Here is the most recent interview on the ESI proposal on the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece which I just gave to the Macedonian daily Paper Dnevnik. The Macedonian version is online as well.

Previous press coverage and reactions to the proposal you find here.

Your proposal was discussed in Macedonia but not in Greece. Do you think that Greece could accept such an arrangement?

Yes, I do. There is a simple reason why both Macedonia and Greece could accept this: it is better than the status quo for both. At this moment EU Balkan enlargement is completely blocked. Serbia is blocked because of Kosovo; it is simply inconceivable that the EU will admit another country with an unsolved territorial dispute, as it has done in the case of Cyprus, and this is slowly becoming clear to Belgrade. Bosnia and Kosovo are blocked because they are still protectorates. Turkey is negotiating but moving at snail’s pace because of the Cyprus issue. And Macedonia, the frontrunner among the Balkan states so often in the past, is blocked because of the name. Some EU member states, eager to postpone the next wave of accession for another generation, hide behind these unresolved issues. The current government in Athens does not like this. Remember, Papandreou has taken political risks before to promote the EU integration of the region: in 1999 he changed decades of Greek foreign policy to support, rather than to oppose, Turkey becoming a candidate for EU accession. He put a lot of energy behind the Thessaloniki summit in 2003 to persuade a skeptical EU to give the Balkans a clear perspective.  The same team in Athens is now trying to create new momentum in favour of Balkan enlargement again, which they see as a matter of Greek national interest.

Why would your proposal be acceptable for Greece?

Here is what could happen.  First Macedonia and Greece agree on a name, such as “Republic of Macedonia Vardar”, or something similar, to replace Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia wherever FYROM is used now: in the EU, in the UN and in other international organizations. Macedonia changes its constitution to say that from the moment it becomes an EU member its international name will be, for instance, “Republic of Macedonia Vardar”. In the Macedonian language the country would remain “Republika Makedonija”. Next, Macedonia joins Nato and EU accession talks begin still in 2010. So what would happen in Athens? The Greek government would be attacked, of course. That is what oppositions do, and Samaras is not famous for his moderation in this particular matter. They could complain: “You allow Macedonia to join NATO and unblock the EU accession talks without a solution of the name entering into force now.” But Papandreou could say that this compromise is still better than what any other Greek government, including those in which Samaras served, have achieved in two decades. First, to have Macedonia join Nato and to see EU enlargement continue is in Athen’s vital interest. Second, he can point to the constitutional amendment and he could warn that those in Greece who want to press for further concessions from Skopje would risk losing everything. And third, he can ask what the policy of the past two decades has really achieved even for the most radical Greek nationalist? This compromise makes it unattractive for any future Greek government to use its veto at any stage in the accession process. Objectively it then becomes a Greek interest to see Macedonia join the EU rather sooner, whoever is in power in Athens.

Diplomatic sources in Athens say that the last deadline for Papandreou to find a solution for the name issue is end of August or mid September because the autumn will be difficult for the Greek government. How credible is this in your opinion?

I think it is credible. Papandreou is still popular in Greece, but the hardest economic and social reforms are yet to come. No unpopular Greek government would be able to make any compromise, which still has to be sold to the public. This promises to be a hot autumn in Greece, and managing the economic reforms and likely protests will absorb all the government’s attention. At this moment there are two strong governments, both in Skopje and in Athens.  There will not be a better opportunity to resolve this than exists in the next few weeks. Perhaps not for another decade or more. Perhaps never.

How much the Greek crisis influences the search for the name solution?

I believe that this government in Athens would have wanted to solve the problem even without a crisis, but the economic crisis has given it additional arguments. First, it can argue that Greece needs to have good relations with all of its neighbours for economic reasons. It cannot afford to alienate either potential tourists or potential markets if it wants to get out of its economic hole. If South East Europe develops, it will also help Greek companies. Second, Greece has seen its European reputation undermined due to economic mismanagement. Any success in foreign policy would restore it as a credible actor in Brussels.

Have you had some contacts in the Macedonian government and do you believe that they could accept your proposal?

Yes and yes. Of course, some will say that there should never ever be a compromise. Some still believe – ignoring what the European Council hast now stated repeatedly – that perhaps the EU will not demand a compromise before opening accession talks. But even if you are opposed to ever changing to name you might like this particular proposal! Here is what the government could tell those who want no concession at all, ever: “First, we get Macedonia into Nato.  At a moment when there is growing uncertainty again about the future of the Balkans this is good for investors, for interethnic relations and for Macedonia’s position in the world. Second, we start EU accession talks. This is also good in itself, even if in the end we decide that we do not want to join. Since Turkey started accession talks, it has seen its economy grow faster than ever before. The same has been the experience of other countries. Third, when our EU accession talks are completed the Macedonian public can decide in a referendum whether it actually wants to join the EU and change its international name or whether it does not want to join and keep the current name. This is a decision that will be taken then, and it is one that the people will make directly once they have a real choice. In the meantime, Macedonia reasserts its position as a frontrunner in the Balkans. In the very worst case, if a future Greek government or another EU government blocks Macedonia’s EU accession, nothing is lost. It is a win-win situation. So, even if you live in Australia and do not care much about Macedonia joining the EU, you might think that this is, at least, a tactical gain. If you live in Stip or Kumanovo or Ohrid or Skopje, you certainly do.”

If you have to say who is more credible saying that they want a compromise on the name issue, who would you choose between Skopje and Athens?

Both say that they want a compromise. What I do not know is whether the leaders will have the courage to take any decision, because clearly previous generations of leaders did not on this matter.  As I said before, Papandreou has proven in the past, most spectacularly with Turkey, that he is capable of taking unpopular decisions if he believes they are in Greece’s long-term interest. In the context of implementing the Ohrid Agreement leaders in Macedonia have also shown courage and determination, which is why Skopje is now quite far ahead of Belgrade. At the same time both countries have red lines. No Macedonian leader will be able to change the name simply in return for the opening of talks, with no guarantee that there will not be more demands later, once a concession is made. And no Greek leader can give up totally on the idea of a change in the name. This means simply that both Skopje and Athens need a compromise they can defend, because in both countries, whatever is agreed, it will be attacked by some.

Do you believe in fast solution that would allow Macedonia to get into NATO and start EU talks?

If a solution is found in the next weeks, both NATO and the start of EU talks will happen very soon. This would be a very encouraging signal, benefiting Athens, Skopje and the whole Balkans. What makes me nervous is the alternative. If there is no solution now, when circumstances are better than they have ever been before, then there might not be another breakthrough for the next two decades. The name issue would become a truly frozen bilateral conflict, like Spain and the UK’s disagreement over Gibraltar, which nobody believes will ever be resolved. This is a very realistic danger.

You were recently in Brussels. How would you qualify the mood concerning the name issue? Are people there impatient or become more and more indifferent?

You have both. Those who work on enlargement are cautiously hopeful, but in a sense they have to be: the future of their job depends in part on finding a solution.  People who work on enlargement believe that a solution has never been closer: this is what they have been told by the parties involved as well.  As a result there would be tremendous disappointment if this fails. On the other hand there are people less keen on enlargement, which is a large number.  They have become indifferent a long time ago. They think that this is simply another irrational Balkan dispute, which shows why it was a mistake to admit any Balkan countries to the EU in the first place. They fear the day when even more Balkan countries might join and welcome any reason for delay. They read the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine a few weeks ago, which wrote that our proposal has only one problem: “it is too reasonable.” They do not believe that reasonable solutions ever work in the Balkans.

Does Brussels still believe that the name issue could be solved rapidly?

Few people believe in a rapid solution after 19 years without one, but some people certainly hope that it will be solved soon.  This is particularly true for those who work in DG enlargement. They know that the credibility of an EU perspective cannot be stretched out forever. They want an end to this conflict almost as badly as people in the region.  But I did not find many people in Brussels willing to put their own money on a breakthrough. When it will happen, it will still be a tremendous surprise to everyone. As one of the most optimistic officials told me: “While I believe that this time a breakthrough could happen, and ought to happen, and would be in everybody’s objective interest to happen, I still cannot believe that it will happen.”

EC is not satisfied with the reform process in Macedonia. Can Macedonia expect more critical remarks from Brussels in the following months?

Yes. The problem is, however, that without a credible enlargement perspective any critical remarks from Brussels, however justified, are unlikely to achieve much. If a country does not believe it will ever join, whatever the state of reforms, why worry about a critical report from Brussels? The next weeks will also decide about the future of the EU’s leverage and influence, not only in Skopje but in the whole Western Balkans.

Dnevnik, Monday 16 August 2010

As numerous European leaders are looking for excuses to slow down the EU accession path of Western Balkan nations it becomes all the more important to be extremely precise when it comes to describing the problems of the region. How not to do it can be seen by looking at a recent publication by the respected IISS (International Institute of Strategic Studies).

A recent short “comment” under the sensationalist title Balkan crime jeopardises EU accession hopes notes

“Recent evidence of the depth and scale of criminal and corrupt activities have bolstered the arguments of those who believe that these countries have a long way to go before they can accede to the EU, and that any attempt to accelerate their accession would be mistaken.”

Then the tone of the paper is set with an opening quote from a 2003 EU document, including references to failed states, drugs, weapons and even terrorism (!):

“Organised crime is routinely listed by the EU and other bodies and governments in their assessments of security threats. The European Security Strategy developed by the EU in 2003, for example, said Europe was a prime target for organised crime which was ‘often associated with weak or failing states’. ‘This internal threat to our security’, it said, ‘has an important external dimension: cross-border trafficking in drugs, women, illegal migrants and weapons accounts for a large part of the activities of criminal gangs. It can have links with terrorism … All these activities undermine both the rule of law and social order itself. In extreme cases, organised crime can come to dominate the state.’ The strategy document also noted that most of the heroin coming to Europe from Afghanistan was distributed through Balkan criminal networks which ‘are also responsible for some 200,000 of the 700,000 women victims of the sex trade world-wide’.”

And the policy implication from all this is also spelt out in the conclusion:

“Regional efforts to rid the Balkans of their criminal networks come as expectations grow that Germany and other countries will demand ever-stricter criteria for countries wishing to join the EU after Croatia, which, if it resolves outstanding issues with the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, could be admitted in 2012 or 2013. The remaining countries of the region, however, have so much to do in terms of preparation, including tackling crime and improving judicial governance, that no other Balkan country can realistically be expected to join before 2020. Dealing with the issue of organised crime and corruption is a constant refrain from all concerned. Those sceptical of early EU enlargement to include the western Balkans often claim that Romania and Bulgaria were admitted to the EU before their institutions, including justice and policing, were ready. The recent revelations have given such critics ammunition to argue that the mistake must not be made again.” (emphasis added by me)

In fact, as described in a recent ECFR paper, there are very good reasons, which have nothing to do with state failure or crime, why no Balkan country is likely to join the EU before 2020.

The quality of research behind this briefing is also made clear by the fact that the text leaves uncommented its own reference to “200,000 women victims of the sex trade”.

This number was always an imaginary figure: it was never (not even in 2003) based on any empirical evidence. But ironically, the IISS briefing appears shortly after another institution, the US State Departement, published its own annual assessment of the trafficking situation, confirming a positive trend in the Balkans that has been ongoing for years.

Now, what can one learn from the latest State Department Trafficking Report 2010? The best performing countries in the world when it comes to fighting trafficking are included in category 1. This means “countries whose governments fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) minimum standards.” And this includes not only most EU members but also BiH and Croatia!

Category 2, on the other hand, includes countries facing problems, such as Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey. But it is worth putting this in context: in this category (2) we also find 10 EU member states, including Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

It is also worth noting that “most of the heroin coming to Europe from Afghanistan” quite probably first has to cross Turkey (an EU candidate state and Nato member) as well as EU members Greece, Bulgaria and Romania to even get to the Western Balkans. Smugglers then still have to cross the external Schengen borders in Slovenia or Hungary as well. This is hardly a Western Balkan problem, it is an international one, and Italians, Turks, Colombians, Afghans, Russians and Ukrainians are as likely to be involved as Albanians or Serbs.

The concrete and recent evidence IISS offers in this short brief is of a successful Serbian police operation in cooperation with other law enforcement bodies against an international drug smuggling group. In fact, the whole brief suggests that there is growing and improving regional cooperation in successfully fighting crime.

It is banal to say that there is organised crime in the Balkans. It exists, as indeed it does in any other country of Europe. It is also banal to note that the situation today is very different (and much better) than in the 1990s. The real policy question is whether institutions in the region are building their capacity to fight it in cooperation with their counterparts in EU countries. In this light, one can read the following IISS observation rather differently:

“In January, the Serbian and Italian police arrested 33 people for cocaine trafficking, amongst whom were not only Serbs, Montenegrins and Albanians, but also Italians and Colombians. According to some reports, the seizure of the Maui followed the tracking in April 2009 of a shipment of drugs from Argentina to the Greek port of Thessalonika, where a Greek prosecutor did not allow the ship to be searched after he was provided with papers to prove that it had been checked on leaving Argentina.”

Here a ship (the Maui) goes from Argentina to Greece, and an international ring including Balkan citizens is exposed as a result of international police cooperation involving also Balkan police forces. Why this should be held against Western Balkan aspirations to begin accession talks is never explained.

By all means, let us be critical where efforts to fight organised crime fall short in the Balkans. But serious institutions such as IISS should not engage in sloppy arguments, based on outdated facts, and spiced up by prejudice.

For more please read: U.S. Department of State: Trafficking in Persons Report 2010

A few weeks ago I wrote on this website that “recently, some people have argued that there is a possibility of a new violent conflict in the Western Balkans”. Let me be more specific here.

Today I was sent an article by Bodo Weber and Kurt Bassuener. There they argue that “Bosnia is backsliding into political chaos and possibly even renewed ethnic violence.” The tone of the whole article is deeply alarmist: “international disarray”, “debacle”, “potential break-up of the country”, “resounding failure.” It is an argument they have made many more times elsewhere in recent months, as can be seen on the website of their think tank.

Travnik is peaceful today, but according to some Bosnia remains a powderkeg

What do the authors suggest should be done about this state of affairs? They make the following concrete proposals:

• keep the Office of the High Representative (OHR) intact and preserve its powers until there is a “new and functional constitutional order” (this is not defined); separate it from the EUSR
• the EU should help “reshuffle the deck through the October 2010 elections” (they do not specify in whose favor)
• the EU should “facilitate substantial constitutional reform”
• there should be a shift in US policy, which “would have to occur at the cabinet level, even undertaken by President Obama himself”
• and the US should send a special envoy for the Balkans

This raises many questions. How exactly is the EU to “reshuffle the deck”? Is OHR needed to keep Bosnia from falling apart, to push for a new constitution or both? What does substantial constitutional reform look like? And what would a US envoy do that a US ambassador cannot?

There is also a question of realpolitik: why – given current challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Iraq and Iran, in Yemen, Columbia, Israel or Haiti – should President Obama himself become interested in a country that has largely demilitarised, has seen no serious incidents of interethnic violence for a decade, has a population one fourth the size of Karachi, and is today surrounded by two neighbours, Serbia and Croatia, which – instead of planning its partition, as they did in 1991 – are committed to their own Western integration?

Vice-president Biden recently visited Bosnia and reaffirmed a US commitment to Bosnian statehood. This was a useful signal. Should Biden visit again? Is any international strategy which relies on an increase in US interest, a willingness to take on Russia and to push aside the EU in Bosnia, realistic? To put this in perspective, it is perhaps useful to look across the US’ southern Border to Mexico. As a recent NYT article noted:

“Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. In 2008, there were more than 6,200 drug-related murders, more than double the figure from the year before. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration … While Mr. Calderon dismisses suggestions that Mexico is a failed state, he and his aides have spoken frankly of the cartels’ attempts to set up a state within a state, levying taxes, throwing up roadblocks and enforcing their own perverse codes of behavior. The Mexican government has identified 233 “zones of impunity” across the country, where crime is largely uncontrolled, a figure that is down from 2,204 zones a year ago.” (NYT October 2009)

Mexico’s current problems concern the US directly. By comparison, the problems of Bosnia are both manageable and distant. Observers sometimes losely talk about Bosnia today as a failed state, but there are few facts to back this up. Crime rates, as I have shown on this site before, are low even by European standards. Life expectancy is relatively high. Child mortality rates are too high by comparison to Austria or even Croatia, but lower than in Romania or Turkey (see below).

Slavko Lovric, a Bosnian Croat who returned after the war, later became chief of police in Travnik

Bosnia has regular elections. There have been alternations in power at every level of government. The police does not torture, people feel save going out at night, the military does not intervene in politics, and there is full freedom of movement throughout the country. By comparison with Turkey (where thousands of minors are in prison based on draconian anti-terror legislation and where journalists all too often find themselves in court) Bosnia is doing well when it comes to meeting the Copenhagen human rights criteria. This is not to say that Bosnia does not have problems, but it is an argument to put these problems in perspective.

MALE LIFE EXPECTANCY at birth

INFANT MORTALITY RATES
Deaths / 1,000 life births

Bosnia is failing today most conspicuously by comparison to its (West) European EU neighbours. It has unacceptably high unemployment rates. There are a lot of political tensions (more on those in a later entry). There is widespread pessimism and deep frustration among the population. Bosnia’s leaders are not doing enough to close the prosperity gap even with Croatia and the current pace of reform means that Bosnia will not catch up (or join the EU) for another generation.

All this should concern Europeans, as – and here I fully agree with Kurt and Bodo – the EU’s credibility is at stake in the Balkans. The EU can ill afford a ghetto of backwardness. I would even argue that it owes Bosnians, given its disastrous failures in the 1990s. The Balkans should become as stable as Central Europe, and the road to get there is still long. But does this make Bosnia a priority issue for the US?

A Bosnian imam in Republika Srpska -
the village and the mosque had been destroyed during the war

This is where the rhetoric of a looming threat, abstract warnings about possible large-scale violence in Bosnia, becomes important and the temptation arises to play up such threats, whatever the potential costs to Bosnia’s image, investor confidence, or its EU aspirations. Perhaps, some might argue, fear of a new war – and memories of the slaughterhouse Bosnia had become from 1992 to 1995 – will make a busy US president focus on Bosnia again after all?

But what if this threat does not actually exist? What if the real worst case scenario is the one Daniel Korski recently described as Bosnia stagnating, with all its current problems, to the general indifference of the outside world, both the US and the EU? This would be bad for Bosnians, bad for the Balkan region and bad for the EU. It might even lead to new tensions one day which are not yet visible. But it is hardly a matter over which a US president would lose much sleep today.

(Skeptics might also point out that even the personal involvement of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in 2006 did not prevent the April Constitutional Reform Package, a US inspired draft, from being rejected … and that it was brought down as a result of the votes in parliament of the party led by a man, Haris Silajdzic, who had long put his trust in a stronger US role. Why would this be different the next time around?)

Everyone agrees that there needs to be constitutional reform to join the EU -
the question is how

The notion that Bosnia needs constitutional reform to catch up with its more advanced neighbours is, on the other hand, compelling and largely beyond doubt. The hard question is how to get there. Essentially there are two ways forward. One is to impose it. The other is for Bosnia’s leaders to agree to it.

Do Kurt and Bodo propose to impose constitutional change? For if they do not (and I am not sure) we might not be so far apart in our proposals. ESI has, some years ago, written two papers on what is wrong about the current constitutional debate in Bosnia:

• Making Federalism Work – A Radical Proposal for Practical Reform
• Waiting for a Miracle? The Politics of Constitutional Change in Bosnia and Herzegovina

We never believed that what we proposed here is a master plan for solving Bosnia’s constitutional problems, only that the question – how do you get Bosnian leaders to agree to serious changes that actually make a difference – must be the starting point for any serious reflection.

This is where Kurt, Bodo and many US analysts on the one hand and most of the leaders in today’s European Union on the other part company. While everyone agrees on the need for constitutional change in Bosnia, leaders like Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt argue that this is much easier to achieve in the context of a serious EU accession process than outside of it. It is not going to be achieved by inventing criteria for Bosnia which no other candidate had to meet. This did not work with police reform in 2007, when the EU risked its credibility by inventing specific “European standards of policing” which simply did not exist (and its Bosnian counterparts knew it as well as the European Commission).

This does not mean that any progress is guaranteed, even if there is a credible offer of EU candidate status or of opening accession negotiations. The door can be wide open: it is still Bosnian politicians who must agree among each other to walk through it. But there are powerful incentives and one could see them at work even recently.

Sometimes – as in the surprising story of Bosnia’s visa reform effort – these incentives are the result of concrete and immediate benefits the EU can offer. But they are also related to wider regional dynamics.

Most Bosniaks (or Bosnian citizens identifying with their multinational state) would (rightly) hate to see Bosnia fall behind its Serbian neighbour on the road to the EU. But so would most Bosnian Serbs. There is thus a lot of benefit in a healthy regional competition when it comes to EU accession. What this requires is that this competition is organised in a manner that is fair and transparent. Above all it requires that all countries take part in the race for the race to begin. But more on this later.

In the meantime, if you are interested in following a debate on Bosnia between Daniel Korski (from ECFR), Kurt and myself – and see how Kurt answers some questions which I posed to him on these issues – go here, to the ECFR website.

Further reading: my contribution to the ECFR Bosnia debate today

Dear Daniel,

I do not know where to start: Bosnia’s problems do not lend themselves to solutions that can be formulated in four paragraphs. But let me try and use this opportunity to get Kurt, and others who share his vision of Bosnia’s problems, to explain in more detail what it is that the rest of us are missing.

Central to Kurt’s argument is the claim that “Bosnia is backsliding into political chaos and possibly even renewed ethnic conflict” (as he writes in an essay I read today) and that the risk of a return to armed conflict can “no longer be excluded”.

Who does he expect to pick up arms? Which Bosnian leader would contemplate this today? What is the scenario for such an escalation? Does Kurt know things that EU military observers, who have reduced EUFOR to an almost negligable size and do not feel guilty of irresponsibility, miss?

Please be concrete: which leader in Bosnia do you suspect is contemplating the use of armed force and a “renewed ethnic conflict”? Which group do you believe is ready to return to war? Without answering the question of what the real threat is, it is hard to confront it.

After all, to say that Bosnia is a country on the verge of disintegration is not a minor thing. If foreign or domestic investors would believe Kurt, they should rethink any future investment. Failing states also do not make credible candidates for EU accession. Most importantly, if the EU would believe Kurt, the debate about OHR would be a sideshow, a dangerous diversion even, from the real burning issues. No OHR-type mandate would have stopped Bosnia sliding into war in 1992 by “dismissing” Radovan Karadzic from his position as Serb leader. For this force was needed. So if there is a real threat of armed conflict then the urgent priority would be to send substantially more foreign soldiers to prevent another tragedy from happening.

I do not believe that there is any such threat, and as a result I believe it is deeply irresponsible to keep on talking in vague terms about it. This damages Bosnia on so many levels. But I hope Kurt will go beyond referring to “popular fears” to tell us why he thinks this risk, which he argues did not exist in 2006, when Kostuncia was leader in Belgrade, exists today.

Perhaps the EU could do a better job spelling out that Bosnia will never be allowed to fall apart, even if this is obvious to any European policy maker. There are then two obvious points to make: first, any Bosnian politician calling on people to pick up weapons again would be treated as a criminal, not as a political interlocutor. The first one who orders somebody to shot would end up in a European jail, with no place to hide. Second, an independent RS would be as miserable a place as Transdnistria, or Abchazia without Russian help. The EU has not recognized Northern Cyprus in decades, and it never will. It will never recognize any alternative to the current Bosnian state. As I said, this may be obvious but sometimes the obvious benefits from being restated.

My second question to Kurt concerns his vision of a “new and functional constitutional order”: what is this exactly? This is not, after all, a debate that started today. Is it the implementation of the April 2006 package of constitutional changes? Is it going further than the April package, towards abolishing the entities and the cantons? Or is it about turning the entities into mere administrative units, with no real autonomy?

Is a functioning Bosnia similar to today’s Belgium (a highly decentralized federal state)? Or to the Cyprus of the Annan plan (an even more decentralized state), which would have entered the EU in 2004, if the Annan plan would have been accepted? Is there a future for a complicated Federation inside the Bosnian federation in Kurt’s “functional constitutional order”? Is there room in it for a semi-autonomous Brcko district? Would this Bosnia still be a federal state?

These are not rhetorical questions. I accept Kurt’s argument that there is a lot that is dysfunctional about Bosnia’s current constitutional set up. Things have to change profoundly, in the interests of Bosnian citizens and in light of Bosnia’s EU aspirations. But how does he see this being helped by a continued OHR presence? To do what: Impose constitutional change by decree? Threaten politicians who do not accept certain reforms (with sanctions or dismissal)?

I could now sum up the conclusions I draw from my answers to these questions. But let me first get Kurt to try to change my mind (and, more importantly, that of most EU policy makers who do not share his threat assessment) about the concrete threats which he sees; realistic scenarios for a return to armed conflict; about the core features of a “functional constitutional order” and about the role of a strong OHR to promote constitutional changes.

Recently, some people have argued that there is a possibility of a new violent conflict in the Western Balkans. It there anything to this claim, which flies in the face of continued international troop withdrawals from the region?

Let me make the case why these claims are not only implausible but in fact dangerously misleading.

First, if either leaders or voters in the Balkans were to believe that there was a real threat of a resumption of violence one would expect this to be reflected in national defense policies: in military spending and in the size of Balkan armies or paramilitary forces.

This was certainly the case in the late 19th century. Then Balkan states had some of the largest standing armies (in proportion to their populations) in Europe.

It was true on the eve of the outbreak of war in former Yugoslavia in 1991. One toxic legacy of communist Yugoslavia’s policy of armed non-alignment was an abundance of arms and paramilitary formations, a population trained and educated in the spirit of partisan warfare and popular defense, and a large number of intelligence agencies and special forces in addition to the huge and expensive Yugoslav Army and its enormous network of domestic defense industries.

It is also the case today in the South Caucasus: a region which in the early 1990s experienced a similarly tragic trajectory of war, ethnic cleansing and aggressive nationalism as the Balkans did. Today’s leaders in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (not to mention Russia) certainly consider the very real possibility and threat of a return to war in a region, full of unresolved (frozen) conflicts. This is reflected in their rhetoric. It also has a measurable influence on policies and budgets.

However, one of the most interesting developments in the Western Balkans in recent years has, in fact, been the demobilisation of formerly highly mobilised societies. Let us not refer to trends as hard to measure as better neighbourly relations or a decline in interethnic tensions. Let us focus instead on hard facts concerning military spending and serious violent crime.

Rumeli Observer, Carl Bildt, and Miroslav Lajcak.
Vienna brainstorming, January 2010. Photo: ECFR

I prepared some tables to illustrate this argument for a recent brainstorming on EU Balkan policy that took place in Vienna (participants in the meeting included foreign ministers Carl Bildt, Miroslav Lajcak, analysts Mark Leonard and Ivan Krastev, Vesan Pusic and a few other Balkan analysts).

First, men under arms and defense spending. Let’s compare what has happened in the Balkans with trends elsewhere on the European periphery in recent years.

The last five years have seen growing military spending in the Caucasus. At the same time this period has seen a decline in defense spending and in the number of men under arms in the Western Balkans. As a result there are today, proportionately to the population, two and a half times (!) more men under arms in the South Caucasus than in the Balkans (see Table 1).

Western Balkan countries have also decided to have considerably smaller armies than either Turkey or Greece, their regional neighbours (table 2). And although they are richer than the countries of the South Caucasus, their military budgets are significantly smaller (table 3). This means that they can allocate more of their public spending to other things, from education and health spending to public infrastructure.

Table 1: active soldiers/paramilitaries relative to population size

Table 2: active military for 1 million people

Table 3: active soldiers/paramiliaries and defense budget relative to population size

(The data on soldiers and budgets comes from the most recent ISS publication The Military Balance 2009, except for Kosovo which has some 2,500 active soldiers/paramilitaries)

How about other forms of violence? One alternative theory is that even if real war is unlikely in the Balkans today, there is always the possibility of spontaneous, smaller scale ethnic violence erupting and than getting out of control.

Well, what we can certainly say is that there is no evidence for this in any of the data of recent years. In fact, when it comes to citizens’ inclinations to pick up arms against each other the Balkans, despite the legacies of the 1990s, are considerably more peaceful than other parts of today’s EU (see table 4).

Table 4: homicide rates per 100,000 population

Let me first say that ESI welcomes the recent Commission proposal on visa free travel to the Balkans. Considering what expectations of progress were only 12 months ago – looking forward to a year with EU Parliamentary and German parliamentary elections, against a background of enlargement fatigue and a deepening economic crisis – this proposal is a very positive signal for the whole Balkan region.

We wrote an article on this, which you find here. The article also appeared as a commentary on BIRN.

We have a serious concern about the implications of this proposal for Kosovo. But this is not due to shortcomings in the Commission-led effort: it is rather that Kosovo is excluded from the meritocratic roadmap process. We also have one suggestion to improve the proposal for Bosnia and Albania. But much of the criticism made of the Commission proposal in the past week does not appear fair to us.

Ok, you might say, but what about the most important criticism one could hear in institutions such as the European Parliament: that the European Commission proposal on visa free travel, which was announced this week, is anti-Muslim?

A good friend and expert on the Balkans sent me the following email and question:

“I have been approached by Muslim friends from Britain, Germany and Turkey asking me whether the Commission has understood that the exclusion of BiH and Albania is sending out a negative signal to Muslim communities around Europe and beyond. Furthermore in the case of BiH where Orthodox and Catholic inhabitants have an option of joint citizenship with Serbia and Croatia, Serbs and Croats from BiH will be able to travel freely using their Serb and Croat passports while Bosniak Muslims will not. Has this rather urgent political issue been considered either by you or by the Commission?”

It is a serious question, and we have discussed it a lot inside ESI. So let me share with you the email I sent him in response:

” Yes, this issue has been considered. Anticipating these debates, we looked in great detail at every one of the five countries, producing a one page score card and a very much longer analysis of each of the conditions that still have to be met based on studying all Commission documents and expert reports.

All of these can be found here: http://www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=353

Concerning Bosnia, look in particular at:

• the one page grade report
• the detailed Bosnia analysis

Now compare these to the one page report and detailed analysis of Macedonia, and it is obvious that there is a difference.

In addition, the Commission has recently outlined itself the precise conditions that Bosnia and Albania still have to meet, sending a detailed letter to the Bosnian Ministry of Security.

In short, considering that meeting the benchmark conditions is the only criteria for visa free travel, the Commission has made the right decisions so far. Bosnia was the last (!) country to introduce biometric passports, for instance, something that was due to sheer incompetence and lack of focus. You could argue that this should not be a criteria (and Bulgaria was given visa free travel in 2001 without having biometric passports), but this is changing the rules of the game while the game is being played. This never works in the EU.

Thus, what critics of the Commission proposal for Bosnia are doing is not in fact arguing with these facts. They want to change the terms of the debate.

Critics argue that that there is a strong moral case for Bosnia to be granted visa free travel. The gist of this argument is a rhetorical question: “How can Mladic travel to the EU with his Serbian passport, but the relatives of his Srebrenica victims cannot?”

Critics also argue that this decision is inherently anti-Bosniak, as Croats and Serbs in Bosnia can circumvent the problems with the Bosnian passport by applying for Croat and Serb passports. This is of course not a new problem at all (in the case of Croatia it was always true).

I personally have a lot of sympathy for this argument (although I hope that Mladic tries out his new Serbian passport soon and ends up in The Hague as a result).

But this is an argument to give Bosnians visa free travel already in 1995! The fact that we are now talking about 2010 shows that it has not worked too well until now.

In fact, purely moral arguments for visa free travel have never impressed sceptical Europeans, only already convinced friends of the Balkans. This is, after all, not a new debate. Moral arguments have been made many times in recent years. They have been made for Serbia (after courageous young people toppled Milosevic, did they not deserve visa free travel?), for Kosovo (there was a decade of apartheid, followed by mass murder and massive expulsions in 1999: how does Kosovo deserve to be the most isolated country in the world today?), for Macedonia (having implemented the Ohrid Peace Agreement and been granted EU candidate status in 2005, did the Macedonians not deserve visa free travel at least as much as Romanians did in 2001), etc …

Moral arguments are important, but they are not sufficient. This we have learned in the past 15 years.

What brought about this week’s breakthrough, however, was the fact that the terms of debate changed recently: that the logic of the process became the slogan of our campaign “strict but fair”. Conditionality turned out to be the best friend of the region!

The argument for the roadmap process is not one of political morality. It was from the outset based on a very rational argument: that it actually IS in the EU’s security interest not to have to rely on visa, but to be able to cooperate with Balkan countries that have implemented the very demanding set of reforms described in the roadmaps. This makes everyone safer. Granting visa free travel is not a gift to a long-suffering region, but a win-win situation for all Europeans.

“How visa-free travel makes Europe safer” … meeting with former interior ministers Giuliano Amato (Italy) and Otto Schily (Germany) this week in Istanbul to discuss the ESI White List Project

We strongly supported this logic, because we felt that it would work. We were also convinced that leaders in these countries were capable of surprising the EU and actually implementing these demands faster than anticipated. And this is indeed what has happened.

Even Bosnia is today much closer to visa free travel than it has ever been in the years since 1995.

Of course, there is always a danger that despite a process of objective assessment (with numerous expert missions visiting the region in recent months) political considerations would enter at the end; that prejudices could cloud the process.

Contrary to what most friends of Bosnia in Europe believe, however, allowing a bigger role for purely political considerations would likely be harmful not beneficial for Bosnia, given its terrible image in some EU countries and the regular recurrence of articles on dangerous islamists in Sarajevo (again earlier this year in Der Spiegel, an article on “the fifth column of the prophet”). We have long warned that this image, which is not deserved, as well as regular alarmist articles that Bosnia might be about to go to war again are doing terrible damage to the European future of the country. But one effect of this bad press is that the less European decisions are based on perceptions, and the more on facts, the better for Bosnia.

Thus, I believe that the principle of “strict but fair” is also in Bosnia’s (and Albania’s) interest. Both countries have an image problem in Europe that can best be overcome by focusing on concrete deliverables.

At the same time, Bosnian leaders need to be told by their friends that if Macedonian Albanians and Macedonians could implement these changes following their fighting in 2001, so must they. Until now at least there is no evidence that this is not actually in their hands.

There are two potential challenges to “strict but fair”:

1. Some claim that EU leaders do indeed have prejudices about Balkan Muslims, and that even once Bosnia fulfills all conditions it will be judged more harshly than Serbia or Montenegro are now.Until now, at least, we have found no evidence that this is the case.It is a strong argument, however, for making the assessment process as transparent as possible, which is the main motivation behind our dedicated website. We believe that full transparency is in the interest of everyone, which is why you can find all relevant documents there.
2. Some people in Sarajevo claim that Bosnian Serb politicians might sabotage the reforms needed for Bosnian passport holder, to undermine the Bosnian state, since Bosnian Serbs might in any case gain access to the EU through their Serbian citizenship.This is definitely something that needs to be monitored. Until now we have found little evidence for this. In fact, once we published the visa score card showing Bosnia in last position a few weeks ago a series of laws were passed that suggested that Bosnian politicians were sensitive to the charge of letting their people down.It is also the case that the EU would not look kindly at a sudden increase in Serbian biometric passports being handed out to Bosnian Serbs.

In short, for now the best message to give to Bosnian leaders is not to lean back and hope that Europe’s bad conscience about Srebrenica will do their work, but to sit down and focus on the roadmap. The EU should help, monitor the process closely, and respond fairly.

This has also been our answer to questions by Bosnian media in recent days:

“Yes, you have a moral case, but this is unlikely to convince sceptical interior ministers in sceptical EU member states. Dont’ rely on it. In fact, the example of Macedonia and Montenegro shows you that implementing these reforms will lead to the desired goal much faster than any campaign based on the history of a war that ended in 1995. As for anti-Bosniak prejudice, so far we have not found evidence of it in the Commission evaluations. Lets be vigilant, but lets admit also that so far the Commission has been fair according to the standards of the roadmap process.”

In fact, we feel, looking in detail at all the still outstanding conditions, that if a real effort is made, Bosnia and Albania might be able to meet these conditions within the next 12 months. That would obviously be best for everyone. All our efforts should now go towards making this possible.

This is why our protest focuses on the specific commission recommendations concerning Kosovo: Kosovo is not even being offered the chance that Bosnia and Albania have to prove that it can or cannot implement the roadmap requirements. This is the opposite of “strict but fair” … a lose-lose situation for the whole region and the EU.”

Further reading:

• Letter by the European Commission to BiH
• Detailed conditions for BiH

Half a year ago I wrote on Rumeli Observer about the upcoming Czech EU presidency.

At meetings in December, which ESI had organized in Prague, Czech politicians and civil servants had defined ambitious goals for the Western Balkans in 2009:

“We are expecting your countries’ applications for membership during our presidency. We have been preparing to receive your applications for membership. We have coordinated with the government of Sweden (the second EU presidency in 2009) in order to be able to promote the cause of the Western Balkans. We are ready.”

Six months have passed. The Czech presidency is coming to a close. Our manual on Czech decision makers – in particular the government chapter – has become outdated faster than anybody expected.

There has been much negative comment on the events in Prague across Europe following the resignation of the Topolanek government. As one friend, an advisor to several EU Commission presidents told me recently, “How dare the Czechs bring down a government during their presidency? How could they be so unserious?” At the recent ECFR meeting in Stockholm another veteran EU policy maker noted that Prague had offered “the best argument” for finally getting rid of the rotating presidency … “at least in the past we could be sure that small countries took this challenge seriously. Now even this is no longer true.” And there is (almost) universal loathing of Vaclav Klaus’ performance among policy makers across the continent.

However, when it comes to the Balkans and the EU, the Czechs have actually done as well as they had promised. That is no small achievement.

It is not Prague’s fault, after all, that the Bosnian elite prefers quarreling about the prolongation of the mandate of a political corpse – the vanishing OHR – rather than focusing its energy on making the compromises necessary to submit an application for membership; something that remains impossible as long as there is an OHR in Sarajevo.

Even Sweden, though it will try hard, will struggle to bring the OHR to a close under its upcoming presidency. This became apparent at a recent brainstorming on the issue I attended in Haga castle near Stockholm (organized and chaired by Carl Bildt and Valentin Inzko).

Haga castle near Stockholm

Haga castle has a bright future ahead of it: soon after our Bosnia brainstorming the Swedish heir to the throne was set to move in and make it her private home. Bosnia’s future, unfortunately, is more clouded. I will write more on it here soon. The conclusion, in a nutshell, is disheartening. For now put your money on there still being an OHR at the end of 2010 – an office with no mandate to do anything, and blocking any more serious progress by its very presence. Even Valentin Incko himself does not seem to believe that he will be the last High Representative …

Nor can Prague be blamed for the failure of Serbia and the EU to agree on whether or not there is now full compliance with the ICTY in Belgrade.

It would have been nice if the Czech presidency had succeeded in having Slovenia lift its veto on Croatia, or Greece on Macedonia. On the other hand, even France did not manage this. I am not sure Sweden will, either.

What Prague could achieve, however, it did achieve. The Montenegrin EU membership application was, after a few tense moments, forwarded to the Commission for assessment. This set an important precedent for Albania, which has also (finally) recently applied.

If Serbia follows later in 2009, and if Macedonia is told in the autumn that it now meets all criteria to begin real talks (even if Greece then proceeds to veto an opening), this could yet become a decent year for the region.

And perhaps more than just decent. In recent months, the issue of visa liberalization has moved forward almost as rapidly as envisaged by friends of the region. Just note the recent conclusions of the EU General Affairs Council meeting.

They state:

“VISA LIBERALISATION

The Council restates its support for the dialogue on visa liberalisation with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, based on the roadmaps containing clear and realistic benchmarks and on a country-by-country assessment. The Council recalls that the countries concerned should continue to focus on full implementation of these benchmarks.

In this regard, the Council welcomes the updated assessment reports presented by the European Commission on the progress in the visa liberalisation dialogues with these countries. The reports reflect the clear progress made by these countries in meeting the benchmarks set out in the visa liberalisation roadmaps. In this context, the Council encourages the European Commission to present as soon as possible a legislative proposal amending Regulation 539/2001, as it applies to the Member States, in order to achieve a visa free regime ideally by the end of 2009 with those countries that will have met all the benchmarks.“

The Commission now has a mandate to do the right thing (see also a recent op-ed by my colleague Alex Stiglmayer and myself in EU Observer): to recommend visa free travel for a group of countries.

There is, as well, a target date for a result: “ideally by the end of 2009″. This is almost as good as it gets in EU affairs. EU foreign ministers have already indicated that they will both welcome and endorse a Commission recommendation!

Sasha Vondra and Jan Kohout – they did well for the Balkans

This means that it is now realistic to expect that all Western Balkan countries – except Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo – could obtain both EU candidate status and visa free travel sometime in 2010.

Albania – whatever its future government – can catch up as well. And if, against all odds, the OHR is closed in 2009, even Bosnia might avoid falling into a new group of hopeless laggards (with unfortunate Kosovo bringing up the tail).

Perhaps there are indeed a few people in Prague who, despite all the turmoil of recent months, deserve a quiet moment to savour this success.

I am currently reading a thought-provoking and entertaining book with a serious conclusion: Wild Europe – the Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers by Bozidar Jezernik, published by Saqi and the Bosnian Institute.

It is a book about continuities in approaches to the Balkans. As anthropologist Joel Martin Halpern writes in the foreword:

“In the early twenty-first century, a large portion of the Balkan lands where Muslims live, our principal area of concern, are occupied by NATO troops with UN participation … in exploring Jezernik’s collection of the views of observers of times past, we can easily see how they provide a necessary prologue to the present.”

Halpern notes that in recent centuries outsiders coming to the Balkans would often hesitate to consider anything admirable in the work of the people of the region. He gives the example of the bridge in Mostar:

“… by the mid nineteenth century, when Turkish power had notably declined, travellers no longer attributed the bridge to the Turks, but gave it classical origins. … A nineteenth century account of the bridge at Mostar by an Austrian noblewoman is illustrative. She had the insight to observe of the bridge that ‘history mislabels it as Roman’. But her husband, who oversaw the publication of her book, added in his notes that the bridge was obviously classical, built by Trajan or Hadrian.”

Another Balkan explorer, Sir Arthur Evans, travelling through Bosnia in 1875, noted about the Mostar bridge that “the grandeur of the work … attests to its Roman origin.” The mindset of these travelers, so Halpern, was to ask “how could something unique and of value come directly from the infidel Turks and be located in the Balkan back of beyond.”

The rest of the book gives many more examples of an outlook which views the Balkans as a region of “primitive quarrels and ancient ways of resolving them.” There is the Englishman who describes the eastern coast of the Adriatic as “one of those ill-fated portions of the earth which, though placed in immediate contact with civilisation, have remained perpetually barbarian.” There are the travel reports written for a “broad and enthusiastic public who found nothing more boring than plain facts.” In these writings hyperbole was encouraged. As Jezernik writes:

“In a book on the inhabitants of Bosnia, written by the French consul in Travnik at the beginning of the nineteenth century, readers would frequently come across terms such as wild, ruthless and cannibalistic. In this light, the civilising role of France might have seemed indispensable and could have been used as a pretext for the occupation of Bosnia. The author repeats several times in different words that this country and its inhabitants might change ‘under some other rule’.”

Some time ago my friend Felix Martin and I have written a provocative little article about the colonial gaze of modern day foreigners in the Balkans and the practical consequences of this for Bosnia (Travails of the European Raj – we then put a short picture story on liberal imperialism on the internet, stretching from Mill and Machiavelli to Michael Ignatieff and Sebastian Mallaby).

We noted that in the modern Balkans – as in the past – liberal imperialists emphasied both wild behaviour and helplessness. It is because the Balkans are wild that they need to be contained and it is because they are helpless that they need to be helped. Achievements by the peoples of the Balkans upset this perspective, which is why it is better not to underline them too much.

This is very visible today in Bosnia. While it is admitted that the Mostar bridge is an Ottoman and not a Roman marvel, the approach that every post-war achievement (peace, reconstruction, return, basic reconciliation) is assumed to be the result of international coercion or assistance but rarely or never the product of local effort, remains very much alive. This is obvious also from two provocative articles published in the Guardian and by USIP. The authors – the former High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lord Ashdown, and two American Balkan experts with long experience in Bosnia, Bruce Hitchner and Ed Joseph – argue that Bosnia and Herzegovina is today facing a tremendous crisis, and that the only way to save it from itself is through more assertive outside intervention, including maintaining (and using) international intervention powers.

There can be no doubt that all three authors feel genuine concern about and commitment to Bosnia. At the same time their views appear to be shared by many (among the dwindling group of) policy makers who focus on Bosnia today in Washington DC in particular. Theirs is thus a serious perspective that deserves a thorough discussion. And yet, at another level the two articles are also good illustrations of the persistance of the colonial gaze: a gaze which can see no salvation for the wild peoples of Bosnia except by outsiders ruling them directly.

Take a look first at the article by Ed Joseph and Bruce Hitchner. Here is the central argument: 1. “ownership” has been tried and does not work. 2. Without plenipotentiary powers in the hands of an international agency there can be no progress in Bosnia. and 3. the best model for Bosnia’s future is the supervisory regime established in the Brcko district in North Bosnia. In this regime a foreign supervisor retains the power to remove elected and appointed officials from power:

“The vast majority of progress in Bosnia has been the result of international prodding. Experiments with “local ownership”. most notably during the regime of High Representative Christian Schwarz-Schilling, resulted in severe gridlock and left the international community’s credibility in tatters …

“There are no plans for the successor EUSR to retain the plenipotentiary Bonn Powers of the High Representative that have been the international community’s primary tool to overcome obstruction. However, recent history suggests that it is expecting far too much of the Bosnian parties to operate together as a typical aspirant country … an empowered EUSR will still be needed at the helm to steer the parties toward agreement and overcoming the inevitable recalcitrant party or parties.”

“A viable model for Bosnia’s EUSR is not only the predecessor OHR, but also the successful Brcko Supervisory regime. Brcko has been the exceptional success story in the country due in part to the knowledge that an empowered outside actor could step in to avoid and break deadlocks. … The EUSR should be expressely required to state which party or parties have been responsible for failure to achieve progress and to make recommendations about corrective action, including removal from power or blacklisting them from traveling within the EU.”

These are very strong claims, about the recent past as well as about the possible futures of Bosnia: Bosnians among themselves are held to be unable to govern themselves without a strong supervisory regime (as exists in Brcko district). This is also unlikely ever to change. After all, there are no constitutional problems for governance inside Brcko District (which was designed completely by foreigners), and the only complication there appears to be the fact that there are indeed Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs living together: and yet, until today this “exceptional success story” continues to require the corrective powers of a foreign supervisor! The implication is that as long as Bosnia/Brcko are multiethnic societies the only way to make elected representatives reach compromises is to threaten them with the sanction of imposition or removal. Brcko is, after all, not a model for multiethnic democracy!

The article by Ashdown also refers to Brcko as a model, calling it a “multi-ethnic markedly successful sub-entity.” Ashdown evokes the threat of war in Bosnia to draw attention to his call for more assertive international action, noting that what would change people’s “calculation in favour of blood” in Bosnia would be continued efforts to divide the country. And such efforts, he underlines in the same article, are continuing and will most likely continue without stronger international engagement. As he writes: “You do not need imagination to know what happens when things go wrong in Bosnia – a memory ought to be enough.”

But is the evidence from recent years truly that a multi-ethnic Bosnian democracy remains an impossible dream? That the only way to improve things in the country is by international imposition? And that Bosnians might soon make a “calculcation in favour of blood”? Let me return to this question in my next blog. In the meantime, I am looking forward to any comments or suggestions.

It was a stressful trip to Vienna, coming here straight from the Bucharest Nato summit, where I had slept through the unique chance of attending an early morning lecture by George Bush (having worked all night to complete and send out a discussion paper on Turkey’s Dark Side early in the morning). I sometimes enjoy conferences and among such events this Bucharest jamboree – a big conference organised by GMF always in parallel to the annual Nato summit – was certainly noteworthy for the prominence of its speakers. Then again, it helps having slept, or even the most interesting event can turn into a painful exercise of trying to stay awake (the worst thing about this event was the cameras zooming in on the audience and displaying their faces on huge screens hung up next to the speakers – this was NOT a conference that was kind to a secret nap in the last row),

Thus I noticed, on the way back from Bucharest, before dozing off on the plane, that there were really only three things that I took away from this rich event: I had had coffee with an old friend from Berlin, sneaking out of the conference centre (and skipping most of the session with the Afghan president). I had another occasion to marvel at Nato’s security operation, essentially closing off most of the streets in the Romanian capital so that guests were taken on empty roads around town. And I had a short but interesting chat with Wolfgang Ischinger, the Kosovo negotiator and German ambassador to London, sharing a taxi with him on the way to the airport. Efficient networking this was not …

My mood was not helped by the fact that my father had been hospitalised in Vienna due to a heart problem, which looked complicated, and had just been operated. But then in fact there was another urgent reason to come to Vienna, for what would otherwise have been a joyful occasion: to present – for the first time – the whole Balkanexpress – Return to Europe documentary film project to a broader audience.

The event, hosted by ORF, was well organised by Erste Foundation. Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer turned up, as did the CEOs of Erste Bank, OMV (the Austrian oil company), the Austrian National Broadcaster ORF and many others – a who-is-who of people interested in and involved in SEE in Vienna. The event became even more colourful as a result of the many guests from the region, including many members of the generation of Balkan change-lovers whom we featured in our films (you can see pictures of the event and who actually came here)

I delivered my introductory presentation. I had been uncertain until the last moment whether the trick of embedding video clips from the films into a power point presentation would actually work: it would be embarrassing to stand on a podium in front of all these august Austrians, having to improvise because the technology mixes up clips or the sound cannot be heared.  I had prepared some lines to laugh away any mishap or confusion.  But, when everything worked, I noted the usefulness of strong images. It is so much easier to move people emotionally when there is a moving picture.

Following the event, on the afternoon of the second day, I gave a little interview (see below). There is also a nice little trailer that sums up the whole atmosphere nicely.

Now we can only hope that TV audiences will also want to see the films. And that the films will soon be available also in English. I will keep you informed where and when you will be able to see them!