Member state building and the Helsinki moment

Member state building and the Helsinki moment

The December 2004 EU Council vindicated the boldness shown by European leaders at the Helsinki summit in December 1999. Five years ago in Helsinki, EU leaders stated that "there are now 13 countries within a single framework of the accession process to the European Union… The candidate States are participating in the accession process on an equal footing." The decision to treat all 13 countries (including Turkey, which at the time did not meet the Copenhagen political criteria) as full CANDIDATES represented a turning point for each of the countries. It emboldened reformers, accelerated reforms and created the political space to address previously sensitive subjects. It seriously weakened anti-European and anti-democratic forces. From that point onwards, even as governments changed, policies remained remarkably consistent, driven by a shared vision of a common goal.

Helsinki sent a powerful political signal. It also brought to bear the sophisticated institution-building techniques developed by the Enlargement Directorate of the European Commission. This involved the creation of new institutions and the strengthening of existing ones (Francis Fukuyama's definition of "state building") on a large scale in each candidate country. It involved "screening" (making an X-ray of the state in each candidate country), hard-hitting annual progress reports taking the European acquis as a benchmark, and National Development Planning to buttress multi-annual public investment strategies. It also involved substantial pre-accession assistance for rural development, agriculture and infrastructure, and for the institution building needed to develop absorption capacity.

These are the instruments of European MEMBER-STATE BUILDING. And as Fukuyama notes in an article that appears this week in the Journal of Democracy, this EU accession process "has become perhaps the most successful exercise of soft power in the world today."

The big question for 2005 is: will European leaders show the same boldness and vision as they did five years ago for Central Europe, the Eastern Balkans and Turkey when it comes to the Western Balkans? Will the countries of the Western Balkans finally experience their own HELSINKI MOMENT?

The European Union has transferred responsibility for Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo to the new Finnish enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn. This is a very positive first step. The European Union has not yet decided, however, to offer Serbia or Macedonia what it has given to Turkey and Bulgaria: to treat these countries as EU candidates, and to apply all of its member-state building instruments. ESI argues that achieving candidate status before the end of 2006 should be the goal for the whole region.

This will involve changing some current policies. In its current proposal for the next seven year EU assistance budget (2007-2013), developed by the previous Commission, there is still a strict separation in the kinds of assistance offered to candidates (Turkey and Croatia) and to potential candidates (the rest of the region). Albania, Bosnia or Kosovo will not - as plans currently stand - be offered support for rural development, cohesion or human resource policies. Instead, they will continue to be treated by ad hoc mechanisms developed in a post-conflict era – which are no cheaper than pre-accession assistance.

If EU governments proceed to adopt this budget proposal later this year, it could have serious political and economic consequences. It would mean that all those living in rural areas in these countries, suffering from inadequate education and training systems, or from seriously deficient infrastructure, will see the development gap separating them from the rest of Europe (and from their immediate neighbours) grow wider. The desperation of the countryside and of declining industrial towns, whether in Sumadija or Presevo, Central Bosnia or Western Macedonia, would also continue to grow. The politically least stable part of the continent would fall further behind. A new European ghetto - comprising most of the Balkans' Albanians and Serbs, brought together behind a wall of visa-restrictions to block a desperate population from seeking work elsewhere - would arise in the heart of an integrating continent. Lasting stability would remain elusive.

To prevent the emergence of a West Balkan European ghetto by 1st January 2007, ESI proposes the following steps to EU leaders and institutions:

• Either encourage all countries of the region, which have not yet done so, to submit an official EU membership application (as Turkey did in 1987 and Romania in 1995) – with the objective that on the 1st January 2007 all countries under DG Enlargement are also offical candidates;
• Or change the existing draft EU commission "Proposal for a Council Regulation Establishing an Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA)" by making all five components of EU assistance in 2007 – 2013 (including regional development, human resources development and rural development) available to both candidate and potential candidate countries;
• To encourage and support all governments in the region to prepare EU compatible provisional National Development Plans (NDP) similarly to the one Turkey has prepared in order to build institutional absorption capacity for future EU assistance;
• To agree on the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement at the end of 2005 as the latest possible date to end the extraordinary powers of the OHR, so that a fully sovereign Bosnia and Hercegovina can submit its application for EU membership;
• To continue along the path charted by SRSG Jessen-Petersen in Kosovo to hand over responsibilities to local institutions, so that by 2006 all economic competencies (for public property and companies, and for the Kosovo Trust Agency) rest with democratic institutions.