BALKANS: EU Now Appears Further Away

• by Vesna Peric Zimonjic (belgrade)
• Friday, December 26, 2008
• Inter Press Service

Yugoslavia, which broke apart in bloody wars of the 1990s, was made up of what are today Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

Croatia has been closest to getting membership, due for 2011, but a border dispute with Slovenia has now crept into the way. 'Croatia has no right to continue (the talks) without proper documents dealing with borders,' said Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor last week.

Slovenia says Croatia took away parts of territories that were under Slovenian administration in times when the two regions were together within Yugoslavia. Slovenia is claiming stretches of land and the Bay of Piran in the north of the Adriatic Sea. Half the Bay is now controlled by Croatia; before the war it was under control of the region that is now Slovenia.

'Croatia is open for friendly dialogue, but is not and will not be ready to accept blackmail,' Prime Minister Ivo Sanader told local media in reply to Pahor. 'We won't buy our EU membership with ceding of territory.'

Hate speech emerged in Croatian media. Facebook 'wars' broke out between groups of Croats and Slovenes. Several consumer organisations led a boycott of Slovenian goods. Croatian customs and police introduced harsh controls that clogged border crossings with Slovenia in the run-up to Christmas.

Croatian TV showed queues of vehicles several miles long, and reported that 'traffic was normalised only after a call from Brussels (the seat of the EU) to Zagreb.'

The European Commission, the administrative arm of the EU, said Croatia and Slovenia must resolve the Piran Bay and other border disputes 'in a spirit of good neighbourly relations.'

The path for Serbia, which has been hoping to join the EU in 2013, is also far from clear. Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic has said that 'Serbia won't accept any more conditions for EU membership.' One of the conditions for Serbia to join is the arrest of Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide and war crimes in Bosnia. And, Jeremic added, 'if recognition of independent Kosovo is the condition for joining the EU, Serbia won't accept that.'

Backed by the U.S. and Western Europe, the southern Serbian province Kosovo declared independence earlier this year. Kosovo has an almost entirely ethnic Albanian population of about two million. But it is also regarded as cradle of Serbian statehood.

'Politicians are simply confusing their nations with controversial statements – both yes and no to the EU,' Marko Blagojevic from the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) told IPS.

New research by Medium Gallup International published Dec. 22 shows a sharp drop in enthusiasm for the EU. In Croatia it dropped by half to 29 percent compared to December 2007. In Serbia, it stands at 58 percent, a drop of four percentage points.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina it stands at 48 percent, but access talks for that country are some way off. 'There is not a single issue where politicians in Bosnia-Herzegovina have common views,' EU representative for the country Miroslav Lajcak said in an interview Dec. 23. 'They should synchronise at least some of their views if they want speedier access of their country to the EU,' Lajcak told Banja Luka daily Nezavisne Novine.

Almost 14 years after the bloody war in Bosnia ended, the country remains deeply divided along ethnic lines. Muslim Bosniaks are accused by both Bosnian Croats and Serbs of attempting to dominate the country. At the same time, Bosnian Serbs in their Republic of Srpska are drifting away from Sarajevo and the other entity of this country, the Muslim-Croat Federation.

The Gallup survey found that more than 89 percent of Kosovars want EU membership. In Albania support stands at 83 percent.

© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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