Tensions have increased in recent months in the Western Balkans and the coming weeks promise to be difficult across the region. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to lead his party out of the country’s delicately constructed state institutions. In North Macedonia, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev resigned. In Montenegro, members of the government coalition are at loggerheads. In Kosovo, the Serbian Srpska Lista party is talking about leaving state institutions. And in Serbia itself, all manner of evils abound, most currently surrounding a Belgrade mural depicting Ratko Mladic.
With the exception of the Macedonian case, the common thread in all these issues is that of the Serbian government’s interference in the affairs of its neighbors through the political representation of Serbian minorities. This has become a model of behavior on the part of Belgrade, reminiscent of that of the 1990s. “The task of this generation of politicians is to create the Serbian world, that is, to unite Serbs everywhere they live”, announcement Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin in July. The recurring theme among Serbian politicians in the region is the call for emancipation from the post-Yugoslav War settlement. Together with high public support in the region, for authoritarian regimes, as for Russia and China, a toxic mixture is brewing.
Serbia is effectively a captured state – “our hard-won freedom from Milosevic is lost,” one local observer recently told me. His government is “irreplaceable” despite free (but not fair) elections; it is mired in high-level corruption; and its media environment has further deteriorated. According to media analysts, between July 2020 and the end of June 2021, representatives of the ruling majority benefited from 93 percent of television airtime on programs dedicated to political actors, while the opposition was present in the remaining 7 percent. In September alone, President Aleksandar Vucic appeared at length on television on no less than 37 occasions, with some broadcasts lasting two or three hours. And it goes beyond the obvious realm of politics and hard news: a recent study investigated the purchase by Serbe Telecom of rights to broadcast English Premier League football matches in countries across the region – a decision taken, according to the author, to “lock Balkan audiences in their channels with their anti-Western narratives, which correspond to the growing ties of countries with countries like China”, Russia and Hungary”.
Russia and China use corruption to influence state institutions in the region. As US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated, authoritarian states use “strategic corruption” as a means of coercion, undermining the social contract and public trust in institutions – and further worsening poor governance in the region. For ordinary Balkan citizens, corruption remains the third most important problem in their country, after unemployment and the economic situation. The fight against corruption and organized crime has become the priority purpose for opposition parties across the region, regardless of ideology, as captured states encroach on the media, justice, economy and public services such as healthcare. As a result, emigration from the Western Balkans only continue to grow.
It is obvious that the EU enlargement process is blocked and will remain so for some time. Membership in the European Union was once intended to resolve, among other things, the problems of poor governance plaguing the Western Balkans, as well as to confirm the uneasy peace established a quarter of a century ago. But a significant number of EU member states are now visibly reluctant to refer to enlargement in official EU Council documents. Recent Member State veto The accession negotiations demonstrate the EU’s reluctance and inability to integrate the Western Balkans – and it seems that the region’s citizens and politicians have gotten the message. The Balkan Barometer 2021 watch that a third of Serbs, Bosniaks and Macedonians do not expect membership at all. Into this vacuum, nationalist ideas and other powers easily take hold. And the investigations carried out by the ECFR this summer confirm that Serbs have a very negative view of the EU. They largely view the EU’s political system as broken and its response to the pandemic as incompetent. And they place a higher regard on their own country’s leadership, while viewing Russia and China as key allies, with 94% and 91% support, respectively.
In this context, what can the EU do differently? And what should it seek to achieve?
In a highly contested geopolitical environment, technical processes alone will no longer be enough. The EU cannot simply intensify accession negotiations (e.g. by expanding access to the single market) and hope that the dynamic will change. It will have to become much more political. To further insert the region into the European orbit, it could use an existing regional cooperation format, such as the Berlin process. Access to the single market could be part of its agenda. But so too should Western Balkan states finally reach political agreements to resolve long-standing points of contention – such as those that continue to block relations between Kosovo and Serbia, or relations between Bosnia with Serbia and Croatia. States which make such progress should in exchange have access to European funds.
In a highly contested geopolitical environment, technical processes alone will no longer be enough.
The EU should work to integrate Western Balkan countries into its Green New Deal, giving them the opportunity to modernize their infrastructure and make greater progress in decarbonizing their economies. Diversifying energy sources will also help them become less dependent on third parties such as Russia for their energy supplies, and would reduce or even eliminate corruption in the energy sector.
The lack of sharp instruments that the EU could draw from its toolbox means that Europe is left out of key strategic discussions in the Balkans. The desire of the United States to brandish a stick in the form of the Magnitsky Act and sanctions, rather than just offering a carrot, this seems to make the US position much more compelling and their voice more forceful. The EU has a wide range of potential tools that it could use and which it could strengthen with some adjustments. For example, he should add kleptocracy to his European Magnitsky Act and extend the law’s provisions to the Western Balkans. Being able to impose personal sanctions for corruption against individuals would increase the EU’s influence and change the perception of hypocrisy that exists – that it is quite happy to work with autocrats when the situation suits it. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office could ensure a greater focus on cross-border investigations involving Balkan authorities. It can also deploy the European Anti-Fraud Office in cases related to EU funds, which represent a substantial part of the Western Balkans’ GDP.
Borders will not soon lose their meaning in the Balkans. The EU must therefore pay more attention to the region’s security and defense architecture, which is currently neglected. A more genuine geopolitical response from the EU will require the enlargement of the European Defense Union. If Western Balkan states join the EDU, they will be able to participate in PESCO projects, and EDU membership should focus efforts on increased compliance with the Common Security and Defense Policy. Serbia, for example, wants to modernize the production capacities of its large state-owned arms manufacturers. Instead of effectively forcing it to cooperate with countries like Belarus, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, the EU should invite Serbia to participate in its own projects. EU battlegroups should not only include regular participation in the Western Balkans, but also enter operational duty in the region, should the situation worsen.
If there is one positive takeaway from the current interconnected crises in the Western Balkans, it is the renewed attention that European and American policymakers are giving to the region. But the EU urgently needs to change its approach: its choice of “constructive ambiguity” no longer works and only creates irritation in the region. Helping citizens loosen the grip of corrupt elites and restoring good governance within institutions would go a long way to further support reforms and strengthen the EU’s influence in a region essential to strengthening its international credibility and ensuring stability of its neighborhood.
The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take a collective position. ECFR publications represent solely the opinions of their individual authors.