The European Union and the Democratization Process of the Western Balkans

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/18763332-03801005

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southeastern europe 38 (2014) 112-133

brill.com/seeu

The European Union and the Democratization Process of the Western Balkans

A Critical Perspective

Ana Ješe PerkovićDepartment of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

[email protected]

Abstract

This paper considers democratization process in the Western Balkans and the influence of the European Union on this process. After the fall of communism European Union has been deeply involved in the transformation of the post-communist societies in the Eastern Europe. The lack of democratic tradition, complexity of democratic process, weak institutions and weak civil society have been among the main obstacles for quick transition. Yet many authors have argued that the EU membership has been one of the most important foreign policy goals of the post-socialist governments and a foreign pol-icy tool of European Union. The EU has been using a leverage of prospect of EU member-ship and EU conditionality for implementing certain policies, hence trying to encourage the democratization process. This paper compares a democratization process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with one in the Western Balkans, and looks at EU conditional-ity and its impact on the democratization process of the Western Balkan states. We argue that the prospect of EU membership has influenced democratization in the Western Balkans to some extent, but the implementation of reforms has been superficial in some policy areas due to ostensible compliance with EU rules of the political elites.

Keywords

Western Balkans – democratization – Europeanization – EU conditionality

1 Introduction

Many scholars agree that democratization in post-communist states has been and will continue to be a focus of attention for policy makers and scholars for

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1 For the purpose of this paper, we will refer to the states that emerged from Yugoslavia except Slovenia as Western Balkan states. This means that Albania will not be included.

2 Yet the role of the United States has also been very important in some cases, such as the formation of “Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina” or independent Kosovo.

a long time. The fall of the Berlin wall was perceived by the West as the victory over communism, and subsequently it reached out a hand to the new democ-racies that started emerging in Eastern Europe. By the end of the 1990s, only about thirty countries in the world had achieved pluralist democracy, mainly located in Western Europe (Mason 1996: 115), and liberal democracy was perceived as the system most desirable for freedom, economic prosperity and international peace (Nagle and Mahr 1999: 3). As in Central and Eastern Europe, also in the Western Balkans1 international organizations were strongly involved in the political and economic transformation after the fall of communism. The most explicit involvement was the case of the European Union.2

Most of the literature that researches and analyzes the EU’s role in the democratization of post-communist countries and EU conditionality focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, but in the past years authors have also researched EU conditionality in the Western Balkans. This paper compares a democratization process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with one in the Western Balkans, and looks at EU conditionality and its impact on the democ-ratization process of the Western Balkan states. We are going to argue that the prospect of EU membership has influenced democratization in the Western Balkans to some extent, but the implementation of reforms has been superfi-cial in some policy areas due to ostensible compliance with EU rules of the political elites. With rhetorical action, politicians have tried to please their constituencies and the EU bureaucracy in order to stay in power.

The methodology applied in this article is a discursive and comparative methodology with an interdisciplinary approach, combining sociology and political science. In the first part, we will look at the democratic elements of the EU membership and the characteristics of democratization in post-communist Europe. In the second part, we will examine the role of EU mem-bership and EU conditionality in the process of democratization, giving examples from the Western Balkans and offering comparisons with Central and Eastern Europe.

This paper examines literature on democracy, transition and Europe-anization, mostly based on the Central and Eastern Europe experience. Furthermore, the critical view and arguments in the case of Western Balkans are based on the existing literature.

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3 European Council: European Council in Copenhagen 21–22 June 1993, Conclusions of the Presidency, p. 12.

2 EU Membership and Democratic Values

Human rights, liberal democracy and the rule of law are the fundamental rules of legitimate statehood of the European Union, and “political conditionality” is the core strategy of the EU to promote them (Schimmelfennig, Engert and Knobel 2005: 29). The Lisbon Treaty from 2010 added to the Treaty on European Union a new Article 2, which upgrades the old Treaty with a more exact empha-sis on human rights, minorities and pluralism: ‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.’ (Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union, 2010)

The basic conditions for enlargement were already set out in Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome, then Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, which was further modified by the Treaty of Amsterdam and finally by the Lisbon Treaty in 2010. They stipulate that: “Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the consent of the European Parliament, which shall act by a majority of its component members. The con-ditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements” (Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union, 2010).

In 1993, at the Copenhagen European Council, the European Union took a decisive step towards the next enlargement, agreeing that ‘the associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the European Union’ (European Commission 2004: 36). At the same time, it defined the membership criteria, which are often referred to as the Copenhagen criteria.3



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1. Membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.

2. It requires the existence of a functioning market economy, as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union.

3. It presupposes the candidate’s ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.

Looking through the lens of a rationalist approach, Heather Grabbe (2001: 11) emphasizes that ‘these conditions were designed to minimise the risk of new entrants becoming politically unstable and economically burdensome to the existing EU. They were formulated to reassure member-states as well as to guide the applicant countries. They provide a safeguard against the EU responding to geo-political and strategic considerations alone, and thus allowing a country to join before it is fully able to compete in the single market.’ The first two conditions are connected to the authoritarian legacy that these countries carried with them and are essentially about the political and economic reforms that are required to ensure good governance and conver-gence with Western European models. The third condition is connected to the future application for membership; the ‘obligations of membership’ include implementation of the whole body of EU law and practice, known as the Acquis Communautaire. Moreover, ‘the applicants cannot negotiate opt-outs like those allowed to some current member-states on monetary union and Schengen’ (Grabbe 2001: 11). However, they are not necessarily participating in all policies yet, because for the most sensitive areas the EU introduced transi-tion periods for the new member states, including for the four basic freedoms of the EU, such as free movement of people, (some) goods, services and capital. At the Madrid European Council in 1995, member states emphasised that besides the preparation based on the Copenhagen criteria, the candidate countries need to make the necessary adjustments to their administrative structures. (Madrid European Council 1995, Presidency Conclusions).

The accession conditions are very general and open to interpretation, which gives the EU enormous discretion in deciding when a country is ready to join (Grabbe 2003: 74). The aspiring countries have to meet all the conditions. For example, progress in economic reform is not enough if a country is not implementing EU legislation quickly enough. Likewise, good progress in tak-ing on EU laws is insufficient if minority populations are being mistreated. Moreover, it is not enough to write the EU’s Acquis into national law: applicant

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4 The security threats that the Western Balkans had been posing to the European Union shaped the EU policies towards the post-communist states in Central and South East Europe. Because the new democracies in post-communist Europe were very fragile and were posing security threats to the region, the EU launched various aid programmes to help build democracy and market economy. The first one was PHARE, launched in 1990, through which financial assistance would be made conditional on a commitment to democratic elections and economic liberalisation. This programme proved to not be enough; eventually the EU would have to offer the prospect of membership in order to keep the countries on the right track. Later that same year, the Commission reached the conclusion to provide Europe Agreements to CEE countries.

countries also need to demonstrate they have the administrative capacity to implement and enforce these laws (Grabbe 2001: 11). Nevertheless, a demo-cratic state also has to have executive accountability. However, governments of the Western Balkans have problems with accountability. A problem arises when only ‘rhetorical action’ (Schimmelfennig 2003) is being used and democratic mechanisms are not being implemented.

Due to the ethnic conflicts and wars in the 1990s, the EU created different frameworks of cooperation with the Western Balkans. In 1996, the Regional Approach for the Western Balkans was outlined, but only bilateral agreements between the countries of Western Balkans and the EU were signed at that time. Only in the summer of 1999 did the Union change its approach by offering a framework for economic and political cooperation between the EU and the countries of South East Europe: the Stability Pact for South East Europe. The pre-accession strategy for the Western Balkans was based on the strategy for the CEE countries, but it was upgraded and improved.4

The Europe Agreement for CEE countries aimed at: (1) providing a frame-work for political dialogue; (2) promoting the expansion of trade and eco-nomic relations between a candidate country and the EU; (3) providing a basis for Community technical and financial assistance; and (4) giving an appropri-ate framework to support the candidate’s gradual integration into the EU (Brinar and Svetličič 1999). The association agreement for the Western Balkans was adjusted to the political and economic situation of the countries and has been a part of the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP). The SAP’s strategic aim has been the stabilisation of South East Europe through integra-tion into the Euro-Atlantic structures and through cooperation among the SEE countries (Brnčić 2003: 20–33). However, Kempe and Meurs (2003: 17) argue that the SAP and candidate status should be upheld as separate but sequential trajectories for EU integration. The centrepiece of the Stabilisation and Association Process is the conclusion of a Stabilisation and Association



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Agreement (SAA). The new component of the new generation of the associa-tion agreements was the inclusion of the stabilisation factor for the region (Pop 2003: 131). The SAA represents a far-reaching contractual relationship between the EU and each Western Balkans country, entailing mutual rights and obligations. Such an association has a high political value. It is based on the gradual implementation of a free trade area and reforms designed to achieve the adoption of EU standards with the aim of moving closer to the EU. The SAA embodies the choice for Europe made by the Western Balkan coun-tries and the membership perspective offered to them by the EU. The SAAs are tools, which provide, much as the Europe Agreements did for the candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the formal mechanisms and agreed benchmarks that allow the EU to work with each country to bring them closer to the standards that apply in the EU. The SAAs focus on respect for key demo-cratic principles and the core elements of the EU single market. According to the European Commission (2004), this process allows the economies of the region to begin to integrate with the EU’s due to a free trade area and the asso-ciated disciplines (competition and state aid rules, intellectual property, etc.) and benefits (e.g. rights of establishment). For those areas where the agree-ments do not impose specific obligations relating to the EU Acquis, there are provisions for detailed co-operation and discussion with the EU, which again has the purpose of helping each country move closer to EU standards. The SAA intends to encourage active development of regional co-operation and good neighbourly relations (European Commission 2004). At this point, the power asymmetry between the EU and the candidate country needs to be mentioned and taken into account, as it also shapes the relations and adoption of EU rules and is deeply rooted in the chapter of trade liberalization in association agree-ments. Hughes, Sasse and Gordon (2004: 10) state that there is an evident ten-dency to ‘mythologize’ the positive relationship between conditionality and enlargement. They argue that “this conventional understanding of condition-ality emphasizes the asymmetric power relationship between the actor apply-ing the conditionality and encouraging ‘socialization’ and the complying and ‘socialized’ actor on the receiving end. EU conditionality for the accession of new members is thus seen as constituting a powerful incentive and disciplin-ing structure […].”

At the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003, the European Union underlined once again the prospect of EU membership offered at the European Councils of Feira and Copenhagen, and it outlined the concrete ways in which the Union was willing to support the countries of the Western Balkans as they move towards European integration. The rate of progress would depend on the performance of the countries themselves in a wide range of reforms of their

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5 The last reconfirmation was at the ministerial meeting between the EU and Western Balkans in Sarajevo in June 2010.

economies, standards of democracy, human rights, good governance and respect for the rule of law. The European Union has been reconfirming the prospect of EU membership for the Western Balkan countries since 2003.5 Hence, the passive leverage of the prospect of EU membership can lose its power and effect on the potential candidates and their reform process if EU membership is taken for granted.

3 Democracy and the Western Balkans

Western Balkan countries carry legacies of more or less authoritarian systems. Before the first world war, peoples of the Balkans either belonged to an empire (Habsburg or Ottoman) or were sovereign kingdoms. After the collapse of empires, they were incorporated in the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later named the kingdom of Yugoslavia, and after the second world war the kingdom was transformed into socialist Yugoslavia, where people lived in an authoritarian socialist system for almost half a century. In the 1990s, most of the new independent states that emerged from Yugoslavia had difficulties with the transition to a democratic system, and most of them experienced illiberal democracy.

Unlike the Czech republic and Slovakia or the Baltic states, which were practicing democracy in the period between the two world wars, there is no legacy of democracy in the Western Balkans. In the 1970s, however, Dahl noticed the extraordinary attempt in socialist Yugoslavia to grant a large mea-sure of self-management to subnational units, which meant that opportunities for participation and contestation were greater in Yugoslavia, despite the one-party regime, than for example in Argentina or Brazil (Dahl 1971: 12). Yugoslavs therefore experienced a different kind of socialism than people under Soviet rule. The Yugoslav experience was more open and liberal, which one would think would help ensure a smoother transition to democracy, but it did not.

In the absence of a strong, organized opposition to communist rule at the beginning of 1990s, as Vachudova (2005) observes, illiberal democracies in the Western Balkans (Croatia and Serbia) created a political vacuum at the moment of regime change that enabled non-opposition governments to hold power. They exploited the lack of competition in the political system to control information and to control the new institutions of the democratic state. Illiberal democracy took hold: elections were mostly free and fair, but the



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6 “Flawed democracies: These countries have free and fair elections and even if there are prob-lems (such as infringements on media freedom), basic civil liberties will be respected. However, there are significant weaknesses in other aspects of democracy, including prob-lems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participa-tion. Hybrid regimes: Elections have substantial irregularities that often prevent them from being both free and fair. Government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common. Serious weaknesses are more prevalent than in flawed democracies--in political culture, functioning of government and political participation. Corruption tends to be wide-spread and the rule of law is weak. Civil society is weak. Typically there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent.” (Democracy Index 2012).

7 The conceptualization of democracies in this Index is debatable (what does ‘full democracy’ mean?); however, we can use the classification and compare the states with each other according to the western democratic standards.

ruling elites had little interest in fostering the institutions of a liberal democ-racy (Vachudova 2005: 37).

Nagle and Mahr (1999: 38) argue that up until 1989, on the one hand East European states failed to consolidate political democracy as the “norm” for political discourse among elites and citizens, but on the other hand these nations made ‘progress in developing as nation-states and they are now, through the most unfortunate of reasons, more homogeneous, have a much longer history of national sovereignty and a greater territorial security’. However, this is not the case for the Western Balkan states. Most of them still have issues with territorial security (Serbia and Kosovo; Croatia has bilateral border disputes with Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia); national sovereignty was compromised during the 1990s wars and in some cases it still is (Macedonia – Greece, Serbia – Kosovo, internal instability in BIH and Macedonia); and they all have greater or lesser problems with weak state institutions. Most of these problems are consequences of the break-up of a common state, of the wars that followed and of organized crime and corrup-tion, which developed extensively during the war period and continue to ham-per these states. These problems have also been the obstacles for Western Balkan states to achieve a quicker democratic transition, such as took place in Central and Eastern Europe. According to Democracy Index of Economist Intelligence Unit 2012, the majority of Western Balkan states fall within the category of flawed democracies, where France, Italy, Slovenia, Poland and some other EU countries also rank; Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina are in the group of hybrid regimes.6 The Index also shows that there are only 25 full democracies in the world (Economist Intelligence Unit 2012).7

Mason (1996: 115) identified the main obstacles that democratization of the post-communist countries faced in the 1990s:

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(1) the large number and the complexity of institutions, legal structures and patterns of behavior necessary for a stable democracy;

(2) the lack of democratic tradition in most of the states;(3) the unprecedented nature of the transition from state socialism to liberal

democracy;(4) the high degree of ethnic diversity in many of the countries;

and we should add here a fifth obstacle, which resulted from the above obsta-cles: (5) the wars in the Western Balkans. The fourth obstacle is controversial and debatable. A high degree of ethnic diversity in our opinion is not an obsta-cle for democratization; managing ethnic diversity is rather a test for democ-racy and a privilege of democratic and developed countries. However, we should keep in mind that the former Yugoslav republics did not only experi-ence transition from an authoritarian socialist one-party system to a demo-cratic multi-party system, and from an economic system of self-management to a liberal economy, but also from a multi-ethnic federation to an indepen-dent nation-state, which was in no aspects smooth. Many scholars agree that the process of democratic transition could take many years, decades or even generations to achieve democratic consolidation (Dahl 1971, 1998; Mason 1996; Linz and Stepan 1996).

One of the first acts of the socialist states in the democratic transition was the ‘elimination of the constitutional provision for one-party rule,’ and one of the major goals for each of the newly formed governments was the ‘creation of a new constitution that would formalize the new structure of power and insure basic civil liberties’ (Mason 1996: 116). This became a bit more complicated in the Western Balkans due to ethnic tensions. As Dahl (1971: 44) pointed out, ethnic nationalism can be deadly for governments that are trying to democra-tize. As in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, also in Croatia and Serbia the illib-eral democrats won power by ‘using the fear of economic reform and the defence of the nation to forge a new political identity and maintain their polit-ical viability’; they ‘warped democratic institutions, sabotaged economic reform and fostered intolerance in their efforts to concentrate and prolong their power’ (Vachudova 2005: 37–38) until the end of the 1990s. One can argue that due to the fact that new Croatian or Bosnian government could not guar-antee minority rights, the Serb minority could not trust the ‘guarantees of minority rights’ and therefore feared ‘majority rule as potentially deadly’ (Mason 1996: 120). A similar fear of the Albanian minority was present in Kosovo and Macedonia.

A possible solution to consolidating democracy in heterogeneous states is consociational democracy. This model of democracy, developed by political



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8 Europeanization as a concept can be used in different ways. For the purpose of this article, we will use Europeanization as an EU rule adoption process. Heather Grabbe (2006) writes more about this concept in her book The EU’s Transformative Power.

scientist Arend Lijphart (1977; 1999), is possible in societies that are fragmented but in which the political elites are able to unite and cooperate in the interest of peace and political stability. Linz and Stepan (1996: 33–34) believe that

the combination of collective rights of nationalities or minorities in a multinational, multicultural society and state, with the rights of individu-als fully protected by the state, is probably the least conflictual way of articulating such a democratic non-nation-state policy.

The European Union, together with the international community, tried to implement the model of consociational democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord and in Macedonia after the 2001 conflict, but rather unsuccessfully. Political elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not cooperating to achieve political stability and moreover to improve the quality of life of all citizens. The consociational model has created parallel societies with parallel institutions.

In the case of Macedonia, however, the European Commission believes that the Ohrid Framework Agreement represents a building block for democracy and rule of law. Lebamoff, Frances and Ilievski (2008: 30) argue that two types of power-sharing principles and practices were applied to Macedonia: conso-ciational and integrative; however, this complex power sharing is still imper-fect. Macedonian Slavs and Macedonian Albanians live in the same state but hardly cooperate in everyday life. There is actually more cooperation on the political level then on a personal level. The educational system is not inclusive but exclusive; Albanians go to Albanian schools and Macedonians to Macedonian. In the 2010 Progress Report, the European Commission observed that the Macedonian government had taken measures to encourage inter- ethnic inclusion in the educational system, but that inclusion continued to be limited (European Commission 2010: 36).

The EU accession process has tried to encourage democratic transition. By adopting the Aquis Communautaire, the Western Balkans are taking part in Europeanization, a process in which states adopt EU rules.8 However, this is not enough to establish a functioning liberal democracy. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2005: 8) distinguish different forms of adoption: ‘the formal (trans-position of EU rules into national law), the behavioural (adoption is measured by the extent to which behaviour is rule-conforming) and the communicative

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or discursive conception (incorporation of the rule as a positive reference into discourse among domestic actors – domestic actors are truly persuaded of a norm).’ The process of Europeanization can be EU-driven or domestically driven. EU-driven means that a state would not adopt certain rules had it not been for a particular action of the EU (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 9). According to the reports of the European Commission and other interna-tional NGOs, the majority of Western Balkan countries have been formally adopting the EU rules. Croatia has been the most advanced in this process, as it finished with EU negotiations in June 2011, adopting the whole Acquis Communautaire, and joined the EU in July 2013. Other countries are also adopt-ing EU rules, but not yet through the negotiation process. A certain level of compliance with EU standards described in the Copenhagen criteria has to be achieved before starting EU membership negotiations. However, EU rules are not being efficiently implemented in all policy areas; political elites have been only ostensibly complying with EU rules, and therefore the democratization process is slow, as we can see from the following data from the European Commission and Human Rights Watch.

One of the indicators of the level of democratic development is freedom of expression and media, which has been very problematic in the Western Balkans in recent years. In the 2010 and 2011 Progress Reports, the European Commission criticized a low level of freedom of speech and media in all candi-date countries and underlined that this is an integral part of every democratic system and that improvements have to be made. Also, Human Rights Watch reported in the 2011 and 2012 World Reports about cases of journalists who had been threatened or physically attacked in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Furthermore, political interference with the media is unaccept-able in a democracy but is present in many countries of the Western Balkans (European Commission 2010: 8). In the 2011 Progress Report, the European Commission reported some improvements in the legal aspects regarding the media in most of the Western Balkan countries, but past assaults on journalists remained unsolved and political interference was still present (European Commission 2011). Human Rights Watch reported about the delay in constitu-tional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is necessary in order to estab-lish a more democratic system. Constitutional changes were initiated after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that eligibility restrictions for political candidates discriminate against ethnic minorities (Human Rights Watch 2011: 410). In Croatia in 2010, a newly elected president, Ivo Josipović, pledged to promote human rights and the opening of a crucial chapter on European Union membership talks in June 2010, but according to Human Rights Watch the gap between commitments and progress remained (Human



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9 In some countries, the corruption has been revealed: e.g. Croatian former prime minister Ivo Sanader has been prosecuted for corruption connected to Austrian Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank. What kind of legal consequences will follow is yet to be seen. In other countries, corruption has not been prosecuted very effectively so far. On this note we should also mention that the EU member states are not immune to corruption. E.g. the Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank is involved in corruption scandals in Austria and Slovenia as well.

Rights Watch 2011: 415). This shows that democratic transition in the Western Balkans is not complete and that progress in many cases has been superficial. The governments are complying with the EU standards administratively, but the implementation is very low. This is similar to what happened to Slovakia in the 1990s, when Meciar was in power, but according to Vachudova (2005) the leverage of EU membership helped the opposition in winning the next election and implementing democratic standards. In the Western Balkans this task is even harder, due to a high level of corruption of political elites and their connection to organized crime.9 We could argue that the leverage of EU membership helped the Croatian and Serbian left-wing opposition at the end of 1990s to win the elections for the first time, but in recent years the demo-cratic governments, which are cooperating with the EU and supporting the EU integration process, have not been implementing democratic standards suffi-ciently in all areas. The leverage of the prospect of EU membership is not as strong as it was in the case of CEE countries, which were much more enthusi-astic about EU membership. In the Western Balkans, political elites are less committed to EU membership and they only comply with EU rules rhetorically in order to stay in power, therefore making the whole process take much lon-ger, and they can afford to do so, because the people are also more skeptical about the EU. The voters are more skeptical exactly because the EU integration process is taking too long.

4 Legitimizing the Leadership by “Returning to Europe”

In the 1990s, newly elected political leaders in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Southeastern Europe (SEE) gained additional legitimacy by signing up to every international organization, and membership in the European Union was the ultimate goal. Most CEE and SEE candidates for EU member-ship have identified themselves positively with the Western international com-munity, have perceived their norms as legitimate and have worked toward institutionalizing them. After the breakdown of the communist system, the CEE and SEE countries searched for a new place or “home” in the international

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10 Ksenija Vidmar Horvat (2009) researches and debates borders in Europe and their influ-ence on creating European identity in Zemljevidi vmesnosti.

system. The “return to Europe” became their central foreign policy goal. Intensive cooperation with and, eventually, full membership in the Western organizations have been the most important elements of this strategy. The “return to Europe” has generally enjoyed a broad consensus among the major political forces in CEE and SEE countries, and has been pursued by post-communist no less than by centrist or right-wing governments.

According to Schimmelfennig (2003: 90), in the sociological perspective, the desire to join Western organizations can be explained by the identification and the legitimation needs of the CEE and SEE countries. The “return to Europe” results from a strong identification with Western values and norms, as well as with the Western European international community from which these coun-tries had been cut off under communist rule. According to Vidmar Horvat (2009: 27), Europeanness became ‘an instrument of historic differentiation and solidification of cultural distinction’ in the region, and as observed by Schimmelfennig (2003: 90–91), “only a few CEE countries had traditionally been part of the Western liberal community so that the ‘return to Europe’ in this sense is a euphemistic label.” Furthermore, former Yugoslavia was not really “cut off” from the Western Europe, since communism was a bottom-up process in this country. Nevertheless, for post-communist countries, member-ship in the EU (and NATO) represented the strongest indication that they had transformed themselves into modern European countries. At the same time, it indicates they have broken links with their communist past and cast off their “Eastern” identity, hence that their “national identity […] [had been] upgraded and rounded up with Euro-Atlantic membership” (Mandelc 2011: 144). Similar construction of national identity can be found in the Western Balkans. For example, Croatia has been trying to break free from the Balkans, and EU mem-bership would position Croatia on the other side of the border, vis-à-vis the Balkans, but only as long as the rest of the Western Balkan countries remain outside the Union (the same perception was noted in Slovenia). State institu-tions in Croatia have symbolically shown that they belong to Europe by dis-playing the EU flag next to the national flag years before entering the EU. Montenegro began using the euro currency even before it became indepen-dent. In this way it distinguished itself from Serbia, formed its own monetary policy and also showed its “belonging” to the EU.10 At the border-crossing Montenegro-Croatia, Debeli Brijeg, there is a sign indicating that the European Agency for Reconstruction co-financed construction of the border crossing. The sign has an enormous EU flag, which from a distance gives the impression



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11 This sign was documented by the author in February 2010.

of entering the European Union.11 However, Serbia is less eager to show its belonging to the West. Due to not so amicable relations with the West in the recent past (NATO bombing and European majority support for Kosovo inde-pendence), and Orthodox-Slavic connection with Russia, Serbia lingers between the East and the West. The majority of political elites in Serbia are aware that EU membership can bring them benefits, but good relations with Russia can also be beneficial.

Schimmelfennig (2003: 90) points out that the prospect of membership in Western organizations has served as an important additional source of legiti-macy for the proponents of liberal democratic reform in CEE and SEE. First, it enhances their international legitimacy. Especially for new states like Slovenia and Croatia, for instance, whose statehood might have been fragile and contested and whose territorial borders may be disputed, membership in the Western orga-nizations is an important normative source of support. Second, membership enhances domestic legitimacy. Changes in domestic and foreign policy as well as the hardship of transformation are easier to justify and implement if they are demanded by Western organizations as a condition of closer cooperation and accession. “The accession to Western organizations has conferred political pres-tige upon CEE governments, strengthened the self-esteem of CEE societies and made authoritarian reversals more difficult” (Schimmelfennig 2003: 91).

Those countries in CEE and SEE that did not work toward institutionalizing Western liberal norms sought membership in the Western organizations as well (Vachudova 2005). Identification with the values of the Western international community and the domestic institutionalization of liberal norms seems to be a sufficient condition for the CEE and SEE countries’ interest in EU membership. However, commitment to western values and norms has not been a necessary condition. CEE and SEE governments which exhibited authoritarian tendencies and defied western norms and socialization efforts sought no less than liberal-democratic and reform-minded governments to deepen their institutional rela-tionship with the EU and to achieve full membership status (Schimmelfennig 2003: 91). This applies to Croatia under the Tuđman regime (until 2000), Romania under Iliescu (until 1996) and Slovakia under Meciar (until 1998).

5 EU Conditionality

Observing the accession process very carefully, one can notice that the EU has been using the leverage of prospective EU membership and of EU conditionality

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throughout the accession process in order to encourage the candidate coun-tries towards European values and norms, the so-called Copenhagen criteria. In this section, we are going to show how EU conditionality influenced imple-mentation of certain policies in the Western Balkans, mainly in Croatia. We have chosen examples from Croatia due to the fact that the country has been the most advanced in the EU accession process in the Western Balkans and has already joined the EU.

EU conditionality actually started as a conditionality of the aid programmes designed for Eastern Europe after 1989 (e.g.: PHARE programme), and was sim-ilar to the aid programme conditionality of other international actors (IMF, World Bank). Later on, it developed into a political conditionality of democ-racy promotion, rule of law and respect for human rights. The combination of economic and political elements and the attempt at simultaneous operation across the region make EU conditionality exceptional in its scope and purpose.

The problem is in measuring the actual effect of conditionality on the can-didate state. It is difficult to detect whether the political elites started to com-ply with EU values and norms by themselves or whether the EU conditionality initiated this process. ‘Therefore it is difficult to prove which reforms have been carried out because of conditionality and which would be carried out even in the absence of the EU’s conditionality’ (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 2). In theory, governments accept and implement EU rules due to different reasons. There is a debate between rationalist and constructiv-ist arguments for why the European Union would want to enlarge and why states would apply for EU membership. In short, the rationalist argument is about costs and benefits of enlargement, i.e., the egoistic reasons of each state; the constructivist argument is more about establishing a community of peace and stability in Europe. In order to explain how EU conditionality functions, one must also look at these arguments. According to the first argument, a gov-ernment would adopt EU rules only when benefits are greater than costs; from the perspective of the second argument, a government would adopt EU rules based upon a discursive conception – it believes that the state belongs to Europe and that the new EU rules are good for the state; therefore, rules are imported voluntarily as the result of perceived domestic utility rather than through a weighting of EU rewards versus adjustment costs.

There are different opinions on whether EU conditionality has had a posi-tive or negative effect on candidate countries. Schimmelfennig and Vachudova both argue that due to the strong leverage of the prospect of EU membership, the CEE countries strengthened liberal democracy. Whether the same “posi-tive” effect is happening in the Western Balkans is yet to be seen. One can argue



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12 For example, access to structural funds and more foreign direct investments.

that the “ICTY condition” encouraged the Western Balkan governments to arrest generals and politicians that are suspected of committing war crimes.

Milada Vachudova sees conditionality as a positive force on the EU pre- accession process, which compelled all CEE governments to reform the state and the economy, embarking on politically difficult or inconvenient reforms instead of delaying them. Vachudova (2005) argues that the deliberate condi-tionality exercised in the EU’s pre-accession process has been so powerful because it builds on the benefits of membership. Once the EU developed its active leverage, it had so much attraction for the domestic politics of credible EU members because the potential benefits12 of membership were so appealing. Rulers that disqualified their states from EU membership by conducting illiberal politics and partial economic reform, like for example Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, could not turn his back on the EU, because the EU was too popular with the electorate. Their participation in the EU’s pre-accession process opened the door to criticism of their domestic policies, strengthening the hand of their domestic opponents (Vachudova 2005: 99). Kempe and Meurs (2003: 19) agree with Vachudova by arguing that active leverage – EUconditionality in bilateral relations with individual countries – is at present the most important instru-ment for implementing certain EU objectives in the Western Balkans.

There is a consensus among these studies that the conditionality for the adoption of the Acquis has a strong causal effect in steering policy and institu-tional change in post-socialist countries. In general, EU conditionality has been viewed as an important lever for democracy promotion and is seen as having made a significant contribution to ‘foreign made democracy’ in the CEE. However, in the Western Balkans the impact is not as big as it was in CEE, as already explained in the above section.

As in CEE countries, also in the Western Balkan countries the ‘desire […] to join the EU, combined with the high volume and intrusiveness of the rules attached to membership, allows the EU an unprecedented influence in restruc-turing domestic institutions and the entire range of public policies […].’ (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 1) However, Trauner (2009) argues that the biggest leverage for rule adoption in the Western Balkans has been policy conditionality and not membership conditionality, which he shows with two case studies, Macedonia and Croatia, and with the incentive of visa- liberalisation regime. Moreover, Džihić and Wieser (2011) examine the influ-ence of EU conditionality on democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they argue that the effectiveness of EU conditionality is weakened by the increasing domestic political costs of compliance.

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Due to low public support for EU membership in Croatia since 2005,13 the motivation to join the EU was mostly on the side of Croatian political elites. The Croatian state was deeply involved in the EU accession process and turn-ing away from it would be too costly. Only after the conclusion of official nego-tiations with the EU did support for EU membership begin to grow, and in January 2012 Croatian voters voted in the referendum in favour of the EU mem-bership (66% in favour, 33% against). Since the beginning of the EU integra-tion process, the Croatian political elite had been manoeuvring between the EU Commission and the domestic constituency, implementing only the most obvious reforms and leaving the unpleasant reforms aside. Because high rank-ing Croatian politicians from the governing party HDZ were involved in orga-nized crime and corruption, not a lot of improvement was made in this area until Prime Minister Ivo Sanader resigned and Jadranka Kosor took over the government in summer 2009. When critique and demands from the European Commission became more serious and strict, the government began to solve the problem of organized crime.

Schimmelfennig, Engert and Knobel (2005: 29) argue that

the likelihood of rule adoption has varied mainly with the size of adop-tion costs. Provided that the credibility of EU political conditionality is high both with regard to the promise of membership and the threat of exclusion, it is the size of domestic political costs for the target govern-ment that determines its propensity to meet EU demands.

However, it is also important how far in the process the country is at a certain moment: the further along it is, more costly it would be to turn away from the process. For example, in the case when the European Union insisted on the privatization of shipyards in Croatia at the end of the negotiation process, and the domestic public was not supportive of the privatization and of the EU accession, the Croatian government did not oppose it, because turning away from the process would be too costly. The EU has exercised the power of asym-metry and the transformative power of EU conditionality on various occasions.

13 Eurobarometer from Autumn 2009 shows the lowest domestic support for the EU acces-sion of Croatia but also extremely low trust in Croatian politics and government. Only 24% thought that EU membership was good for Croatia and 37% thought it was bad. Almost 85% did not trust the Croatian government and 85% were not satisfied with democracy in the country (Eurobarometer, 2009). However, a year later, in Autumn 2010, the ratio between the eurosceptics and eurooptimists was almost even: 27% thought that EU membership was good, while 29% thought that it was bad. However, the number of undecided grew to 41%.



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Even to start the negotiations, Croatia had to prove its cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and “give up” a national hero, General Gotovina, in 2005, although the domestic public opposed it and afterwards the support for EU accession began to fall unstop-pably. In order to continue the negotiations in 2009, Croatia had to achieve an agreement with Slovenia regarding an approach for solving the border issue. Furthermore, the EU also pressured Croatia to solve or at least to start solving its border issue with Serbia and the issue of Bosnian Croats before entering into the Union.

There are some difficulties with the above-mentioned “positive” approaches to the effects of EU conditionality. Hughes, Sasse and Gordon (2004) argue that there is often a tendency to ‘mythologize’ the positive relationship between EU conditionality and EU enlargement. They try to explain whether it is possible to attribute any “Europeanizing” effects from EU conditionality in institution-building, norm construction and convergence with regard to enlargement.

Heather Grabbe mentions a negative effect and views conditionality as a factor that has the potential to frustrate moves toward greater European inte-gration in the medium term, because conditionality involves costs to the can-didate countries in the implementation of what is essentially a moving target within an ‘evolving process that is highly politicized, especially on the EU side’ (Grabbe 2001: 252). Grabbe argues that the conditionality rules are too loose, which results in difficulties when the candidates themselves try to analyse EU accession conditionality and what they have to do (Grabbe 2006: 31). That can be one way of looking at it, but one must take into account that EU accession is a political project and the power asymmetry plays a big role in the whole process; therefore the EU can change or at least modify the conditions accord-ing to the current situation.

When the rhetorical action is in place, the implementation is not always successful but only ostensible. Hughes, Sasse and Gordon (2004: 11) argue that in studying conditionality and compliance it is important to distinguish between ‘the effective implementation of policy derived from EU conditional-ity, which is generally weak, and rhetorical or formal conditionality and com-pliance, which is strong.’ The problem is also in measuring whether the regime-change, for example in Croatia or in Serbia in 2000, really happened because of EU passive leverage or because the voters were voting for the oppo-sition due to current bad political and economic situation. Besides, president Tuđman died before the elections in 2000 and his party HDZ succumbed to internal rivalries. All this contributed to the regime change. In 1999, Belgrade was bombed by NATO, that means also by EU member states, so the public was not really in favour of the West; however, wars had exhausted Serbia (BIH

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14 In 2000, several killings of known public figures that were involved in organized crime happened in public in Belgrade, which was shocking for the citizens. For more, see Misha Glenny, 2008.

1992–1995, Kosovo in 1999), the country was in a bad economic situation (UN sanctions), and organized crime expanded enormously.14 The alternative to the current regime was the opposition, which was supported by the European Union and was in favour of EU membership.

As Hughes, Sasse and Gordon underline, the new conditionality was satu-rated with inconsistency in its implementation. There have been numerous cases demonstrating “the inconsistency with which the EC, Western govern-ments and multilateral organizations applied conditionality and their back-sliding from sanctions when their own selfish economic and security interests were considered to be paramount to normative political conditionality” (Hughes, Sasse and Gordon 2004: 18–19). These inconsistencies diminish the transformative power of EU conditionality to a certain degree, and also frus-trate the candidate country, which has problems in following the rules, as they are constantly changing.

6 Conclusion

Democratic values, human rights and rule of law lie at the core of the idea of European Union. The pre-condition to even start the negotiations is that the aspiring country meets democratic standards. The democratization process in the Western Balkans has encountered many obstacles, and it might take decades before democracy is fully established. The lack of a democratic tradi-tion, weak institutions, ethnic tensions and slow economic recovery after the wars have hindered the democratization process; hence, this is not surpris-ing. Also, Western democracies needed several decades or even centuries before they established the democracies we know in our time (even if still imperfect).

With the incentive of EU membership and EU conditionality, the European Union has been encouraging the implementation of democracy in the Western Balkans, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully. The EU tightened up the rules for the Western Balkan countries after the experience of the enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, and is being more careful in set-ting out the conditions, but the democratisation process is still moving for-ward very slowly. The governments of the Western Balkans are ostensibly complying with the vast majority of EU rules, but the actual implementation



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of reforms lags behind. The political elites are less committed to the EU acces-sion process than the elites were in CEE. They are trying to preserve domestic political power, which is based on nationalistic discourses, and at the same time trying to comply with EU rules rhetorically in order to stay on the EU track, which also brings some benefits. Thus, the whole process is taking much longer and the domestic political elites can afford this, because the voters are also more skeptical about the EU. Hence, the EU integration process in the Western Balkans is highly challenged by national political elites and national identity.

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The European Union and the Democratization Process of the Western Balkans