U.S. have been doing the same for the Albanians. The NATO enlargement on Ukraine and Georgia remains for Moscow the core issue and the key reason for resistance and its re-penetration to the Balkans. The slower and the weaker would move the EU process of the Balkans stabilization, the better chances to slow or to possibly to prevent the NATO enlargement towards the Russia?s borders, as many in Russia believe. That?s being said, the question of what should be done to diminish growing Russia?s influence in the Balkans? Serbia and the Serb factor is the platform for Russia?s backdoor entry to the Balkans. There will be many speculations whether it was not us, who helped to open these backdoors by lack of thoroughly crafted and timely mastered Trans-Atlantic policies, in particular on Kosovo and Macedonia. But yet, to diminish Russia?s reach in the Balkans, the EU should finally admit, that if it continues to offer the lower fruit to Belgrade, instead of rewarding true commitment and delivering on the domestic agenda, whilst overseeing the countries trying to play by the EU rules, it can not succeed in a long-run.

Martin Kačo | Washington, DC | 27 Jun 08, 27 Jun 08 EST

Dear Daniel,

Congratulations on your post. Some few observations:

1)Putting the HR/EUSR and the Head of the Delegation under the same hat is not just a matter of ‘bureaucratic rivalry’ between the Council and the EC. In Macedonia there’s a double hatted EUSR/Head of Delegation, even without the External Service reform. But in BiH there’s a lot more involved. Firstly, the HR is an expression of the Peace Implementation Council, where US and Russia still have a strong voice. Secondly, merging the two roles would mean the abolition of the HR as detentor of the Bonn powers. But with no clear idea on when that might happen, such a streamlining of the EU presence in BiH appears still far from taking place (unfortunately)

2) Notwithstanding their decreasing Balkans’ engagement, the US remain a key player in BiH. The constitutional talks, one of the key aspects in the slow Bosnian normalization process, are almost entirely brokered by them. The EU should play a greater role in leading the process, but in a very different way from the face-saving exercise of the police reform.

3) Dodik is a problem. But he’s not the only one. A stronger support should be given to those (very few) politicians who can cross the ethnic divide, such as Zeljo Komsic.

Dario D'Urso | Rome | 30 Jun 08, 30 Jun 08 EST

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