Balkan exceptionalism

May 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition

What Serbia's election says about the European Union's enlargement

Illustration by Peter Schrank

A BRITISH tabloid set a high standard for bombast when it once took
credit for the re-election of a Tory government with the headline:
“It's The Sun Wot Won It”. This week European Union leaders
were taking credit for another election upset: the unexpected success
of the pro-European coalition led by the Serbian president, Boris
Tadic, in the general election on May 11th. The Serbs had “clearly
chosen Europe,” said the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. Jan
Marinus Wiersma, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, declared
that the election was “a form of referendum in which citizens gave
their support for the country's future membership of the EU.”

That may be a little premature. It is true that Mr Tadic's block is
called the “Coalition for a European Serbia”. His supporters waved the EU
flag of gold stars on blue. But Mr Tadic did not win outright, and it
matters enormously which parties end up in a new coalition government.
If the wrong parties cobble together a deal, they could yet lead Serbia
into deeper isolation.

Yet it would be absurd to deny that the EU
played a role in the election. European governments agreed to offer
Serbia a couple of timely (if symbolic) concessions just days before
the vote. Serbs may feel “humiliated” that 19 EU countries have recognised the independence of Kosovo after the province broke away in February, says a diplomat. But the EU also reminded them that Europe is about good things, such as freedom to travel. If it was not exactly the EU “wot
won it”, European governments did at least send a signal that they
would rather have Serbia in the club than brooding dangerously outside.

That holds true also for Serbia's neighbours in the western
Balkans, who are being jollied along with visa concessions and the
like, and assured that they enjoy a “European perspective” (to use the
Brussels jargon for eventual membership). It all feels rather
pragmatic, even generous. And that is odd, because when it comes to
enlargement in general, older members of the club are in a foul temper.

It is not only the future that causes alarm. The mood is sulphurous
over Romania and Bulgaria, which joined in 2007. Bulgaria has already
seen tens of millions of EU funds frozen
amid fears of fraud. The figure of suspended aid could rise to billions
when a European Commission monitoring report comes out this summer. The
new Italian government is talking menacingly about restricting Romanian
migrants. The latest Eurobarometer poll on enlargement found majority
support for the admission of only one new country: Croatia, a
relatively advanced place whose beaches heave with sizzling Italians
and Germans each summer. Croatia is on course to join in 2010 or 2011.

Even more paradoxically, some of the countries keenest on admitting
Serbia and others have voters who are the most alarmed by enlargement.
Migrant-phobic Italy led the way (together with Greece) in arguing for
the EU to be flexible over demands that
Serbia co-operate with prosecutors hunting war criminals. Austria has
lobbied tirelessly for Balkan bits of the former Austro-Hungarian
empire, starting with Croatia. Yet Austrian voters now oppose admitting
any Balkan country other than Croatia by large margins (and a whopping
81% are against Turkish membership). Similarly, French ministers may
rejoice that Serbia's voters choose Europe, but in 2006 France was
pushing the idea that future enlargement should be assessed according
to the EU's “absorption capacity”, a
dangerously vague term that includes voters' “perceptions”. The French
president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is publicly against Turkey's membership.

If enlargement is so unpopular, why do so many EU
leaders want the credit for Serbia's vote for Europe? There are two,
linked explanations. The first is that holding the door open to Balkan
countries such as Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and the rest does not
imply support for enlargement in general—it is a specific strategy for
preventing further instability in Europe's backyard. And the second is
that enlargement mostly works like that.

Consolidation, not enlargement

Arguably, enlargement as a general project does not exist. Moves to expand the EU
are more often responses to particular crises, and they trigger big
squabbles until it becomes clear that no better alternative exists (the
1995 expansion to take in Finland, Sweden and Austria being the
exception). Greece was admitted in 1981 to bind it to the West, even
though everybody feared it was not ready. It took nine years of
argument to get Spain and Portugal in, amid cries of alarm (loudest in
France) over cheap Iberian workers and farm produce. In December 1989,
as Communist regimes fell across eastern Europe, the French president,
François Mitterrand, proposed that ex-Warsaw Pact nations should be
invited to join a loose “European confederation” (the idea died, not
least because Mr Mitterrand invited Russia too). The EU hopes of Bulgaria and Romania only became plausible during the Kosovo crisis of 1999, when their airspace was needed to allow NATO jets to bomb Serbia.

Today's Serbia and the other Balkan applicants for entry may not be
easy cases. But their admission does not pose “existential” questions
for the EU, notes one diplomat, just a lot
of hard work on building up clean, capable governments, in which scary
nationalists are marginalised. Croatian negotiators even talk smoothly
of “consolidation” rather than “enlargement” nowadays. Larger
candidates for the EU, notably Turkey and
Ukraine, cannot do that. They pose big questions, such as how to relate
to the Muslim world or how to live with Russia.

The Serbian election could have been a lot worse. A thumping win for nasty nationalists would have seriously delayed EU
expansion into the western Balkans. But supporters of admitting Turkey,
say, should avoid premature congratulation. The western Balkans remains
an exceptional case. Enlargement as a broader cause was not the winner
this week.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=11375822