DGAP akcioni plan: Kako Nemačka može da doprinese trajnom miru na Balkanu

This is a translation of the action plan “Westlicher Balkan und EU-Nachbarschaft” I wrote for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). It was part of the DGAP project “Action Plans Structures German Foreign Policy,” a ten-month process of reflection and strategy resulting in ten concrete action plans.

Of those I contributed two (English translations will be available in November):

Nemačko Društvo za Spoljnu Politiku (DGAP)

Akcioni plan Zapadni Balkan i EU-Susedstvo

Kako Nemačka može da doprinese trajnom miru na Balkanu

Više od dve decenije nemačka spoljna politika posvećena je sprečavanju obnove tenzija, unutrašnjo-političkih ili čak oružanih sukoba na Zapadnom Balkanu. Da je ovo uspelo od 1999. godine takođe je uspeh nemačke politike.


20.09.2021

Poslednjih godina se povećao rizik od neuspeha stabilizacione politike EU i Nemačke na Balkanu. U Srbiji, najmoćnijoj zemlji u regionu, vodeći članovi vlade ponovo otvoreno govore o mogućim oružanim sukobima i dovode u pitanje granice na Zapadnom Balkanu. Osuda bivšeg generala Ratka Mladića za genocid u Srebrenici, u proljeće 2021. dovela je do ekstremno nacionalističkih reakcija vlasti i medija bliskih vladi. Godinama rastući izdaci za vojnu potrošnju takođe jasno stavljaju do znanja da bi destabilizirajuća politika prema susednim državama, poput Bosne i Hercegovine i Kosova, bila ne samo zamisliva, već čak i verovatna da nema stabilizacijske kontra-strategije Nemačke i njenih saveznika.

Kosovski sukob tek što je bio okončan kada su u julu 1999. godine nemački kancelar Gerhard Schröder, američki predsednik Bill Clinton i šefovi vlada svih članica EU došli na veliki balkanski samit u Sarajevu. Na Kosovu, u četvrtom balkanskom ratu za manje od jedne decenije, skoro milion Albanaca je bilo proterano u susedne zemlje. Političare, koji su se tada sastali u Sarajevu, spajalo je gnušanje prema nacionalizmu, koji je u kratkom vremenskom periodu koštao toliko života. Oni su se obavezali da će „sarađivati na očuvanju multinacionalne i multietničke raznolikosti zemalja u regionu i u zaštiti manjina“. Svečano su izjavili: „Zajedno ćemo raditi na integraciji Jugoistočne Evrope u kontinent na kojem granice ostaju nepovredive, ali više ne znače podelu te nude mogućnost kontakta i saradnje.“ Obećali su evropski mir, postmoderni “Pax Europeana”. Nemačka je imala vodeću ulogu u formulisanju ovog cilja.

Dve decenije mira

Dok su u drugoj polovini devedesetih pre svega USA imale vodeću ulogu u stabilizaciji regiona -nakon završetka ratova u Bosni (1995.) i na Kosovu (1999.)- to se promenilo od 2000. nadalje. EU je postala vodeća igrač, a unutar EU je Nemačka igrala glavnu ulogu: sa sve većim uticajem. Zapadni Balkan je tako postao prvi i do danas najuspešniji test zajedničke evropske spoljne politike, pri čemu je EU i njenim državama članicama uspelo geopolitičko čudo demokratske stabilizacije.

Crna Gora je svoju nezavisnost postigla mirnim putem, uz podršku široke multietničke koalicije. Danas u bosanskoj “Republici Srpskoj” ponovo živi više od 220.000 Ne-Srba, proteranih sa srbske teritorije tokom rata 1992-1995. Severna Makedonija ima osnovne škole na četiri jezika, a albanski je službeni jezik u celoj zemlji. Većina kosovskih Srba koji su živeli na Kosovu pre 1999. godine ostali su tamo i posle 1999. godine. Srpski je službeni jezik na Kosovu. U celom regionu vlada mir već dve decenije.

Poslednjih nekoliko godina oko EU vidimo ratove i izbijanja nasilja: u Gruziji, Iraku, Siriji, Ukrajini, Libiji i na Kavkazu. U mnogim istočnoevropskim državama, članicama Saveta Evrope, sada ponovo ima političkih zatvorenika. Zapadni Balkan je, s druge strane, ostao miran. Danas nema političkih zatvorenika ili sistematskih kršenja ljudskih prava ni u jednoj zemlji u regionu. Nemačka je povukla svoje vojnike iz Bosne i Hercegovine, ne brinući da bi zbog toga moglo doći do izbijanja novih borbi. Samo na Kosovu je trenutno stacioniran mali kontingent od oko 80 vojnika nemačkog Bundeswehra.

Zastoj

Ne samo na Zapadnom Balkanu već i u evropskom susedstvu uticaj Nemačke na unutrašnjo- i spoljnopolitičke razvoje više od dve decenije je tesno povezan sa verodostojnošću evropske integracione perspektive. Tamo gde ona postoji, Nemačka ima veliki uticaj, bilateralno i preko Evropske Unije, te može da realizuje svoje interese. Izručenje traženih ratnih zločinaca koje traži Njemačka, modalitet za referendum o nezavisnosti Crne Gore, prvi koraci u procesu normalizacije između Srbije i Kosova, kompromis sa Grčkom oko imena države Severna Makedonija, dalekosežne pravosudne reforme u Albaniji i druge teške odluke su sprovedene u regionu, jer su elite smatrale da je to neophodno kako bi se napredovalo ka evropskim integracijama: koje su želele i smatrale realnim.

Tamo gde ta „evropska perspektiva“ nestaje, reducira se brzo i nemački uticaj u regionu. Razvoj odnosa Turske i EU jasno je upozorenje šta se u bliskoj budućnosti može desiti i na Zapadnom Balkanu. U Turskoj je postojao period rastućeg uticaja Nemačke i EU posle 2000. Ali onda su pregovori o pristupanju EU sa Turskom iz različitih razloga izgubili svaki kredibilitet i na kraju su zamrznuti. U isto vreme rasle su napetosti između Turske s jedne strane i Nemačke i drugih zemalja EU s druge – sve do vojnih pretnji Ankare Grčkoj i Kipru. Nemačka i EU su se pokazele nemoćnima glede demontaže turske pravne države i kršenja osnovnih ljudskih prava.

Sada i na Zapadnom Balkanu perspektiva integracije -koja je bila toliko moćna pre nekoliko godina- gubi kredibilnost za političke elite i društva. U važnim državama članicama EU, poput Francuske ali i Holandije, postoji veliki skepticizam u pogledu bilo kakve dalje runde proširenja. Stoga je novo učlanjenje u EU postalo malo verovatno a proces proširenja već godinama u zastoju. Trenutno su samo dve od šest zemalja u regionu stvarno uključene u pregovore o pristupanju: Srbija i Crna Gora. Međutim, pregovori ove dve države o pristupanju -i reforme u njima- se ne pomeraju sa mesta već godinama. Albanija i Severna Makedonija godinama čekaju na početak pregovora. Bosna i Hercegovina nije čak ni zvanični kandidat za članstvo. Neke zemlje članice EU ne priznaju Kosovo kao nezavisnu državu i stoga se Kosovo ne može ni kandidovati za pridruživanje EU.

Uloga Nemačke

U decembru 2003. EU je usvojila prvu evropsku bezbednosnu strategiju koja je sadržala upozorenje: „Izbijanje sukoba na Balkanu nas je podsetilo da rat nije nestao sa našeg kontinenta.“ EU je povezala budućnost vanjske politike EU sa sopstvenim uspehom u Jugoistočnoj Evropi: „Kredibilitet naše spoljne politike zavisi od učvršćivanja naših tamošnjih postignuća.”

To i dalje važi. Od Beograda do Tirane, od Sarajeva do Prištine, Njemačka je danas najpriznatiji i najvažniji evropski partner. Realno: Zapadni Balkan bi u narednih pet godina mogao postati spoljnopolitička priča o uspehu Nemačke i EU ako bi se perspektiva integracije ponovo učinila verodostojnom. Tada bi bilo moguće upotrebiti mudru diplomatiju kako bi se otvorena spoljnopolitička pitanja približila finalnom rešavanju: od dijaloga između Srbije i Kosova do trajne stabilizacije multietničkih demokratija u Severnoj Makedoniji, Bosni i Hercegovini i Crnoj Gori. U regionu u kojem se sve države orijentišu prema EU, njenim standardima i vrednostima, ali i njenim pravilima i institucijama, pitanja statusa bi takođe bila rešiva.

I naredna nemačka vlada takođe ima veliki interes za stabilnost u regionu koji je, sa četiri rata i genocidom, svojevremeno bio najkrvaviji konfliktni region na svetu a devedesetih godina prošlog veka prouzrokovao veliki pokret izbeglica. Da bi se eliminisao rizik povratka u nestabilnost nije dovoljno pustiti da se trenutni proces nastavi. Potrebna je nemačka inicijativa.

Preporuke za obnovljenu nemačku Zapadnobalkansku Politiku

Poslednjih godina vlade u Beogradu, Podgorici, Prištini, Sarajevu, Skoplju i Tirani ispunile su mnoge zahteve Nemačke i EU te poboljšale odnose između etničkih grupa i sa svojim susedima. Političari u Crnoj Gori (pre i neposredno nakon početka pristupnih pregovora 2012.), Srbije (između 2010. i 2014.), Severne Makedonije (2004.-2005., kad se zemlja nadala statusu kandidata te ponovo između 2017. i danas) te Albanije iznova i iznova su sprovodili politički zahtevne reforme, imajući na umu konkretan i atraktivan cilj. Danas u regionu nedostaju slični mobilizirajući ciljevi. U nemačkom je interesu da se to promeni. Ali to može uspeti samo ako Berlin ozbiljno shvati zabrinutost svojih partnera u EU.

Inicijativa Nemačke trebalo bi da se zasniva na predlogu koji je Francuska predstavila krajem 2019. godine, a koji predviđa različite faze integracije balkanskih zemalja. Ova ideja se može pojednostaviti kako bi bila kredibilna u EU a istovremeno definisala atraktivan cilj za elite regiona u narednih nekoliko godina. Ovako bi to moglo da funkcioniše:

1) Predlaže se pristupni proces u dve faze. Cilj pregovora sa svih šest država u regionu ostaje punopravno pridruživanje, ali se nudi novi i konkretan posredni cilj: potpuni pristup evropskom unutrašnjem tržištu.

2) U prvoj fazi, svaka država u regionu koja ispunjava neophodne uslove trebalo bi da pristupi unutrašnjem tržištu, poput Finske, Švedske i Austrije 1994. Ostvarivanje ovog pristupa do 2030. bio bi realan cilj za sve zemlje na Zapadnom Balkanu. Oni bi uživali u četiri slobode – slobodnom kretanju robe, kapitala, usluga i radne snage – baš kao što to rade Norveška i Island danas. U tom cilju, EU bi trebala stvoriti okvir Ekonomskog Prostora Jugoistočne Evrope (EPJE). Nemačke institucije: Ured Saveznog Kancelara, MIP i druga ministarstva izradili bi poseban predlog i založili se za njega u EU.

3) Jačanje vladavine prava u regionu pri tome ostaje centralna komponenta procesa integracija, jer svi uslovi za vezani za demokratiju, vladavinu prava i ljudska prava moraju biti u potpunosti ispunjeni da bi se zemlja mogla pridružiti unutrašnjem tržištu i Ekonomskom Prostoru Jugoistočne Evrope. Sledeća nemačka savezna vlada trebalo bi da se založi za  proširenje redovnih izveštaja o vladavini prava u EU na zemlje Zapadnog Balkana.

4) Istovremeno, Nemačka bi trebalo da se založi i za jačanje Saveta Evrope – kojem pripada pet od šest zemalja u regionu – i da promoviše brzi prijem Kosova u njega. Važno je da implementacija presuda Evropskog Suda za Ljudska Prava u čitavom regionu postane centralni uslov za integraciju u EU.

5) U tu svrhu, EU bi trebala još pomnije da prati važne sudske procese u svih šest zemalja kako bi mogla utvrditi da li pravosuđe radi nezavisno. Evropska Komisija treba da izradi detaljne izveštaje o korupciji za Zapadni Balkan, koristeći istu metodologiju koja se koristila za izveštaje o korupciji u državama članicama EU 2014. godine. Novi izveštaj svake dve godine mogao bi osigurati uporedivost među zemljama.

6) U tom kontekstu bi približavanje i normalizacija odnosa između Kosova i Srbije već u naredne četiri godine bilo realna. Usvajanjem istih pravila EU, državne granice bi postale manje važne. Pre nego što se pridruži zajedničkom tržištu, Srbija bi takođe morala da prihvati sadašnje granice Kosova. Opšti cilj bi bio da granice između balkanskih zemalja budu isto tako nevidive, kao što je danas norveško-švedska granica.

Pristupanje unutrašnjem tržištu EU, u okviru EEA EU-a i Zapadnog Balkana do 2030., ambiciozan je ali ostvariv cilj za sve zemlje Zapadnog Balkana. Realna perspektiva uživanja četiri slobode – za robu, kapital, usluge i rad (sa prelaznim periodima, kad EU smatra da je to neophodno) – u roku od nekoliko godina mobiliziralo bi društvo u celini te stvorio novu ekonomsku dinamiku.

Cilj je region, koji je ekonomski tako blisko povezan sa EU kao Norveška i Island danas. Jaz u blagostanju sa ostatkom Evrope trebalo bi brzo da se smanji, baš kao što su Rumunija ili baltičke zemlje to tako spektakularno postigle od 2000. Vladavinu prava i zaštitu manjina treba ojačati. Slično unutrašnjim granicama EU u šengenskom sistemu, granice između balkanskih zemalja takođe bi trebale postati nevidive, kako bi se ublažio politički spor oko njih.

Ovaj cilj se može postići bez previše napora i bez rizika za Nemačku i EU. To bi bio nemački i evropski spoljnopolitički uspeh. I to bi bio signal drugim zemljama u susedstvu da se dobri odnosi i posvećenost funkcionalnoj integraciji sa EU politički isplate i bivaju realnost.

Višestruki interesi Nemačke u regionu još uvek se najbolje mogu realizovati u okviru koherentne politike EU prema Balkanu. U poslednje dve decenije, moć Nemačke na Zapadnom Balkanu zasnovana je prvenstveno na realističnoj utopiji: verodostojnom obećanju bolje budućnosti kroz integraciju u stabilnu i prosperitetnu EU, koja omogućava sličan mir na Zapadnom Balkanu kakav je proteklih decenija u EU postojao: „Bezbednost kroz transparentnost i transparentnost kroz međuzavisnost.“ 

Ovaj „postmoderni mir“ u EU, koji je opisao Robert Cooper, učinio je vekovnu politiku alijansi i balansiranja moći suvišnom. Članice EU, rekao je Cooper, ne razmišljaju o tome da naprave invazije jedna na drugu. Izazov na Zapadnom Balkanu je postizanje sličnog trajnog mira u kom granice gube na značaju, vojske više ne služe za zastrašivanje, a manjine žive sigurno.

Oružani sukob bio bi onda nezamisliv na Zapadnom Balkanu kao što je to danas među članicama Evropske Unije. Ako sledeća nemačka savezna vlada može pomoći u implementaciji takve “Pax Europeana” na Zapadnom Balkanu, ona će nastaviti nemačku i evropsku priču o uspehu, priču u kojoj se mir obezbeđuje integracijom i umrežavanjem.

A Balkan, od bureta baruta postaje region stabilnosti za narednu generaciju.

Autor: Gerald Knaus, predsednik European Stability Initiative (ESI)
Prevod: Mirko Vuletić

Visas and the Czechs – savoring success

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).

slottefram grusvag
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!

vondraa_big 14549540
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.

Las Ramblas in November (Barcelona)

Anybody who in their youth has read George Orwell’s book on the Spanish Civil war in Catalonia is likely to think of him when visiting Barcelona. Not that there is anything that reminds a visitor in November 2007 of the Spain in 1937 that Orwell evokes. His city was one in which armed guards roamed in the streets, in which bread was scarce, and in which people were arrested at random. An anarchist uprising had been defeated in 1937 and Stalinism was rearing its ugly head behind the Republican front-lines of the Spanish civil war: a dark moment in an even darker decade. As Orwell put it:

“It is not easy to convey the nightmare atmosphere of that time – the peculiar uneasiness produced by rumours that were always changing, by censored newspapers, and the constant presence of armed men. It is not easy to convey it because, at the moment, the thing essential to such an atmosphere does not exist in England. … the notion of ‘liquidating’ or ‘eliminating’ everyone who happens to disagree with you does not yet seem natural. It seemed only to natural in Barcelona.”

In fact, one can still walk down the tree-lined ramblas boulevard (today packed with tourists) to the Cafe de l’Opera which Orwell describes. One can also go in search of bullet holes in the walls in some hidden courtyards in the old town that (I was told) go back to the Spanish civil war.

When I worked here as a guide for Austrian tourists in the early 1990s I would present this beautiful city as the stage for a succession of bitter struggles throughout history, an epic story of its rise, fall, rise and fall (again) leading up to the 1930s. There are the monuments of the great medieval merchant city, centre of a Mediterranean Empire; the drama of Barcelona loosing its preeminence and prosperity at the beginning of the modern era (the destruction of its Jewish community being one of the reasons); repeated defeats in its struggles against the centralising Spanish crown; the 19th century rise of a new industrial power-house and the flourishing of Catalan modernity (the Barcelona modernista described by Cristina and Eduardo Mendoza); and then the bitter struggles, from anarchist terrorism to the confrontations in the Spanish civil war, ending in the deafening silence of another dictatorship. It is a riveting tale, worthy of the great epics. It also includes the most important element of a good Hollywood movie: a happy ending, sometime between the fall of Franco’s regime and the Olympic games in Barcelona in 1992.

For my tourists the dark shadows of Barcelona’s past were, of course, safely remote: even the most tragic history was ultimately info-tainment. Certainly gruesome stories of the Spanish civil war were no obstacle to feel good at the end of the day, to retire to a 4-star hotel and enjoy a good Spanish, sorry, Catalan dinner. Groups like the ones I would lead through Barcelona (at least 5 times in the early 90s) had themselves become part of a new Barcelona story: the reinvention of the city as a place of European cool and elegance, a truly post-modern place in which historical narratives were used to attract tourists.

Of course, there were also those who regarded the city’s rising popularity with foreigners as suspicious. Post-modern Barcelona is the “prototype of a factory-town”, one local anthropologist complained: too perfect to reflect any real life, too superficial, in a way dishonest, hiding its true self. Attracting 4.5 million tourists in 2005, Manuel Delgado writes, has come at the price of “destroying all spontaneity, all rebelliousness, no disobedience goes without punishment.” There is even a book to celebrate an alternative “city of rebellions”, la Barcelona rebelde. The book tells a story of uprisings and protests and celebrates the revolutionary spirit of the place, recalling times when the strength of local anarchism had given Barcelona the name rosa de foc (rose of fire), referring to the large number of arson attacks. One of the most striking quotes in that book refers to the anarchist uprising of 1937, which plays such a prominent role in Orwell’s book. It is presented as the highlight in a long tradition of revolts: “perhaps Barcelona has not been in the hands of its citizens ever since that 7 March 1937” (the day the anarchist uprising was repressed).

1937 as the “good old times”? A narrative where everything has gone downhill since the 1930s and anarchism is a political philosophy worthy of admiration? Reading this made me realize how little I really knew about the Spanish debate. But I knew enough about Barcelona’s history to be skeptical: my walking tour on the ramblas always included an account of the anarchist who had thrown two bombs in the Liceu opera house in 1893, killing 22 people. In 1909 eighty churches, monasteries and convents were burned in one week when protests against a call-up of troops to go to war in North Africa got out of hand. How could anybody innocently celebrate a “culture of protest” in the early 20th century?

I also remember another disturbing experience. On one of my last trips as a tour guide I slipped out of the hotel one evening to watch a movie by Ken Loach (Land and Freedom) about the Spanish civil war. At one moment some people in the audience broke out into loud applause. The trigger for their joy was a scene where some unarmed Franco-supporters and clergy were shot. Some in the audience cheered the execution. Stepping out of the cinema I found myself again among the bars and pleasures of the beautiful Gracia quarter, disturbed and confused.

More than a decade has passed since then. What will the admires of Barcelona rebelde make of the fact that it is no longer George Orwell who most inspires young visitors from abroad but Xavier, a 25 year old French economy student looking for pleasure and distraction; not Homage to Calalonia but Xavier’s adventures in auberge espanole? Xavier and his film do not need an introduction, I assume? Judging by the huge number of foreign students I see in the streets and bars on this mild November day there is no shortage of young Europeans who seek to follow in his footsteps: unlike Orwell, they are not drawn by an ideological battle against evil. Instead they search for fun, friendship and amorous adventures in a Mediterranean setting.

I liked auberge espanole, but then I quite like happy endings. Those with a more tragic bent of mind will find the multi-national fraternity found there infinitely less worthy of interest than the multi-national army of fighters against fascism celebrated by Ken Loach. I do wonder, however, whether Orwell would not have been the first to welcome, rather than mourn, the recent transformation of Barcelona: the city which he left as a fugitive turning into a centre of innocent (and international) hedonism. Is this not another European miracle worthy of celebration? A city that has set aside its tragic history, turning it into a fairy tale of Barcelona modernista, Gaudi and Miro, Gothic churches and the FC Barcelona? Today websites discussing ‘”what is cool in Europe” no longer mention anarchism but coffee:

“barcelona is also fabulous, and the rambla is not really too dangerous – there’s just scammers. keep your wits about and you’ll have a great time. take the stairs in sagrada familia cathedral rather than the elevator, your legs will hurt but it’s worth it – like climbing a giant seashell with amazing views. the textile museum has a lovely cafe. the cafe del’opera bar is great for cava and people-watching. oh, and – spanish coffee is like crack. uno mas caffe con leche y sucre, por favor!”

It is a city – in a country – marked by material progress, a booming economy, a vigorous democracy, even a European model in terms of gender relations (as measured by the WEF’s gender gap index). If the price for all this is consumerism and some superficiality, so be it. A country, where even crazy people escaping from the mental asylum – Antonio Banderas kidnapping Victoria Abril in Tie me up! Tie me Down! – have a soft spot and a good heart is a civilised place indeed.

But the cheering in the cinema and the celebration of anarchism still made me wonder to what extent I understood what was going on. Had Spain really turned into the grand island of Circe so attractively depicted in auberge espanole? On one of my trips I had seen a book by Giles Remlett “The Ghosts of Spain – Travels through Spain and its silent past” which promised to offer some answers. I bought it to read it during an upcoming trip to Barcelona. An invitation in November 2007 to give a presentation on the Balkans provided the opportunity.

Ghosts of Spain

Cidob is one of the leading think-tanks in Spain, wonderfully located in an old town house in the centre of the city. It is close to the museum of modern art, surrounded by small boutique shops and cafes. My presentation is in the morning, the audience is a group of Catalan academics, journalists, business people. My host is the president of Cidob and former Spanish minister of defence, deputy prime minister and previous mayor of Barcelona, Narcis Serra. The topic is the future of the Balkans: Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia, and the fact that in the Balkans the transformation and Europeanisation that Spain has gone through remains far from completed.

I report on new research from Serbia and Bosnia; on the struggles to overcome the legacies of the past in these places; on the achievements of the people of Ahmici (the scene of a gruesome massacre in Central Bosnia in 1993) and on the risk that some brave individuals in Serbia are still running today as they try to confront the legacies of the murderous 90s.

As always there are some in the audience who have difficulty to image the Balkans as part of modern Europe, who believe that while the rest of Europe is able to banish its ghosts this very same feat is beyond the Balkans, which are somehow condemned to be part of a different world for ever. Others in the audience are well informed. Some have even worked in the region in the 1990s (there was a lot of solidarity in Barcelona for war-time Sarajevo, a fellow Olympic city, shelled when Barcelona held its games in 1992). Narcis Serra, of course, knows both the Balkans and the difficulties of transition, having first reformed civil-military relations in Spain and then advised a number of other governments on this matter, including Boris Tadic, when the latter was minister of defense in Belgrade.

Following the presentation I retreat to a cafe near Plaza Catalunya and open my book, “The Ghosts of Spain”. It is a strange experience: sitting in this cosmopolitan, joyful city on a sunny autumn day, having defended the Europeaness of the Balkans, delving into the secrets of Spain, and suddenly discovering unexpected connections between recent events in the Balkans and here.

Giles Tremlett, the author of this extremely well written book, sets out to describe what he calls the surprising Spanish “relationship with silence”: the pacto del olvido (the pact of forgetting) that has marked Spain’s transition from Franco’s authoritarianism to today’s democracy in the 1970s and since, as well as its (very recent) unraveling. Tremlett describes how in 2000 a Spanish journalist went to the village of his grandfather in Leon to find the roadside grave where his grandfather, a civilian shot by a death squad of France supporters, had been burried:

“DNA tests, carried out by Spanish forensic scientists with experience in digging up much more recent mass graves in Chile or Kosovo, finally enabled him to identify his grandfather …. Suddenly, it turned out, there were graves all over the place. Spain was sitting on what campaigners claimed were tens of thousands of such corpses.”

This experience triggered Tremlett interest:

“As history erupted from under the ground, I decided to turn my back on Spain’s glittering, entertaining and enticing surface. I wanted to undertake what one Italian writer called ‘that difficult voyage, to travel through time and space across the country.'”

In fact, until 2000 a pact of silence (whose legal expression was the Amnesty Law of 1977) concerning the civil war and the crimes immediately following it by the victors was largely respected. Even very recently, when the Spanish parliament in 2002 approved a motion that agreed that local authorities could, if they wanted, set aside funds for exhuming bodies, it also told them to avoid “reopening old wounds or stirring up the rescoldo, the embers, of civil confrontation.” As Tremlett notes:

“That a European parliament should, at the turn of the twenty-first century, be passing motions about a war that finished sixty-three years before may seem surprising. That it should include in one of those motions a stern warning about reviving the embers of that confrontation shows that the Civil war still had the power to provoke fear.”

Tremlett points out that there are “still thousands of bodies in unmarked graves. The highest estimates talk of 30,000 unidentified corpses. Around 300 have now been recovered.” And he quotes the Spanish author Isaias Lafuente:

“Can a democratic country allow thousands of citizens murdered like animals by a dictatorial regime to remain burried in its roadside ditches? Can it tolerate this while a man who allowed and encouraged the mass killings rests under the altar of a Christian basilica? The answer is so obvious that it is almost an offence to have to ask the question.”

Tremlett concludes that the Spanish Transicion “was a success because Spaniards made a supreme effort to find consensus.” At the same time the transition was still very violent, with more than a hundred demonstrators killed by the police in its first five years and many more killed by ETA and other left-wing terrorist groups.

As I set aside the book and look around at the affluent young crowd in this Barcelona cafe on this November day in 2007 my thoughts wander back to the Balkans. Why is so hard for outsiders to show respect for the achievements of people there? Have we forgotten how hard the road to a democratic consensus, to stability and prosperity, was in our own countries?

In fact, it did not take Bosnians decades to answer the question posed by Lafuente: a sign of European maturity that deserves some recognition. And if we expect Serbs (I believe rightly) to confront the crimes of their recent past, to openly address atrocities committed in their name in neighbouring states and in Kosovo and to hand over those responsible for mass killings: should we not at least be more aware of the enormity of this challenge under conditions of physical isolation, economic turmoil and social crisis? The outside world reprimands Kosovars (I believe rightly) for not setting aside all feelings of hatred against former oppressors, for not turning a page and moving on. However, why are we not more prepared to accord respect for those efforts that are made in this direction?

Tremlett notes that “Spain will probably not be fully ready to confront its most bloody episode until all those involved are dead.” The people of the Balkans do not have this choice: they try to build new forms of consensus, stable democracies and prosperous economies while at the same time confronting the ghosts of their pasts. In the long run I believe that this could well be to their advantage: but in the short term it certainly requires a modicum of understanding – if not empathy – by outsiders for the challenges faced by the people of the region.

Or is there another way to read the Spanish experience? Certainly if you are interested in how countries – in the Balkans, Turkey, elsewhere in Europe – deal with their past I highly recommend The Ghosts of Spain. And do let me know, once you have read it, what, if any, the lessons of Spain in your view might be for the countries of the Balkans.

The good news problem – beyond the wild Balkans (Vienna)

A presentation in Vienna, some 120 people in the House of Music in the first district of the city. We do something risky: talking about recent ESI research, we present success stories from the Balkans: Montenegro, Bosnia, even Albania. The event is organised by Erste Stiftung.

Success stories? In the Balkans? We should have anticipated some bewilderment. The Austrian papers are full with articles about Kosovo (hardly a success by most standards at the moment) and a few about a “terrible crisis” in Bosnia. Recent EU enlargement reports by the European Commission on Macedonia and indeed on the rest of the region are no cause for celebration. Croatia as a possible success, perhaps, but anything further south evokes scepticism here.

Here is the paradox: success stories do not sell well. In a book edited by World Bank economists Robert Picciotto and Eduardo Wiesner (Evaluation and Development, 1998) one author writes that the challenge for development research is to “evaluate situations in which things have gone from being wrong to being right, and document how it happened. We need the examples, the models, the best practice cases.” But this is a World Bank managing director speaking. To be honest, when I hear that a certain country is “top reformer in the world” according to some development bank, that Armenia (which I visited a few times this year) is now a “Caucasian tiger” or that some places are top of the business climate indicator of some evaluator, I am also often sceptical. But this does not mean that there are no success stories: only that one needs to take more time and effort to present evidence when making a positive case.

In his little book on the Progress Paradox Gregg Easterbrook explains the “active preference for bad news” in US public debates through the dictates of fund-raising: money awaits on the extremes of an issue: “most contemporary fund raising turns on high-decibel assertions that everything’s going to hell.” International organisations fund-raising for their annual programs and missions are often subject to a similar temptation. Journalists pitching a story to an editor face the same temptation. It is normal, and it means that stories of real success need to be told in the face of both skepticism and possible indifference.

In the Balkans today it is not hard, however, to define a benchmark to measure progress. In the middle of the 1990s many societies in the region were still part of an early 20th century European world of extreme nationalism, severe economic dislocation, public debates revolving around geopolitics, real and imagined enemies, conspiracies. Speeches like this one were turning points: “Six centuries ago, here on Kosovo field, Serbia defended herself. But she defended also Europe. She stood then on the rampart of Europe, defending European culture, religion, European society as a whole. That is why it seems not only unjustified, but also unhistorical and completely absurd to question Serbia’s belonging to Europe.”

This is, of course, the famous Kosovo speech of Slobodan Milosevic in 1987. It is easy to forget how present the notion of “Europe” was in this type of rhetoric. But the “Europe” evoked by Serb nationalists in the late 80s and early 90s was a different one from the Europe of consumers, functional integration, a style of politics based on compromise, a continent where people can also make a rationale choice not to be too concerned about politics. It is the Europe of the early 20th century, a Europe that Mark Mazower called a “dark continent”.

The main theme of the presentations of my colleague Kristof Bender, Erion Veliaj from Tirana, Alida Vracic from Sarajevo and myself in the House of Music was that during the past decade Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania have changed fundamentally. They are becoming part of modern Europe: a continent in which both war and anarchy have become inconceivable. This is part of a wider transformation: all the Balkans today were very different from the Balkans in 1997. In 1997 Bulgaria was on its knees, Montenegro feared a civil war, Albania was in anarchy, Bosnia was divided by three armies, intelligence services and police forces and by extreme nationalism. None of this is the case today.

Following the presentations there are questions. Many reveal scepticism. The representative of an aid organisation wonders whether what we describe as changes in some parts of Bosnia might be different in others. A person who worked on war crimes in the village of Ahmici (which we also refer to in our talk) was startled by our description of inter-ethnic relations in Ahmici. After the presentation I see an Austrian soldier in uniform shaking his head, noting that “there is a difference between theory and practice.” As if a story of positive change is “theoretical”, whereas a story of stagnation and pessimism is practical.

Probably if we had said that across the Balkans a few things improve, huge problems remain, and overall the region’s development is disappointing, there would have been little skepticism. News of stagnation is easily believed. But the debate would have ended there, and the remarkable changes that we are discovering through our field research would not become a topic of debate. If one of the results of challenging conventional wisdoms is that people might be motivated to get in a bus or car and check out the new realities in the Balkans themselves, we would have achieved our objective …