Labor immigration has been the focus of Serbia’s governmental agendas for years now. The labor regulations related to immigrants have been amendedmost recently in 2023 to attract and utilize to the fullest the potential of immigrant laborers. Whereas the legislation is partially in compliance with the EU acquis, the implementation thereof has struggled with numerous challenges to result in a rather low proportion of immigrant laborers on the national labor market. In the introductory part of the paper, we present in brief the overall situation on the national labor market. After that, we explore the national labor market characteristics and accompanying legislation concerning immigrant laborers. This is followed by the presentation and comparison of data on immigrant laborers, as well as their factual situations on the labor market. In the concluding part we point to further considerations of importance for the topic, first of all regarding future challenges for the labor immigration to Serbia, calling for more extensive measures of empowering immigrant laborers to integrate into society. The deployed methodological approach consisted of the desk review, including the review of the relevant legislations, description and analysis of the statistical data and reports from the relevant stakeholders.

Keywords: employment, immigration, immigrant laborers, labor migration, labor market, labor legislation

Introduction

In recent decades, Serbia’s economic development has been characterized by a relatively unstable relationship between economic growth and labor market performance, frequently framed under “growth without development” (Perišić 2016). The consequences thereof started to be experienced as of 2008, when the world economic crisis of 2007 showed to present a long-lasting threat to achievements in the sphere of human development realized in the period from the beginning of the 2000s (Arandarenko, Jorgoni, Stubbs 2009). The end of this decade was marked by high concerns about the labor market performance, which was characterized by a shrinking economy resulting in declining employment and increasing unemployment and poverty (Vuković, Perišić 2011). After 2012, which saw the employment rate as low as 35.5% and unemployment rate of as high as 23.9% (Republičkizavod za statistiku 2015), labor market indicators started to significantly improve to result in an employment rate of 51.4% and unemployment rate of 8.6% in the last quarter of 2024 (Republičkizavod za statistiku 2025). Whereas the low unemployment rates partially mask high inactivity rates, the employment rates, and even more, the characteristics of employment, are worrisome.

Numerous advancements in the national labor market, first of all, regarding the harmonization of the national legislation with the EU acquis, have been planned and gradually implemented within the context of Serbia’s aspirations towards EU membership. Serbia started its negotiations with the EU in 2012, but the progress in labor relations in general still remains limited.

The aim of this paper is to present and analyse characteristics of labor immigration in Serbia and the changes that occurred more recently as a result of the complex domestic and international circumstances. In the first part of the paper, we explain briefly the main impacts of the national legislation on labor relations on the labor market in general. Then, we present in more detail and analyze the regulations on the employment of immigrants in Serbia. The immigrants have been seen as a means to facilitate the complex demographic situation, resulting in shrinking and aging of the population in combination with high emigration rates of the young to middle-aged population, requiring additional workforce in certain sectors of the economy. In the second part of the paper, we present and analyze the structure of labor immigration to show that it cannot compensate for the high emigration rates. More importantly, we point to many violations of the rights of immigrant laborers. Throughout the paper, we present the challenges in relation to the legislation and its implementation, resulting in low attractiveness of the national labor market for labor immigration.

Labor Legislation – Between Innovation and Implementation Trap

In Serbia, labor relations are regulated through a series of laws, with the Labor Law of 2005 as a general law in this domain. The Law introduced the flexibilization of employment at the expense of labor security and adaptability and its subsequent amendments have been contributing to this trend irreversibly. For the last two decades, some of the most critical challenges in relation to the Labor Law and its implementation have been reflected in high rates of informal employment and undeclared work, with low capacities of the Labor Inspectorate to counteract illegal labor practices. Additionally, there is a recurring process of extremely aggravated transitions of informal laborers into official contractual employment, followed by increased numbers of fatalities and severe injuries with fatal consequences in certain industry sectors.Widely occurring phenomena of prolonging fixed-term contracts for an indefinite period of time has become a common practice, with almost absent social dialogue and involvement of laborers due to disempowered labor unions, and underdeveloped measures aiming to ensure a work-life balance for laborers (Perisic 2023).

In its country reports for Serbia, the European Commission has been continuously pointing to the deficiencies in relation to Chapter 19, which encompasses employment, including the last one for 2024 (European Commission 2024). The Labor Law is only partially in compliance with the EU acquis, and in combination with weak mechanisms for its implementation, its result has been an inefficient effectuation of the rights of both national and immigrant laborers in multiple ways. Clearly, Serbia performs below the EU average in the domain of labor relations, and especially fair working conditions indicators, but in comparison with other Western Balkan economies (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Montenegro and North Macedonia), its performance was above average (Ymeri 2023; Sarajlic 2023; Zylfijaj 2023; Mirkovic 2023; Nikoloski 2023; Perisic 2023). Contrary to this, the Law on Entrepreneurship of 2022, with its focus of social economy, vulnerable groups and social innovation, according to the first informal evaluations conducted, is harmonized with the EU regulations and especially with the Action Plan for the Social Economy (Perisic 2023), albeit missing important sublegal legislative to be implemented in full. It does not have special references to immigrant laborers, but the vulnerable groups are defined in extenso (article 6), so that vulnerable migrants can o be included.

Regarding the legislation regulating exclusively the labor migration, the Law on Employment of Foreigners of 2014 was adopted to encompass multiple categories of immigrant laborers, both EU^[1] and non-EU nationals, as well as asylum seekers. It stipulates the equal rights and obligations of immigrants and Serbian nationals in the domains of labor and employment (article 5), but its norms are not fully in compliance with the principle of equality, as it will be elaborated further. The introduction of the latest amendments to the Law in 2023 was motivated by the harmonization of national legislation with the EU acquis and the necessity to facilitate highly complex procedures for the employment of immigrants that were previously in existence.

Novelties to the Law include the provision of a single permit for temporary stay and work for an immigrant (article 9), as well as the activity of the National Employment Service, such as assessment of an immigrant’s eligibility for employment (article 10), as a necessary precondition for employment. The assessment of an immigrant’s eligibility is prescribed to present a precondition for obtaining an employment-based visa for a longer stay (which is to enable an immigrant to enter Serbia, travel throughout the country, stay and work there). The Law also authorized the National Employment Service to issue a consent enabling an immigrant to change his/her employment (article 11).

The introduction of a single permit superseded the norms that differentiated as many as seven types of work permits. The new legislation digitalized the process of requesting and obtaining a single permit for stay and work with a view to lowering the administrative barriers, reducing costs and time consumed in the process. However, the implementation of the legal stipulation that an immigrant can apply only electronically for the permit was postponed already at the occasion of the Law enactment until February 1^st, 2024, due to the inability to build an operational portal (Beogradskicentar za ljudskaprava 2024). Based on reports from January 2025, the portal was still not operational in full, the information for prospective immigrants was incomplete or lacking, sometimes outdated and not tailored to any of their specific circumstances. Two versions of the relevant website (the official and the trial one) were running in parallel and even the link for the application for the single permit was not functioning from the official website but could only be found by googling it (Daffini 2025). The amended Law also made the authorities liable to process the requests within 10 days (article 11). Finally, it is prescribed that a single permit does not necessarily have to encompass only one, but it can encompass more immigrants, and it can be issued, i.e., prolonged for three years, instead of one year as per the previous regulation (Urdarević, Misailović 2025).

And while the introduction of a single permit is in compliance with the EU regulations, more specifically the Directive 2011/98/EU, the difficulties in its implementation call for special precautions and the novelty regarding the legal provision of the so-called labor market test to be performed by the National Employment Service clearly interferes with this compliance. Namely, the National Employment Service is authorized to act as “an interregional mediator in employment by means of establishing whether there are already eligible persons that can be employed by a requesting employer” (article 16a). This norm serves as a protective measure against immigrant laborers and in favour of Serbia’s nationals. Still, certain categories of immigrants with deficitary occupations and professions can be omitted from the labor market test, based on the governmental decision, depending on the labor market situation (article 16a). Finally, the government is entitled to limit the number of immigrants to be employed, i.e. to introduce quotas, when there are labor market disturbances, in compliance with the migration policy and labor market trends (article 24).

The Law also enabled asylum seekers, persons authorized with asylum and temporary protection to effectuate their right to an employment 6 months after applying for an asylum, instead of previously prescribed 9 months. This novelty to the Law brings Serbian legislation more into compliance with the EU standards. The intended consequence is to facilitate their integration via employment. Still, this requires more specific active labor market measures to be deployed by the National Employment Service as well as more cultural sensitivity by the employers.

The Law on Employment of Foreigners made progress only in certain aspects, and in relation to Chapter 2 which encompasses freedom of movement for workers, the European Commission evaluated it as partially aligned with the EU acquis in its latest country report for Serbia (European Commission 2024).

Even before the latest amendments to the Law on Employment of Foreigners, the Regulation on Criteria for Incentives to Employers Employing Newly Inhabited Persons was enacted in June 2022 and amended in 2023. It is targeted towards deficitary occupations and professions and entitles employers who employ newly inhabited persons “the need for which cannot be easily satisfied on the national labor market” (article 2) to certain benefits. Newly inhabited are considered those who did not stay in Serbia for a longer period than 180 days in the period of 24 months prior to the open-ended employment contract signing for a wage of at least RSD 300,000 (around EUR 2,550), four times higher than the average wage in Serbia. Such employers are entitled to a return of 70% of paid taxes and to a full reimbursement of contributions paid for old-age and disability insurance (article 2). The purpose of the Regulation is to encourage talents to immigrate to Serbia by offering them special opportunities for being exempted from paying taxes and social contributions.

Labor Immigration in Statistics and Reality

International migration patterns have had a pronounced impact on the national labor market dynamics. The country has long exhibited complex migratory flows, with outward labor migration prevailing as the dominant form. Emigration has functioned as a socio-economic outlet for persons unable to secure employment aligned with their qualifications and skills within the national labor market. However, the continued outflow of working-age populations has contributed to a contraction of the labor supply, effectively reducing not only the number of job seekers but also the broader potential of the labor force (Medić et al. 2022). At the same time, consistent with the theory of Ernst Georg Ravenstein that “every migration flow generates a counterflow” (Langović et al. 2024, 2), Serbia found itself in a situation of the lack of labor force, which, along with other international complexities (the 2015 migration “crisis”, COVID-19 crisis, Russian invasion on Ukraine, etc.) influenced the numbers of immigrants in Serbia. The “door“ forlabor migration was opened already in the 1990s, mainly for the Chinese laborers, but their immigration remained on a rather small scale. It was the Law on Employment and Insurance in Case of Unemployment of 2009, which attracted foreign employers to the country by offering them extremely generous subsidies for starting their businesses in Serbia. This was frequently followed by the employment of their nationals (especially in the case of employers from Asia).

In Serbia nowadays, the immigrant population can be broadly divided into three groups (Republičkizavod za statistiku 2025):

1. Persons granted temporary residence for a minimum duration of one year;
2. Persons initially granted temporary residence for a period of less than one year, but who, through consecutive extensions, have maintained uninterrupted legal stay exceeding one year;
3. Persons who have been granted permanent residence.

Asylum seekers, persons authorised with asylum and temporary protection, have a specific position, since the effectuation of their rights is dependent on the asylum procedure and the regulation of their legal status in the country. The challenges for asylum seekers stem from long-lasting asylum procedures, difficulties in applying for asylum, lack of support in the process and complicated procedures. Additionally, the vast majority of asylum seekers do not apply for asylum immediately upon arrival to Serbia, as they often plan to move to another country, most frequently in the EU, and rarely consider Serbia as their country of destination (IDEAS 2024). This influences their integration in society, including the integration into the labor market. The numbers of asylum seekers and people granted with refugee or subsidiary protection vary since 2015, but they are extremely low; the latest data show that 196 persons applied for asylum whereasnine of them got their asylum claims approved (Komesarijat za izbegliceimigracije 2024).

When compared to the preceding decade, 2023 recorded the highest number of foreign nationals residing in Serbia to date. The most prominent among these were those residing on the basis of employment, with a particular concentration in the information technology sector, as well as foreign nationals engaged in large-scale infrastructure development projects (Komesarijat za izbegliceimigracije 2024).

Citizens of the Russian Federation represented the largest group of immigrants (41,644), followed by citizens of the People’s Republic of China (12,157), Turkey and India. Notably, the total number of immigrants to Serbia in 2023 was approximately 9.5 times higher than in 2012. Citizens of the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, Turkey, and India together accounted for 83.5% of all immigrants to Serbia in 2023. The number of Russian immigrants increased nearly 47 times compared to 2012, while the number of Chinese and Turkish immigrants rose approximately eight and thirty-three times, respectively, over the same period (see graph 1). Demographically, nearly two-thirds of all immigrants who arrived between 2012 and 2023 were male, while one-third were female. The average age of immigrants was on average lower than the national average (32.6 years), with the most significant difference observed in the Belgrade region, where the average immigrant age stood at 30.2 years (Republičkizavod za statistiku 2025).

Graph 1. Numbers of largest immigrant groups in Serbia, 2012-2023

Source: Adapted according to the Republicki zavod za statistiku (2025).

Employment remained the most common legal basis for granting temporary residence in 2023, accounting for 58.9% of all cases – mirroring the trend observed in the previous year (Komesarijat za izbegliceimigracije 2024). This development reflects both the continued arrival of foreign investors and the ongoing implementation of major infrastructure projects, as well as a structural shortage of labor within Serbia’s national labor market. Whereas family reunification was the predominant basis for residence at the beginning of the decade, recent years have seen a clear shift toward employment-based immigration. However, the increase in the number of residence permits issued based on family reunification can be attributed to the growing trend of entire families relocating to Serbia, particularly in cases where the primary residence permit holder was granted status on the basis of employment.

At the end of 2023, a total of 46,073 immigrants held valid temporary residence permits in Serbia based on employment. This figure represents a 29% increase compared to 2022, and a striking 121% increase compared to 2021, when 20,828 foreign nationals resided in Serbia on the same legal basis. Furthermore, the number recorded in 2023 is nearly 3.5 times higher than in 2020, when only 13,669 individuals held employment-based residence. Between January 1 and December 31, 2023, the National Employment Service issued a total of 52,178 work permits to foreign nationals, of which 9,875 were issued to women. The number of work permits issued to foreign nationals holding valid temporary residence in Serbia in 2023 amounted to 51,631, which reflects a notable increase compared to 2022, when 34,573 such permits were issued (Komesarijat za izbegliceimigracije 2024) (See table 1).

Table 1. Number of issued work permits and immigrants found without work permits during labor inspection

Note: For years 2019 and 2020, the Labor Inspectorate did not include a special chapter on foreign workers’ rights. The data in the table are derived from the reports of the Labor Inspectorate, calculated and recorded in different parts of the reports, so that they should be taken with caution.

Source: Labor Inspectorate, different years, and Commissariat for Refugees and Migration of the Republic of Serbia, different years

As per the above Table, the highest share of immigrant laborers found by the Labor Inspectorate in undeclared work was as low as 5% in 2021. In the rest of the listed years, it accounted for less than 2%. On the one hand, it seems that the number of cases of malpractices to which immigrant laborers are exposed on the labor market is underestimated. On the other hand, the Labor Inspectorate reports that in all those cases in which immigrant laborers were found in undeclared work, employers did not translate them into formal employment (which is frequently the case with Serbia’s nationals), but employed new immigrant laborers (Perisic 2023), pointing to stubborn malpractices in cases of employing immigrants.

Between January and December 2024, labor inspectors in Serbia conducted 289 inspections related to the employment of foreign nationals. During these inspections, 7,482 labor immigrants were identified as being engaged in work activities, of whom 611 were found to be working without valid work permits. The majority of the undocumented workers originated from Turkey (425), followed by India (30), Tajikistan (24), Uzbekistan (19), and other countries, including Kyrgyzstan, China, Indonesia, Russia, etc. Among those found in breach of employment regulations, 338 immigrants were working informally, either without formal employment contracts or without registration for mandatory social insurance. The largest groups among them were citizens of Turkey (200), India (30), and Tajikistan (17), followed by workers from Russia, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, China, Indonesia, etc. Turkish citizens have been the largest group identified in the past five years, whose labor rights are being violated through different forms of informal work (Inspektorat za rad 2025).

In addition, inspectors established that 668 of the detected foreign workers (approximately 9% of the total) were employed by foreign companies abroad and seconded to Serbia to perform contracted tasks for locally registered employers. The remaining 91% (6,814 workers) were directly employed by Serbian-based companies. These findings underscore persistent challenges in the regulation and oversight of foreign labor, particularly concerning legal employment status, social protection, and workplace safety standards. They also highlight the need for improved inter-institutional coordination between labor authorities and migration services, as well as stricter enforcement of employer obligations (Inspektorat za rad 2025).

Reports of the Labor Inspectorate show that the procedure for accessing the labor market in Serbia for asylum seekers dissuaded foreigners from pursuing asylum procedures in Serbia or forced them into the informal labor sector, thus heightening their vulnerability to further human rights violations (Inspektorat za rad, 2025). Additionally, there is strong evidence of child labor, especially among the unaccompanied children asylum seekers and migrants in Serbia, who are often involved in hazardous labor and the worst forms of child labor (Marković 2024).

There are several anecdotal reports compiled by the civil sector and reports of investigative journalists of violations of labor rights of immigrants. Even though these reports raise very serious allegations and concerns of exploitation and even trafficking of migrants from Turkey, India, China and Vietnam who came to Serbia for employment in the industry and construction sectors in recent years, there are no official reports on these alleged developments, with the Labor Inspectorate remaining silent. One of the most exemplary cases of labor malpractices, which included immigrant laborers, was based on anecdotal evidence and without further court proceedings. It was 2021 when immigrant laborers from Vietnam came to Zrenjanin, Serbia, to construct a factory “Linglong”, led by Chinese in Serbia. The living conditions they were provided with by their employers, which were obligated to do this, were rather bad: accommodation, in barracks next to the construction site, was extremely poor, without warm water and the food they were given was low in calories. Laborers claimed to be satisfied with the salaries, but were unable to send any remittances because their passports were taken away from them. They were not aware that their labor rights were violated, among other reasons, due to the fact that the labor contracts were not written in a language they were able to understand. Elements of the labor contracts, as provided by the national regulations, such as the records on the date of the employment beginning, daily and weekly working hours and holidays, were omitted. They were prohibited from organizing into unions, etc. (A11 & Astra 2022).

Contrary to such malpractices, there are anecdotal records of examples of asylum seekers, especially young and female, employed with the social enterprises, primarily in the sectors of food processing and catering, as well as restaurants. They are frequently included in different types of training in order to be able to perform their activities.

Further considerations

The characteristic of the national labor market is precarious employment, characterized by low salaries, open-ended contracts and low security of jobs. In terms of the attractiveness of the national labor market, therefore, there are low incentives for the immigrants to employ and to stay longer in Serbia. Rather, they will be prone to be employed for certain shorter periods, before being able to transit and to immigrate further, to higher income countries throughout Europe.

These circumstances make the national migration landscape extremely complex and dynamic. Even though 2023 data on immigration reports the highest numbers of immigrants ever in Serbia, the emigration is far more dramatic than the immigration, even looking into national sources, which traditionally tend to underestimate the numbers of emigrants. The immigration is still in the shadow of emigration that is traditionally framed under “brain drain” and recently increasingly more and additionally under “care drain”. This calls for more sophisticated statistics, policies, strategies and measures to be taken by the Government compared to those currently being in place.

Along with the situation on the labor market, the national legislation regarding the immigrant laborers is not empowering for them. Sadly, data on labor immigration in 2024 are currently not available (until July) and any preliminary estimations of the impact of the regulations which came into force in February 2024 can not be made. Concerns come from the fact that simplified procedures, as provided for by the amended regulations, are not operational and actually serve as distracting immigrants to get employment. Its protective clause ruling that the national laborers will be given priority clearly leaves room for the employment of immigrant laborers only in those occupations and sectors that are absent from the national labor market, due to emigration.

The majority of employed immigrants from Russia, concentrated in the information sector, however positive development for the national economy does not seem promising. Namely, the past experiences when the foreign citizens were granted tax and contribution evasions and other benefits, tell us the same: the moment the evasions and benefits were lifted, the immigrants left the country. Chinese immigrants, as the second major ethnic group on the labor market, are still within their ethnic labor market, even though there are new arrivals of Chinese immigrants employed by Chinese companies operating in Serbia. On top of that, labor immigrants are more visible on the national labor market, since they work as bus drivers, construction workers, cleaning ladies, etc. With a view to that, it seems that more extensive measures of supporting immigrants to integrate into society are absent and should be taken into due consideration. Labor integration is surely one of the most important aspects of integration, but some other aspects are also important. Building a society which would welcome migrants requires much more cultural sensitivity, changed media and public discourses and more friendly environments for immigrant families.

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Short biographies of the authors

Natalija Perišić is a Full Professor of Social Policy at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Policy and Social Work where she lectures on the national and European social policy, ageing and migration at the under-graduate, master and PhD studies. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Tuzla – Faculty of Philosophy, B&H. Her scientific and research interests in the migration field are within the nexus between migration and welfare state, services for migrants provided by the public and civil sectors, migrants’ integration policies, etc. She has been particularly interested in the mechanisms for social inclusion of migrants. Natalija has been very active in making connections among the academia, civil sector organizations and public services, regarding the support to migrants. She has published about 50 papers in national and international journal. She leads the MIGREC – Migration, Integration and Governance Research Centre at the Faculty of Political Science (www.migrec.fpn.bg.ac.rs).

Violeta Markovic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, where she teaches in the field of theory and methodology of social work, with a focus on child protection, people in migration, social work with families,and elderly care. She has5 years in conducting national and international research and participation in national and international projects, with a special focus on developing and conducting qualitative research, from methodology development to data collection and data analysis. She has spent7 years in direct work with people with disabilities, women victims of abuse, and people in migration (5 years). She has extensive knowledge in the area of migration, child protection, family support, Roma people, and social work in crisis. She has published 15 papers in international and national journals and co-authored a book on the protection of children in migration.

^[1] The effectuation of the regulations regarding the employment of the EU nationals is postponed and conditioned by Serbia’s membership in the EU.

The post In Search of Labor Market Opportunities for Immigrants in Serbia: Migration Policy Ambitions and Labor Market Realities appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Abstract

This paper examines the multifaceted and complex phenomenon of globalization, structured into six distinct sections. The introduction elucidates the concept of globalization, defining it as a complex network of interconnectedness, interaction, and interdependence among individuals, societies, and economies. The subsequent section traces the historical development of globalization through its various ‘waves’, arguing that while globalization has existed since antiquity in the form of international trade, it gained momentum through the voyages of discovery, colonialism and imperialism. However, it was not until the late 20th century that globalization accelerated on an unprecedented scale.The paper identifies two key drivers behind the increased rate of contemporary globalization: technological advancements in transportation and, more significantly, in communication and information. The invention of the internet, followed by the rise of 21st-century social media and digital networking, has propelled globalization to new heights. The thirdpartanalyses the types of globalization, categorising it into four distinct ones: economic, political, cultural, and social, addressing their respective characteristics and manifestations.The following section explores the implications of globalization, emphasizing its profound and far-reaching consequences. While globalization has yielded significant economic, cultural and social benefits, it has also generated considerable challenges and inequalities. The fifth part examines the phases of globalization, delineating four key periods: pre-World War I, post-World War II, the late 20th century, and the era of hyper-globalization. Each phase is analysed in terms of its defining features and impact on global dynamics. The final section engages with scholarly debates surrounding the concepts of ‘slowbalization’ and‘ deglobalization’,about certain developments such as the 2007–2008 Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted global interconnectedness and raised questions about the future trajectory of globalization. The paper concludes that, despite growing discussions on its slowdown or potential reversal, globalization remains an enduring reality that has brought substantial benefits to humanity.

Key words

Globalisation, international trade, transportation, communication, information technology, political & economic & cultural globalisation, deglobalisation, slowbalization.

I. Introduction: Meaning of Globalisation

Scholars have debated the phenomenon of globalization for several decades, although there has not always been agreement on what it means and some even doubting whether it exists (Held and McGrew, 2003; Scholte, 2005).Most scholars, however, accept that globalization is a reality, although there still questions as to when it began and whether the current phase is something that is really new. Furthermore, the phenomenon also has a normative dimension: is it a good or bad thing? There are strong arguments for and against. More recently, the debate has shifted to whether globalization has come to a halt or even reversed, if this is the case, why is this happening today? This topic, known as ‘deglobalization’, has also been hotly debated (Paul, 2021). This paper accepts the majority position that globalization is a reality and has brought many positive benefits but argues that we are today in a new phase.

First and foremost, what is globalization? It can be defined as the process through which goods, services, capital, technology, knowledge, and ideas are disseminated rapidly across the world. In other words, globalization constitutes a complex network of interconnectedness, interaction, and interdependence of everything and everyone, wherein distance of time and space between people have become increasingly insignificant. It facilitates the swift and seamless global mobility of people, capital, technology, goods, and services. Essentially, globalization can be understood as the emergence of a ‘borderless world’, in which national and state boundaries have become increasingly permeable.

II. History of Globalisation

The term itself appeared in social science discussions as early as the 1940s and then became more frequent in the 1960s and 1970s (Scholte, 2005), but it became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s reflecting global geopolitical and economic changes during this period. Some authors at that time argued that globalization wasnot new,buthad existed in phenomena such as the Great Silk Road which connected China with the Mediterranean world from the 1^stcentury BC to the 5th century AD and again during 14^th and 15^th centuries AD. Other examples of early globalization were the voyages of discovery in the 15^th and 16^th centuries when Spanish, Portuguese, and English explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Sir Francis Drake discovered lands then unknown to Europeans and opened the way to a more global understanding of the world (indeed the awareness that the world was a globe and not flat as had earlier been thought), as well opening up trade routes across the oceans (Scholte, 2005).

This was also the beginning of the first phase of Empire-building by European powers,Spain, Portugal, England, and the Netherlands, whose domains would eventually cover almost the entire planet. Imperialism has been seen as a form of globalisation (Hardt & Negri, 2003) and the 19^th century saw a new wave of empire-building as France, Germany, and Italy occupied territories in Africa and elsewhere.

Despite these claims that globalization is not new but quite ancient, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (2024) distinguishes two waves of globalisation. It argues that it was not until the 19th century did global integration take off. Following centuries of European colonization and trade activity, that first ‘wave’ of globalization was facilitated by steamships, railroads, the telegraph, and other breakthroughs, and by increasing economic cooperation among countries. The globalization trend eventually waned and crashed in the catastrophe of World War I, followed by postwar protectionism, the Great Depression, and World War II. After World War II in the mid-1940s, the United States led efforts to revive international trade and investment under negotiated ground rules, starting a second wave of globalization.

Although globalization has historical roots dating back to early regional and international trade networks, it accelerated dramatically by the late twentieth century, driven primarily by two transformative forces.The first key driver was advances in transportation. This was already present in 19^th century with the introduction of steamships and railways. The motor car and air flight arrived at the beginning of the 20^th century and horse-drawn transport gave way to the use of cars, buses and lorries, and the construction of huge highway networks. In addition, developments in aviation made possible that large numbers of passengers and big amounts of goods could be moved over long distances very quickly. The two World Wars, besides causing widespread destruction and loss of life, were also seedbeds of innovation and technological development with further developments in motor transport, more sophisticated airplanes, helicopters, and rockets, the invention of radar and sophisticated communications system. Science was applied to warfare, but had many spinoffs that would enter into everyday economic and social life. All of this accelerated after the Second World War with the invention of atomic energy, space travel, satellites, and increasingly swift transport systems.

However, it was not until the 1980s that the term ‘globalization’ gained popularity and in particular in the early 1990s. Why was that?

Globalization, encompassing not only the trade of goods and services or the movement of people,but also the spread of capital, technology, knowledge, culture and ideas,very rapidly on a global scale, began to accelerate in the 1980s. But why during this period? This surge was largely driven by the high-tech revolution and advancements in innovation, including the development of computers, cable networks, satellites, and information technology. Thus, the second driver responsible for shaping globalization was the communication&information technology (technologies revolutionthat began in Silicon Valley in California). At the beginning of the 1990s, another significant technological breakthrough entered the scene creating a truly global world of communication and interaction – the invention of the Internet, allowing people and businesses to communicate instantly. The 21st century has seen huge leaps in communication technology.Personal computers and especially the mobile phones, enabled people to communicate and to access the internet wherever they are. In the last decade, communication went to next level with social media, bringing people from all around the world in contact with one another.

When scholars began to debate the globalization of the 1990s, they were divided into three principal groups: a)those who argued that this was nothing new but, as has been described above, is actually a very old phenomenon; b) those who argued that the globalization of the 1990s was a specifically new phenomenon compared to previous globalization (Held, Scholte and others); c) and, finally, some who argued that in fact there was no globalization (Hirst and Thompson, 2003, 98-105). This last group rejected globalization because, according to them, nation-statesare still the key actors in international relations and politics, while the advocates of a ‘new’ globalization argued that this was undermining nation-states.

Most social scientists today agree with Held and Scholtethat there has indeed been a new globalization. However, the problem remains of defining what the term means as different definitions of the term may explain the lack of agreement referred to above.Here we distinguish different types of globalization, which are distinct, but also interact with each other.

III. Types of Globalization

Economic globalization.

This represents one of the earliest forms of globalization, historically evident through international trade. In contemporary terms, economic globalization refers to the increasing interdependence of national economies, driven by the expanding scale of cross-border trade in goods and services, the flow of international capital, and the rapid dissemination of technology. As a result, national economies are becoming increasingly integrated into a highly interconnected global economic system.

Economic globalization manifests in three key forms:

1. Transnational Companies (TNCs) or Multinational Corporations (MNCs):They have become the main carriers of economic globalization (Shangquan: 2000). TNCs relocate manufacturing operations overseas, often to regions where labor regulations are less stringent, wages are lower, labor costs are more competitive, andlabor force is cheaper.
2. Internationally Mobile Labor Force: Individuals with in-demand skills can access employment opportunities and find work across the world fast and easily.
3. Global Financial Markets: The growth and increasing integration of financial markets enables capital to move freely across borders, influencing global economic trends.

Figure 1: An example of MNC – Toyota, which operates manufacturing and sales facilities across the globe.

When scholars speak of globalization, they often refer to the economic dimension. The advocates of the new globalization relate this to transformations which took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s which saw the end of the dominant Keynesian model of economic policy with the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971, when President Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value (Eichenberg, 2019, p. 124-7). This eventually led in the 1980s to neo-liberalism, promoted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which replaced the Keynesian model and shifted the focus in economic policy from a state-based approach to a market-based one. This became known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ (see below for an outline of the main tenets of this). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), the institutions of global economic governance established in the 1950s, now shifted from an approach informed by Keynesianism to one underpinned by the ‘Washington Consensus’. Economic production has been primarily associated by the economies of nation-states. With the new globalization, there emerges for the first time truly global economies in specific fields, such as banking, and in certain sectors of production although it remains true that all economic production is located somewhere geographically (Dicken, 2003). Economic globalization is primarily measured by trade flows, reflecting the increasing interconnectedness of national economies through the exchange of goods, services, and capital. This economic integration has promoted global business and investment, fostering economic growth and development across borders.

An important feature of this aspect of globalization is that it has permitted countries such as Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa (known as the BRICS) to join the economic system of Western countries dominated by the USA and Europe, while previously they had been excluded or excluded themselves, from this. The collapse of the USSR and its communist satellites in the 1990s accelerated this type of globalization. For various reasons, the former communist states such as the Balkans, such as those that emerged from the former Yugoslavia, failed to capitalise on the opportunities that the new globalization presented in the way that the states of the Far East and Latin America did.

It is important to distinguish between the financial and the economic dimensions of globalization.  Economies are still today largely nationally based. Economics as a discipline calculates economic processes by referring primarily to national economies. As mentioned earlier, there have been some truly global economic processes in some markets such as services. But the bulk are still nationally based. Even MNCs have their headquarters in particular countries although their diversification across several countries allows them sometimes to escape government regulation and taxation. The global financial markets are rather different and from the 1990s these took on a life of their own with banks developing new financial instruments and derivatives which really did escape government regulation. This was one of the factors that led to the 2007/8 Financial Crisis which subsequently began to affect national economies.

A key implication of economic globalization is the diminishing ability of national governments to regulate their economies independently, to manage their own economies, and to resist neoliberal market policies. Consequently, many scholars argue that globalization aligns closely with neoliberalism for two primary reasons:

1. Shared Principles: Both emphasize competition, efficiency, productivity, and flexibility.
2. Economic Policies: Both advocate for open markets, free trade, capital market liberalization, and flexible exchange rates.

By the end of the 1990s, neoliberalism had emerged as the dominant and largely unchallenged ideology of the new world economy.

Political globalization.

Political globalization refers to the increasing degree of political cooperation among nations. It is reflected in the establishment and growing influence of international organizations, which exercise jurisdiction not only within individual states, but also across multiple countries or entire regions. The underlying rationale for these “umbrella” organizations is that they are better equipped than individual governments to address and resolve global challenges and conflicts.

However, political globalization has also led to a decline in national sovereignty, as states increasingly cede authority to supranational institutions. This has raised concerns about the erosion of the traditional nation-state and its ability to independently govern its affairs.

The most significant types of international organizations include:

1. Political and Security Organizations: United Nations (UN), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), European Union (EU), Council of Europe (CoE).
2. Economic Organizations: World Bank (WB), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
3. Cultural Organizations: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

One of the most important transformations that occurred with the arrival of the new globalization was a reconfiguration of the place and role of the nation-state and national governments in the international Westphalian system of international relations. The old Keynesian model had placed central governments as the key actors in economic policy and management even if this varied according to distinctive state traditions. The underlying rationale of Keynesianism remained the same: the state should dominate both markets and society. Neo-liberal globalization did not abolish nation-states as some of the more extreme analyses claimed (Ohmae, 1995),but it did undermine its central position and permitted other actors such as international organizations, most notably the IMF and WB, and in Europe the European Union (EU), and even subnational authorities to rival its sovereign status. This has been described as a system of ‘Multilevel Governance’ (Marks and Hooghe, 2001).This led to a new development of global governance institutions and structures (Wilkinson and Hughes, 2002). The new global governance encompasses the formation and operation of international organizations, and the treatiesand agreements that shape global policies and regulations.

The advocates of strengthened global governance argue that this aspect of globalization facilitates cooperation and coordination among nations to address global challenges such as climate change, security, and human rights. On the other hand, critical perspectives point to the declining role of national governments and particularly the deregulation that accompanied neo-liberal globalization. One of the longer-term consequences of this deregulation was the financial crisis of 2007/8 which led to the Great Recession of that period. It was clear that globalized banking processes had largely escaped governmental regulation and failed to prevent the melt-down. Subsequently, central governments and organizations such as the EU began to tighten up their fiscal procedures and even to re-centralize their economic and financial control mechanisms (Callanan and Loughlin, 2021).

Cultural globalization.

Cultural globalization refers to the process by which information, goods, and images produced in one region of the world circulate globally, leading to a diminishing of cultural differences between nations and societies. As a result, people dress, eat, speak, and think similarly everywhere. This trend promotes cultural homogeneity and uniformity, often at the expense of national traditions and identities, withlocal cultures fading away.

This refers to the spread of values and ideas across the globe. In practice, this means Western values and ideas. Therefore, this phenomenon is frequently describedas ‘Americanization’ or ‘McDonaldization’, highlighting the dominance of Western, particularly American, cultural influences. Cultural globalization has been significantly accelerated by advancements in transportation, making international travel more affordable, and by the rapid development of information technology (IT), including the internet, satellite communication, and telecommunications.This has been helped by the extraordinary development of communicationstechnologies mostly in Silicon Valley in California, but in the UK and France as well.

In the contemporary era, social media has further intensified this process, amplifying the reach and impact of global cultural influences. From the early successes of the internet and email, these have expanded to platformssuch as Facebook, X/Twitter, and TikTok (McChesney, 2003). The use of new social media by political actors such as Obama on the Left and Trump on the Right show how effective they can be (Hendricks and Denton, 2010; Francia, 2017). Although these technologies originated in the West, countries such as China have adopted and developed them and now use them as means of influencing Western societies. Russia, for example, has been heavily involved in cyber-attacks on Western states to undermine Western democracy (Greenberg, 2020). Cyberwarfare has thus become a new theatre of warfare which is perhaps even more dangerous than conventional warfare especially with the most recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (Clark, 2003).

Social globalization.

This is most clear in patterns of cross-border migration. Cross-border migration has always been a feature of human settlement, and in the 1950s and 1960s the post-war economic recovery in Western Europe attracted many economic migrants to bolster the labour forces of these countries. Since the 1980s, however, and particularly since the 1990s, with the collapse of the communism in USSR and Eastern Europe and the enlargement of the European Union, there has been an even more massive influx of economic migrants from east to west. In 2010, the Arab Spring and Western intervention led to further intensive migration into surrounding countries especially Turkey and Europe as a result of the conflicts and wars and the rise of groups such as Islamic State.

It is sometimes argued that these movements of people across countries and continents contributes to the creation of multicultural societies, where individuals and communities interact and coexist. This has been the case when the migration flows have been carefully managed such as in the United States and, even there, the integration of early migrants such as the Irish, Italians, and Germans in the 19^th century at times led to conflict. Overall, however, the US did prove to be a ‘melting pot’ in which the different groups in the end became loyal Americans while retaining some of their original identities.

In contrast, the more recent waves of migration in Europe have been less carefully managed,giving rise to a range of new challenges, which Bogdani (2009) categorises as below:

• The complexities of multiculturalism
• Issues of integration of immigrants into hosting societies.
• The threatto national security.
• The rise of nationalist political movements and right-wing parties.

Multiculturalism initially meant the co-existence of different cultures andthe recognition of cultural diversity of communities living in harmony together.However, in contemporary discourse, it increasingly denotes not only tolerance of cultural diversity but also demands for legal recognition of ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural rights. As Francis Fukuyama (2006) argues, “The hosting societies could get along with it as long as it does not challenge the liberal social order and is not a threat to liberal-democracy”.However, some immigrant communities have advanced demands or engaged in actions that are incompatible with liberal democratic principles, in some cases even challenging the secular order. This has led to growing hostility among European populations, who argue that multiculturalism has weakened national identities, disrupted traditional ways of life, and diminished the role of religion in public life. This has led, not to vibrant multicultural societies, but to societies divided into different communities and marked by high levels of social conflict.

Integration, on the other hand, refers to the process by which ethnic communities adopt the cultural identity of their host country. In Europe, this primarily applies to Muslim and other immigrant groups. However, a lack of successful integration has often resulted in the formation of segregated communities, where immigrants live parallel lives in enclaves among their compatriots. As Robert S. Leiken (2005) observes, “they are European citizens in name only, but not culturally or socially”. Francis Fukuyama (2006) considers the integration of immigrant minorities (particularly those from Muslim countries) as citizens of pluralistic societies, the most serious longer-term challenge facing liberal democracies today.

The growing dissatisfaction among Europeans with the failure of immigrant integration, the perceived excesses of multiculturalism, and the pervasivePC (political correctness), have contributed to the rise of right-wing and far-right populist parties (Bogdani, 2009). This resurgence of nationalist movements is evident not only in political discourse, but also present in mainstream politics, in national parliaments and governments.The electoral success of some of these parties in various national elections, as well as victory in the last 2024 European elections, where nationalist, populist, and far-right parties gained substantial support, showed that these parties are popular and loveable, particularly among native populations. The reason for this is because they advocate for the preservation of European heritage and European national identities,the protection of traditional cultural values, and the reinforcement of Christian-secularist principles against the perceived threat of Islamization.Their victories reflect widespread concerns among European populations over immigration, cultural change, and national identity, prompting calls for stricter immigration policies and renewed emphasis on safeguarding Europe’s historical and cultural legacy.

This in turn has placed the democratic systems of the EU under strain. The prospects of joining the EU for those candidate countries which are seeking membership have become so much more difficult as the elites of the EU and the current member states are wary of causing further backlashes such as occurred in the UK with the Brexit vote to leave the EU in 2016 (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2018).

IV. Implications of Globalisation

Globalization has far-reaching consequences, bringing both positive and negative implications for societies worldwide.

Positive Implications

Globalization offers numerous benefits and advantages, which can be categorised into economic, cultural and social dimensions, as outlined below.

Effects of globalization on economic development (Research FDI: 2023) include:

Increased trade and investment opportunities: This has led to higher levels of economic growth and development.

• Access to new markets and customers: This has helped to boost sales and profits. 
• Greater efficiency and productivity:  Globalization has increased competition among businesses, which has driven innovation and efficiency.
• Increased competition: This has led to lower prices and higher quality products for consumers.  
• Spread of new technologies and knowledge:  Globalization has facilitated the spread of new technologies and knowledge across borders, allowing countries to learn from one another and adopt best practices.
• Transnational companies in lower income countries:This can help to improve the local economy and provide new jobs and skills.

Effects of globalization on cultural dimension:

• Greater tolerance and understanding: Exposure to diverse cultures fosters mutual respect and global awareness.
• Cultural coexistence: Different cultures interact and influence one another, promoting multiculturalism.
• People can experience new countries and cultures around the world due to the media and better transport.
• Access to new cultural products: Globalization enhances exposure to cultural elements such as art (greater access to diverse artistic works and expressions) and entertainment (wider availability of global media, films, and music).

Effects of globalization on social dimension:

• Increased convenience: It simplifies daily life through technological advancements and global integration.
• Easier communication: The widespread use of the English language facilitates global connections.
• Access on education: Expansion of international academic exchange and learning opportunities.

Negative implications

Despite its advantages, globalization also presents several challenges. Alongside the positive impacts, globalization has also brought about a range of negative impacts on economic development (Research FDI: 2023), as well as on culture and social life.

Economic dimension:

·

• Loss of jobs and industries in some regions: because of the relocation of industries and jobs to countries with lower labor costs.
• Widening income inequality: between and within countries, with some countries and individuals benefiting more than others.
• Vulnerability to global economic downturns: Globalization has increased the interconnectedness of economies, making them more vulnerable to global economic downturns and crises.  
• Small businesses are forced to close, due to the competition from global chain stores.

Cultural dimension:

• Cultural homogenization: Globalization has led to the spread of Western culture and values, which has resulted in the homogenization of cultures and the loss of traditional cultures. 
• Often referred to as the “global monoculture,” globalization diminishes cultural, social, economic, and political diversity. People worldwide watch the same TV programs and films, buy the same things, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and adopt uniform lifestyles.
• Loss of national identities: The increasing influence of global norms and institutions can weaken the sense of national belonging.
• Erosion of local cultures: Traditional customs, languages, and cultural practices risk being overshadowed by dominant global influences.

Social dimension:

• Environmental degradation: Increased trade and economic activity has led to higher levels of pollution, deforestation, and climate change. 
• Global risks: The interconnected nature of globalization exacerbates various transnational threats, including:
• Pandemics – The rapid movement of people and goods accelerates the spread of infectious diseases.Diseases such as Covid-19 can spread from one country to another far easier with so many people and goods moving around the world.
• Terrorism – Global networks facilitate the organization and execution of transnational terrorist activities. As Bogdani (2009) argues, globalisation, driven by the Internet and the tremendous modern mobility, has blurred the boundaries between the developed world and traditional Muslim societies. The proximity brought by globalisation is inherently dangerous when cultures are different. It is not an accident that so many terrorists were either European Muslims or came from privileged sectors of Muslim societies with opportunities for contact with the West.
• Drug and Human Trafficking – International criminal networks exploit globalization to expand illicit trade and exploitation.

Therefore, wide-ranging effects of globalization are complex and controversial. As with major technological advances, globalization has delivered benefits to the world’s societies, but has been the target of criticism for allegedly harming certain groups and aggravating inflation, supply chain disruptions, trade disputes, and national security concerns (Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2024).

V. Phases of Globalization

It is useful to sketch out the changing historical context in which different phases of globalization occurred and to analyse the different features of each phase.

Figure 1: Globalization through recent history.

Source: World Economic Forum.

What is striking in this history of globalization is the accelerating pace of change. This can be seen in the diagram in Figure 1 which distinguishes distinct periods:

Globalization 1.0 (pre-World War I).

This period of globalization was driven by two principal factors: first, the expansion of new phase of imperialism by Western countries such as England, France, and Germany; and second, by the dynamism of the Industrial Revolution with the US, Europe, Argentina, and Australia as the principal forces. The resulting global trade exchange was facilitated by the gold standard and lower transportation costs.

Globalization 2.0 (post-World War II).

Phase 1.0 ended with the outbreak of the WWI and the interwar period was marked by economic nationalism and retrenchment, the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism, all leading to WWII. Following WWII, however, we enter the phase of post-war economic reconstruction, with the United States emerging as the new superpower while the European empires begin to unravel. This is a period internal state and economic expansion in the Western powers, as the combination of Keynesian economic policies and the founding of Welfare States led to the emergence of strong states. The founding of the European Economic Community in the early 1950s, far from undermining the nation-state, served in fact to strengthen it (Milward, 2000). Although Western countries dominated by the US created the conditions of global trade, the Cold War divisions of international politics prevented true globalization, as major powers such as the USSR and China remained outside the emerging global system.

Globalization 3.0 (late 20^th century).

The crises of the 1970s which saw the collapse of the Bretton-Woods Agreement as outlined above and the arrival of a dominant neo-liberalism known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ (Marangos, 2020), whose key tenets typically include:

• Fiscal discipline to avoid large fiscal deficits.
• Reorientation of public spending from subsidies toward broader social services like health and education.
• Tax reform, aimed at broadening the tax base and ensuring moderate marginal tax rates
• Interest rate liberalization to ensure market-determined interest rates.
• Competitive exchange rates to facilitate export growth.
• Trade liberalization, reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
• Openness to foreign direct investment (FDI).
• Privatization of state-owned enterprises.
• Deregulation to remove barriers to entry and competition.
• Secure property rights to ensure legal ownership and usage.

This period was marked by the creation of truly global markets in certain services and goods and, not least, in banking, where new financial tools such as derivatives were traded in global markets away from the regulation by national governments and banks (Castells, 2003). The foundations were thus being laid for the subsequent financial crisis.

Globalization 4.0 (hyper-globalization).

The collapse of communism in the USSR and its former satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as Yugoslavia and Albania, ushered in a new phase of globalization which was dubbed ‘hyper’-globalization.China and other states such as North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba did not give up communism, but China decided to join the global capitalist system and, as a result, became one of the leading players in world politics (McGrew, 2011). Although digital technologies had been present throughout the rise of the new globalization, their development accelerated at an even greater pace than previously and their application to real life economic processes and social interactions intensified. This enabled remote work and international telecommuting which transformed the service sector thus creating new opportunities and challenges. Productions processes and supply chains became highly integrated across borders and led to significant economic interdependence (Castells, 2003).

VI. Slowbalization, Deglobalization, and Regionalization

The period of ‘hyperglobalization’ ended with the Great Recession of 2007/8 and then with the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought the world almost to a standstill and from which we are now recovering. There is a debate as to whether this has led to ‘deglobalization’,with some contesting the idea (e.g. Altman et al. 2024), and with other prominent economists accepting that it is occurring (e.g. James, 2017).

At the very least, we can say that globalization is slowing down even if it not reversing. The term ‘slowbalization’ was coined by Teyvan Pettinger in a blogin 2017 (Pettinger, 2017).The advocates of slowbalization and deglobalization highlight the following features of the change:

• Reduced global trade.
• Reshoring, onshoring, and friendshoring: governments and companies are bringing production and supply chains closer to home to reduce dependency on foreign suppliers (for the West, especially dependency on China).
• Regionalization of trade: there has been a trend towards regional trade agreements and partnerships.
• Technological decoupling: countries are investing in their own high-tech industries which is especially evident in US-China (even US-Taiwan) relations.
• Focus on resilience and security: countries emphasize strengthening their own security chains.
• National governments are trying to regain control over their own economic and financial systems: this is a reaction to the loss of control that had led to the financial and economic crises of 2007/8.

These developments pose challenges to world and regional political systems. Aspects of globalization, as we have seen, contributed to the rise of populist movements of both left and right in the EU member states and, in the UK at least, led to Brexit and the departure of the UK from EU membership. Similar political movements can today be found in several of the Member States including the longest serving members such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. The EU’s response to these challenges has been to attempt to strengthen its democratic credentials, both atmember-states level and at the EU level. But they have also led to a rethinking of the EU’s future and particularly its appetite for further enlargement toward the Balkans and Turkey, both of which are candidates for membership. It remains to be seen whether there will be ‘slowbalization’ of the enlargement procedure. Many EU member states, particularly France and the Netherlands, have expressed skepticism about further enlargement due to concerns over governance, corruption, and economic disparities in candidate countries. This reluctance has resulted in stalled accession talks, as seen with North Macedonia and Albania. President Macron has repeatedly emphasized that the EU must deepen integration before expanding further. His 2019 veto of North Macedonia’s and Albania’s accession talks illustrates how domestic political priorities in France shape EU policy. Germany has traditionally been a pro-enlargement advocate.It sees Balkan stability as crucial for European security. However, domestic concerns about migration and economic disparities have tempered enthusiasm for rapid expansion. On the other hand, some member states from the former East European bloc like Hungary and Poland often support Balkan enlargement, partly to strengthen the influence of conservative and Eurosceptic voices within the EU (Bogdani & Loughlin, 2007).

Conclusions

Globalization is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, commonly defined as a network of interconnectedness, interaction, and interdependence. It has enabled the rapid transnational movement of goods, services, people, capital, technology and culture, rendering traditional notions of time and space increasingly irrelevant. Although globalization has historical roots dating back to early regional and international trade networks, its scope and intensity expanded dramatically by the late twentieth century, driven primarily by two transformative forces: advancements in transportation, and more significantly, innovations in communication and information technology.The early 1990s marked a turning point with the advent of the Internet, followed by the widespread use of personal computers and mobile phones, all of which revolutionized global communication. The emergence of social media in the past decade has further accelerated the pace and depth of globalization.Globalization manifests in four primary dimensions: economic, political, cultural, and social, each characterized by distinct features and expressions. Its influence has generated profound implications for states, governments, societies and individuals alike. While globalization has delivered significant economic growth, cultural exchange, and social transformation, it has also given rise to notable challenges and deepening global inequalities. Globalization has evolved through several distinct phases: the pre-World War I era, the post-World War II period, the late twentieth century, and the current phase often referred to as ‘hyper-globalization.’ Each of these periods is marked by unique characteristics and has exerted a significant impact on global dynamics.The era of hyper-globalization has, in recent years, led to growing discourse on ‘deglobalization,’ with scholars divided between those who challenge its occurrence and those who assert that it is already underway. A related concept gaining traction in academic debate is that of ‘slowbalization,’ which refers to a deceleration of global integration, as exemplified by critical events such as the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions have raised fundamental questions about the future trajectory of globalization.Nevertheless, despite increasing discussions about its potential stagnation or reversal, globalization persists as a defining and enduring feature of contemporary global society, one that continues to deliver considerable benefits to humanity.

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[1]University of New York Tirana, Department of Politics & IR. Albania. mirelabogdani@unyt.edu.al

[2]University of Cambridge & Cardiff University, United Kingdom. jl602@cam.ac.uk

The post Globalization, Deglobalization, and Slowbalization appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Paris Peace Research Institute, France; *Institute of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Lille, France

Published here by courtesy from the Authors and Francis & Taylor, Inc. First published in: Third World Quarterly, vol. 38 (4), 2017, pp. 1012–1042. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1191345. [Routledge Journals, ISSN 0143-6597].

Abstract

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912-1913) and new (1991-1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicizations have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialization of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicized, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.

Introduction

The main aim of this article is to approach the dominant narratives of Balkan wars, from the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars to the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s, with a critical awareness that can provide a new perspective on the narrative legacies that have plagued Southeast Europe in international representations.[1] Our primary concern is a politics of knowledge that moves beyond narratives of Balkan wars and focuses on the social construction of objective history and the international hegemonic representations of Southeast Europe.

The focus of our analysis is on the knowledge produced about the Balkan wars from the 1910s to the 1990s and the concrete relations between those forms of knowledge and political practices in relation to Southeast Europe as a whole. The sociology of knowledge is not a usual complement to political science and international relations theory. Yet it is clear that particular types of knowledge about the Balkan wars, as argued in the case of the Yugoslavian conflicts,[2] had a decisive and independent influence on the outcomes of the wars as well as on the international representations of Southeast Europe. The task of any sociology of knowledge is not to deny the possibility of absolute truth, but as Karl Mannheim insisted, to increase the possibility of objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is not how we might arrive at a “non-perspectivistic picture” of the events, the nature of war and violence, or the ethnicities and religiosities in Southeast Europe, “but how, by juxtaposing the various points of view, each perspective may be recognized as such and thereby a new level of objectivity attained”.[3]

The past decades have seen a growing interest in the role that the media can play as agents of peacemaking and peacebuilding in their own right and a small but significant group of people have championed the development of peace journalism. At the same time, war propaganda is a popular research topic within the field of communication studies and receives considerable attention from historians, linguists, political scientists, sociologists and other academics.[4] From the dawn of the era of the mass media to more recent views on the propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent,[5] commentators have pointed out the way the media can be manipulated to create support for genocidal regimes and questionable foreign policies. In addition, we argue that the complex relationship between the media and violent conflict may lead to a certain construction of hegemonic international representations.

In these lines, by taking issue with different narratives of Balkan wars that overstate facts in a quest for sensational stories and essentialist memories, we aim to show the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public representations. Media events are conceptualized as collective actions in which otherwise isolated individuals and fragmented groups of people are briefly integrated into an “imagined community” by focusing their attention on one particular event.[6] The body of literature on media events concentrates on those events that express a strong symbolic meaning, which is uniformly shared across a wide variety of social actors, such as the media, the audience, public organizations and political representatives. In this sense, these events hold several properties of contemporary public rituals in the Durkheimian sense of the term.[7] By drawing on certain themes and images, they cyclically perform a sense of collective identity, shared membership and moral beliefs. Periodically celebrating one’s solidarity towards vulnerable others by performing suffering in the media, or one’s distance from violent others by overstating facts in the narratives, links are re-tied between otherwise merely individual members of a formal rather than an experienced international community.

In many instances, social actors may concentrate their attention to the same event or crisis like a Balkan war, but without necessarily sharing an interpretative framework. In other words, whether the interpretations of the events by different international actors are relatively uniform needs to be researched as a dependent variable, rather than posited as an a priori characteristic of media events.[8] Hence, not only should we examine the consensual nature of media events, but in the case of the Balkan wars we should also examine how and why they developed into full-fledged media events in the first place. We suggest that narratives of Balkan wars might have served as triggers for a moral “cosmopolitan vision”,[9] which tells us about much more than the cause of dramatic disasters that it attempts to communicate. The narratives may tell us something about the ways in which international actors imagine the world outside themselves, rather than a knowledge about events. The distinction between imagination and knowledge is important for understanding the distortion of representations, as it may uncover ultimately a “soft power of war” that contributes to elaborating a new doctrine of international community, turning international actors into the “ironic spectators” of other people’s wars.[10]

To this aim, we pay special attention how temporality and historicity are conveyed in ways that make present and represent the narratives of another past and how historical knowledge is produced in the narrative contexts of the Balkan wars, the result of which has been to inform public representations of Southeast Europe in international society. This perspective can contribute to the growing interest in different forms of historicization by exploring the ways in which the past is represented, interpreted and manipulated to explain and justify political interests in the present.

The object of modern historiography is defined as the separation of the “space of experience” (Erfahrungsraum) from the “horizon of expectation” (Erwartungshorizont), in other words as a fundamental rupture between past and future.[11] By contrast, in the case of the Balkan wars, narratives of the past are often used as an alternative to history. In this context as in others, collective memory tends to bridge past and future, creating a usable past for a changing present, which brings to light how the past is imagined and represented in temporal terms. Ultimately, this convergence between temporality and historicity recast war and violence in many accounts of the troubles in Southeast Europe as “secretions of history” so as to explain moments of great ruptures, liberation, nation-building, dissolution and the like. These accounts are appropriated to construct an almost coherent framework for the discovery of sensational events that has been “used to demarcate historical periods”,[12] and to ascertain whether the advances of modernity were stopped in their tracks. In this process, the overdetermined Balkan imageries of socioeconomic and civilizational backwardness, ethno-religious hatred and ferocious aggressiveness worked in reference to beliefs and representations from the past and with exemplary temporal excursions that make it vital for imagining Southeast Europe as a Balkan other in Europe.

In the following sections, after a brief contextualization of the Balkan wars and Southeast Europe, we explore various narrative legacies in order to better understand the importance of discourse exerted by various ideological and political interests on the construction of the hegemonic international representations of the region. The various narratives of Balkan wars are discussed in terms of sensationalist stories that claim to discover an explanatory model in a so-called immutable “Balkan nature” that is supposed to remain prone to inter-ethnic genocidal wars, and in terms of essentialist assumptions that have distorted, reified and essentialized as immutable the past and the present reality of Southeast Europe. Whether these narrative factors may operate alone or in consort, their anachronistic arguments can be taken together as a whole from the standpoint of their common feature to act as a discursive instrumentality of vested interests and potentially hidden agendas that affect contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant media industry and international politics on Southeast Europe.

Imagined Balkan wars

International representations related to the southeastern part of Europe, or the Balkans, are impregnated by the very use of the terms to designate the region. Both types of designation, coming from either geographical or historical classifications, “Southeast Europe” and “the Balkans”, have been misused and both have had their pejorative component at one time or another. Even the term “Southeast Europe” might have acquired negative connotations in the past with long lasting effects.[13] The labels used in political discourses to denote the southeastern part of Europe have changed over time, and each new label was a kind of euphemism for the previous term, aimed at eliminating the ideological consequences of stereotypization in international representations.[14] However, the problem lies not in the labels but in the discursive practice of the terms.

In this article, we use “Southeast Europe”as a term much more appropriate than “the Balkans”. Indeed, as a political term, “Southeast Europe” must implicitly imply that the southeastern part of Europe is normally an integral part of European history and politics. Accordingly, the problems that have arisen in this part of Europe are European problems and so the solutions to those problems must be European solutions. Arguably, it may well be the case that Southeast Europe, as shown in the case of Albania,[15] instead of being seen as an exception or an unusual and extreme form of quasi-European society, now represents the European norm and needs to be integrated theoretically into how Europe is seen and sees itself. Normally, Southeast Europe is often redefined in these terms, taking as a starting point the cultural and social threads that allow seeing this borderland space as a coherent complex whole of creative history.[16] Yet, in the historical and literary imagination, the region looms large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space that is “consumed by war” from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the breakup of Yugoslavia.[17]

War and violence in Southeast Europe have become an essential resource and enduring topic of West European concern, both politically and academically. Yet, the scholarly literature on the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 has remained incomplete and episodic for a number of reasons, which are interesting to mention briefly in order to better understand some of the distortions that may have fueled the construction of certain international representations of the region rather than others. Often considered to be part of the so-called “Eastern Question”,[18] Balkan issues are discussed in European history in the context of the diplomatic and political problems posed by the increasingly weakened Ottoman Empire. Normally, the Balkan wars are discussed in works of a certain broad-ranging historiography of the region,[19] even though many of such works in local historiography were appropriated by nationalist political forces and used to serve their interests, thus providing a nationalistic bias on facts and events. Often a selective and partial usage of archival sources was also exacerbated by the fact that they were difficult to access in their entirety due to language barriers. In other cases, the Balkan Wars were eclipsed by a focus on the First World War. Later, with the exception of a few publications by local scholars,[20] many others appear to have glossed over the Balkan wars as a result of focusing on the ideological division between East and West and the realpolitik of the Cold War.

At the same time, even if it is possible to have a picture of events during the old Balkan Wars based on the early narratives of different fact-finding missions and individual reports,[21] it is difficult to make generalizations about the nature of these wars. Much of the discussions revolving around the Balkan wars, as shown in more detail elsewhere,[22] suggest they were something more than liberationist movements in the case of the first war (October 1912 – May 1913), and more than a competition over the creation of national, homogenous, bounded territories in the case of the second war (June – July 1913).[23]

In spite of what the boom of publications in the aftermath of the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s seem to indicate, there must have been again more going on than the supposed unleashing of primordial ethno-religious hatred, easily attributed to old hostilities that are claimed to repeat always themselves in the region. Everything seems to indicate that there may be more than this dynamic and disputed process in a making and remaking of the facts of Balkan wars and the resulting international representations of Southeast Europe over time. As this paper will aim to suggest, the interest of the Balkan wars to raise understanding of the international representations of the region can bring our attention to this imagined geopolitical space, which seems to be constructed and organized according to broader political and ideological conditions.

The publication of Imagining the Balkans established “Balkanism” as an important concept,[24] which is productively considered in debates on the problematization of the historical relationships between West and Southeast Europe as well as that of the West European discourses through which Southeast European societies are “Balkanized”. Since then, a series of perceptive and critical interdisciplinary works intended for a specialist readership have demonstrated the growth of a theoretically sophisticated and politically aware scholarship in the field of Southeast European studies.[25] Some of these works relate directly to the issues of the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars.[26] Triggered by the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s and their aftermath, those works drew attention to the existence of a Western culturalist and colonial view of Southeast Europe. Since the late 1990s, this view has become one of the most debated topics in historiography and public discussions. Over the past decades, an enormous amount of scholarship has been devoted to understanding the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia,[27] and the role of international politics,[28] including the implications that various legal, diplomatic, political and military international interventions in Kosovo,[29] might have had both for international society,[30] and for international relations theory.[31] Most of the works have aimed to expose the hidden internal assumptions and contradictions in previous publications and subvert their influence on our understanding of the region and its wars.[32]

These critical studies are often concerned with the discursive mechanisms through which the Balkans, or Southeast Europe, has been transformed into an “internal other” within the West European imagination, and the manner in which this otherness has been internalized on the part of Southeast European societies themselves. The interesting result is that these studies are emerging as a sort of subaltern, hybrid field of post-colonial and post-socialist studies,[33] aimed at uncovering “entangled histories”[34], and “alternative modernities”,[35] in Southeast Europe. In the growing field of critical Southeast European studies, the knowledge produced about the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s focus in particular on nationalism and the state-building process in Southeast European countries, but also on the international representation of Southeast Europe.

Already, a number of efforts have convincingly demonstrated that the stereotypes and prejudices drawn on to construct the Balkan image of Southeast Europe in hegemonic international representations unabatedly fly in the face of ample empirical evidence. For instance, international representations of the Balkan wars might have changed and the meanings of violence shifted consistently.[36] Nationalism might have also been largely limited by the oscillations between the aggressive behavior of military and political elites and the apathy, even hostility, of the peasantry majority toward war.[37] Moreover, information communicated by the various forms of media about events and politics might have been non-stereotypic, ambivalent and in some cases even positive.[38] In yet other cases, it seems that the humanity of Southeast European peoples at war might have not been given the attention that it deserved.[39] Such studies have conclusively challenged the reified validity claims of ruthless violence, war atrocities, aggressive nationalism and dirty politics of the Balkan wars, or the “inhumanity” of Southeast European peoples, during both the 1910s and the 1990s.[40]

Clearly, the extant scholarship on Balkanism has already deconstructed the confinement of Southeast Europe to the margins of Europe. In this analysis, therefore, we cannot merely catalogue or seek a more correct or more balanced reading of the historical narratives related to the Balkan wars. The drive towards maintaining Southeast Europe as an “internal other” of Western Europe in public and hegemonic international representations is a topic that intersects with attitudes and interests that are based in the narrative legacies of sensationalist stories and essentialist assumptions. By focusing on their important overlapping attributes, we can see that the narratives reveal different aspects of a single biased idea of permanence that is generated because of and underpinned by ethnocentrism. Such a discursive formation combines anachronistic and ethnocentric ideas with a clear political project of post-colonial and post-socialist management. In this sense, the anachronistic and ethnocentric discourse of all these narratives, which we explore in the following sections, is important not only in describing the Balkan other but also because it justifies particular international attitudes and practices towards them.

Sensationalist stories

The Balkan wars were amongst the first military conflicts reported on high scale by the press. From October 1912 until November 1913, like many war correspondents of major European papers, Leon Trotsky was sent to Southeast Europe to cover the events. His articles and correspondences were published in 1926 as the sixth volume of his uncompleted Works, under the title “The Balkans and the Balkan War”,[41] which was also translated into English in 1980 under the caption of War Correspondence.[42] While the analytical pieces and impressionistic dispatches or the interviews and political portraits are interesting, apart from being a testimony to the rhetorical and polemical brilliance of such a major figure as Trotsky, their cognitive significance is no more informative than the dispatches of dozens of others war correspondents.[43]

Trotsky exposed the horrors of war and the atrocities “that must evoke shudders and nausea in every cultured person, in everyone capable of feeling and thinking”.[44] He further detailed the atrocities, but he did not see the heat of war. As a rule, journalists were not allowed on the front line and he had to form his “picture of the life and death of the army on the battlefields through interrogating participants, with the bias this inevitably implies”.[45] Actually, some of his informers were casual acquaintances, but most often, they came from his own social-democratic circles to whose accounts he gave greater credence.[46] As a result, like in many other cases, one suspects that “there is a certain degree of voyeurism about violence, garnished with a puritan moralizing and hectoring”.[47]

In August 1913, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace created an International Commission of Inquiry that was sent to Southeast Europe,[48] with a main explicit objective to investigate allegations and collect evidence for “the causes and conduct of the Balkan wars”.[49] Predictably, the Carnegie Inquiry mobilized all possible means of attracting public attention. Several press communiqués were given, the press was kept informed of the progress of the Commission whose departure from Paris was released with great publicity, and almost twenty thousand copies were distributed of the Report published in May and June 1914 in both English and French.[50] Again, the Carnegie Report is often taken to offer a detailed and well-documented description of what happened in the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars.

However, the Carnegie Inquiry was based on problematic fieldwork. Time for preparation had been short and the commission immediately encountered problems and was stopped and delayed several times.[51] Thus, Serbian officials protested that one of members was anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian and expelled them all, while Greeks officials allowed them to stay but offered them no assistance and again they formally declined to receive one of them, who was also expelled from the hotel.[52] Another member arrived after the group had left, and instead of sending a telegram to ask where they were, he gave up and retraced his steps.[53] Due to various issues and to great disappointment, the commission was reduced to four members on the ground and only two of them could understand some Slavic languages.[54] There was even a question whether the commission should persist in the inquiry at all. It was decided to continue the work but to separate. When the members met in Sofia, their reception could not have been more useful than in Serbia and Greece, since Bulgarian officials prepared all documents and witness testimony for them.[55]

In addition, the Report required considerable rewriting and editing. Many of the chapters were problematic in multiple ways, especially as it was deeply unwise for the member who had done the least field research to end up with most of the writing. Most of the members never concealed their openly pro-Bulgarian positions or anti-Serbian and anti-Greek opinions, which obviously limited the credibility of their writing and the facts they reported or even discredited the content of some aspects of the Report and allowed government officials of participating countries to use their unsubstantiated comments and one-sided opinions to protest.[56] Finally, the Report was neither adequately substantiated nor impartial and it cannot be reasonably considered a credible and valuable source on the Balkan wars.

In all these early accounts, violence was “the leitmotif of the Balkans wars” and one hundred years ago, there was clearly a thoroughly negative estimation of Southeast Europe.[57] Inflated assessments of violence perpetrated in these wars as non-civilized and non-European atrocities and genocide spurred a display of the “combats of extermination marked by inhuman rage” in Southeast Europe.[58] The blame was then translated in various accounts of the time as a narrative of civilization. About the region, it was stated that “a large section of the population is undoubtedly semi-barbarous”,[59] and must “be reclaimed from their semi-civilization”.[60] Also that “the effect of this deplorable exhibition on the moral relations between the Western and the Near-Eastern peoples has been lamentable and will be lasting”.[61] A single phrase in an acclaimed travel book illustrates the Western stereotype that developed of the timeless image of the Southeast European propensity for war and extreme violence: “Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans”,[62] from which it can be inferred that Southeast Europe had to aspire to and attain Western “standards of civilization”,[63] to enjoy equal status in the European society of states.

In the 1990s, during the troubles in Yugoslavia, there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in the old Balkan wars. In particular, the 1913 Carnegie Inquiry suddenly re-emerged to become the single most often-cited source, which was mistaken “naively as a historical source”,[64] on wars in Southeast Europe.[65] Similarly, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky was reprinted in 1993 to great acclaim as a rare primary source on Southeast Europe, at the height of the wars for the Yugoslav succession, in order to find confirmation of often completely opposing political preferences or prejudices.[66]

To explain the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, many commentators repeatedly overemphasized parallels between the barbarisms of the 1912-1913 Balkan wars and the so-called “Other Balkan Wars”.[67] The violence reported in 1913 re-emerged as a compelling factor in arguments in many books and reports, inspiring a sort of selective “memory boom”,[68] and parading uncritically the brutalities of past Balkan wars before a watching world. From the 1910s to the 1990s, one after another self-styled authoritative reports illustrated how the narratives of violence in the region became part of history,[69] thus paving the way once again for important political and ideological implications resulting in the otherization of Southeast Europe. Actually, after Yugoslavia crumbled in the 1990s, the casual reader of the international press, as represented for instance by the journalism of the North American and West European diplomatic and political establishment, was left in little doubt that ethno-religious hatred, wars, violence and atrocities in Southeast Europe were endemic and primordial.[70] Most of these accounts have continually renewed the message of the early twentieth century, according to which Southeast European peoples live in another time and a barbaric land, making it necessary to contain them and fence them off from the rest of Western Europe.

To a certain extent, the press initiated the inquiries, but despite the proliferation of media accounts, the information reported by the press appeared fragmentary, distorted and contradictory. From the 1910s to the 1990s, the vast majority of the narratives of Balkan wars were produced, not by academic scholars in the strictest sense of the term, but by a freelance, extra-academic or pseudo-academic cottage industry. Many journalists, travelers and correspondents suddenly became Balkan “experts” because they had the tendency to generalize from the particular, in other words to present their stories as representative of the grand scheme of things. Actually, they simply fly over the war zones for a few days or weeks, drawing on old stories, to compile and report the same stories. They come prepared to “witness rather than to analyze”.[71] The very nature of their trade in search of sensations means that such narrators do not focus on a subject until it becomes a hot topic.

With the publication of A Witness to Genocide, the highbrow international press found evidence for the “horrors of ethnic cleansing” and “the virus of aggressive nationalism” in Balkan social life and reported that “long-suppressed forces have been unleashed once more in the present”.[72] Indeed, according to some other commentator, this “mad war” could only be grasped if one turned back the clock and keep on going towards the past, as if what had happened in the past causally determined or inescapably motivated people in the present to kill and “die for what their great-grandparents once did”.[73] Thus, in various sensational narratives, we were told how the “fragile peace shatters as Balkan hatred overflows” in the perpetual struggle of “rival ethnic groups” killing each other “for imagined national spaces”.[74] In these narratives, Benedict Anderson’s persuasive argument is conspicuous by its absence, namely that this ethnic animosity is also the defining characteristic of other wars that have shaped the modern European nations.[75] Instead, in this narrative of the unreal, the ghosts of ethnic feuding revive exclusively in Southeast Europe, the characteristics of which are presented and generalized unceremoniously: “The Serbs hate the Albanians, who are not very keen on the Macedonians, who in turn have a mighty grudge against the Bulgarians, who are not very fond of the Turks, who are not exactly enamoured of the Greeks”.[76]

The work of this group of self-styled Balkan specialists and “parachute journalists” targets mainly a non-specialist, non-academic audience, and purports to explain and unravel the intricacies of Southeast European history and politics for lay readers. Many books published in this genre on Southeast Europe have achieved commercial success.[77] These accounts may vary notoriously in quality and utility, but they all convey a very distinct and clearly defined perception of the region in international representations. In these representations, Southeast Europe is nevertheless imagined as a loosely defined but contentious, dangerous, and violence-prone area, given that Balkan war has long been reified as the exception to the international norm and continues to be such.

Many of these writings consciously or unconsciously perpetuated the idea that at the end just as at the beginning of the twentieth century the Southeast European peoples were geographically very close to mainstream Europe and yet culturally very distant, relegated to the “margins of Europe”,[78] to recall a phrase coined for Greece.[79] As has been shown elsewhere in the case of writings on Albania in the early twentieth century, especially by Austrian and German travelers,[80] the impression was always given that people’s life in the region was one of barbarism and nothing else. The aim of these writings, typical of the travelogue genre, was not to provide information or conduct scholarly work, but to make sensational discoveries to satisfy the author’s insatiable desire to acquire some sense of prestige, not unlike what is known today as network ratings.

Similarly, by the end of the twentieth century, regardless of the fact that the target of the narratives was initially the area of the conflicts following the dissolution of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the association of the extraordinary characteristics of the Yugoslav situation with the situation of the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913 has taken a high degree of significance in international public opinion, especially when it is extended to apply to Southeast Europe as a whole, completely without justification. Thus, the high-flown rhetoric of sensationalist media coverage, countless policy-driven surveys and seller’s case studies hawked the whole of Southeast Europe to the political class and to the general public who imagined it as “Balkan”.[81]

Even nowadays, the quest for sensations in Southeast Europe is still alive. When the so-called Western Balkans are at peace, we are reminded that some of its inhabitants go abroad to look for war: “Orthodox Christian Serbs are joining pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine while Catholic Croats fight on Ukraine’s side. Muslim Albanians, Bosniaks and Muslims from Sandzak have also gone to fight in Iraq and Syria… For Serbs and Croats, this war is a replay of their own conflict in the 1990s as much as an adventure or crusade”.[82] What is a striking conclusion, however, is “the degree to which, apart from their religions, most Balkan fighters are so broadly united against liberalism and the West”.[83] Oddly enough, not only the empirical evidence on religious everyday life, which is provided elsewhere for current Albania and other Southeast European contexts, including Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia,[84] but even their own raw data offer no deterrent to the purveyors of such views. In fact, if we look at the number they themselves provide of jihadists as a percentage of each country, “Kosovo comes 14th between Germany and Spain, Bosnia is 11th and Albania 20th, [whereas] the top nine countries are West European”.[85]

Similarly, the confrontation between Serbian fans and Albanian players during the last year’s football match between Serbian and Albanian national teams, in the context of qualifying competition for UEFA Euro 2016, is tagged with “Belgrade chaos fed off centuries of rivalry between Serbia and Albania”.[86] In this way, international highbrow press encouraged everyone to know that in the Balkans “mingling football hooliganism with ultra-nationalist politics” is business carried on as usual, whereas the last event should be seen simply as “the latest skirmish in the Serbian-Albanian territorial struggle”.[87] A single stock phrase provided proof to the readers: “in the Balkans, more than anywhere else, football is the continuation of war by other means”.[88] Many observers endorsed clearly the difficulties of defining the match by emphatic affirmations of “Serbia-Albania brawl impossible to believe”, as “in years of covering football at home and abroad, nothing had come close to this”.[89]

By all accounts, the timeless Orientalizing and Balkanizing images from selected and reported narratives interwove the past and the present by singling out specific acts of war and violence. The result is the erasure of any sense of historical distance from more recent events, and hence any sense that the present can be different from the past. In this way, Southeast European populations are doomed forever by history. These narratives have enabled the construction of a primordial, timeless and unchanging ethno-religious hatred that is, paradoxically, connected in a clear and immediate way to the ever-changing present. We suggest that this construction, made sensational by the political and media discourses, underlies the association of the label “Balkan” with Balkanization and the representation of a complicated and irresolvable political situation that is often assumed to be based on complex and variegated division, fratricidal hatred and longstanding ethnic and religious grievances.

Essentialist assumptions

Sensationalist non-academic writings might have developed complex relations with reputedly more serious accounts, to the extent that at times the authors of these two types of literature have seemed to call for mutual consideration. This, of course, undermined the validity of the scholarly research, in respect of objectivity and quality of analysis. The result easily seems as though academic writers were simply not concerned about understanding the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s. The excessive consideration of past wars, stretching back centuries while looking to the past to find answers to problems of the present, seems to have engendered a quest for a cultural inventory of collective memories. Indeed, much of the scholarly research seemed to hold the view that from a historical perspective “the Balkan proclivity for ethno-religiously based violence [as] an explosion of intercommunal hatred and savagery was not at all surprising”.[90] Many believed that “there is no ideology in the Balkans [that] matches nationalism’s profound effect upon individuals and groups”, simply because “this accursed land was always prone to tectonic collisions, and those who have reignited the ethnoreligious hatreds have hurled entire nations into the inferno”.[91] Similarly, others have observed more specifically how the “struggle between Serbs and non-Serbs lies at the heart of the instability for which Yugoslavia was famous”.[92]

Once released, this cultural inventory seems to have inspired and encouraged the need to develop an ethno-culturalist approach, which often lapses into primordial essentialism. Remarkably, such an approach is adopted by both Western and local researchers on Southeast Europe. As shown elsewhere in more detail regarding either German-speaking Albanologie,[93] or native Albanian studies,[94] a strong tradition of scholarship has aimed to emphasize the essential and immutable character of a people’s culture and history. In particular, most local scholarship and politics in Southeast European countries have contributed, albeit inadvertently, to such an outré reading of events because their frameworks for thought remain narrowly nationalistic.

This may also explain why most local scholars regarded the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 as liberationist wars of independence against the Ottoman Empire, the ultimate result of which was the creation of national, homogenous, bounded territories of the Southeast European states at the price of much suffering, which is still blamed on mutual perfidy and atrocities.[95] Ottoman historiography also regarded the disaster of the Balkan wars as the point at which Ottomanism ended, and much intellectual self-examination and reassessment of the world prompted the “search for a nation’s soul”, which made of Turkism the dominant national ideology in modern Turkey.[96]

The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s also attracted much scientific and extra-scientific attention, especially within the “scholarship” that promoted a parochial understanding of the role of the social sciences as nationally constitutive. Many recent accounts are held captive by their authors’ national affiliations or personal convictions. Some betray their predilection for predictions that are avidly consumed by US-American policy-makers,[97] or their eyewitness accounts are colored by their own liberal humanitarian positions.[98] However understandable or even commendable their predispositions may be, scholarly objectivity in these instances has made no progress and can be considered to be biased, instant history, superfluous and dictated by immediate conditions.[99]

To varying degrees, this is the case when some render their genesis of Yugoslavia with a Croatian slant,[100] or they are likely to see the conflict as a Serbian aggression, sometimes even refined by rational choice as an explanation of Serbian behavior and Serbian national character.[101] Others make no bones about their Serbian loyalties,[102] especially when they stress the global dimensions of the conflicts and the role of the international community, basically regarded as an international conspiracy against the Serbian people.[103] Some of these accounts may even supersede spontaneous bias and prejudice. While supposedly dispassionate and grounded in the rhetoric of social science, objectivity and neutrality, many academic analyses are often denounced as blatant cases of abuse of the social scientific approach.

A case in point is provided in the forceful debate published in successive issues of Anthropological Theory, following the publication of an analysis of conceptual practices of power related to “Anthropology and Genocide in the Balkans”,[104] which offered a critique of moral and historical relativism in the social analysis of Yugoslav conflicts.[105] From an anthropological perspective, cultural relativism argues against cultural superiority and for cultural toleration, but anthropologists are very critical of the ways in which cultural analysis can lead to a kind of moral relativism which argues that moral judgments or affirmations of universal cultural values are not possible. In particular, some narrative accounts of the Yugoslavian conflicts are seen as examples of the relationship between this kind of relativistic thinking as an independent cultural force and a certain political ideology that affected the interpretation of concrete historical events in former Yugoslavia as well as some concrete international policies of western political elites. The interpretive strategy of these accounts, while seemingly grounded in a welter of rhetorical commitments to the Weberian tradition of Verstehen and Wertfreiheit, are not especially detached or value-free in relation to the actual conflicts. Relativism, for all of its pretensions, is not value-free, nor is any social-scientific knowledge, which remains “always for someone and for some purpose”,[106] and always laden with political positions and consequences.[107]

Researchers are often in the grip of ideologies that seek to establish identity boundaries and cultural hegemony, by glorifying the past as a means to gain ascendancy and legitimacy in the present. In pursuing this ideological path, they often use and misuse collective memories of the past that promote the grand narrative of the nationalist interests. Quite often, they do not concern themselves with people’s ways of life or with what was happening before and after historically traumatic events. Rather, their discourse seems to be born of cultural insecurity, in which conflicting national claims to moral superiority and contingent victimizations are used to promote aggressively several rationalizations of the root causes of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 or the Yugoslav crisis in the 1990s.

So far, a critical interrogation of the trend towards relativism and equivocation is all the more important since the hallmark of the Balkan wars is the prominence of equivocal or relativist positions and reinterpretations. Such a trend also persisted between 2012 and 2013 with a proliferation of celebrations and exhibitions to commemorate the centenary of the 1912-1913 Balkan wars in all participant countries, which also included many reprints and new publications, especially memoirs and other witness accounts, interviews with historians, literary scholars and politicians. The press and the web are particularly rich sources of activities, where one can gauge the reactions to the Balkan wars, ranging from openly and fiery nationalistic apologies to confrontations critical of any display of extreme nationalism. Many national and international conferences and other academic competitions on the topic were also organized all over Europe and North America. Again, in these conferences, we frequently came across quite diverse and conflicting yet firmly held views, all of which were put forward as “truths” regarding historical facts, events, attitudes, and their lasting significance for the region.[108] This shows that the Balkan wars continue to divide many of the peoples, the scholars and the states of the region and beyond. Indeed, when one recalls these or other facts, events and attitudes, this does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of the Balkan wars, but rather reveals the conviction that the holders of these views have in the validity of their own truth claims.

Throughout the discourse on the Balkan wars, whether in the 1910s or in the 1990s, relativist positions usually took the form of moral equivalence, arguing that “all sides are equally guilty” for committing war crimes, atrocities and genocide. The distinction between aggressors and victims was blurred and everyone became a member of a warring faction filled with ancient hatreds. The Bosnian war especially “became a strange beast: a perpetratorless crime in which all were victims and all more or less equally guilty”.[109] The alleged equivalence of sides made the moral analysis of Balkan wars problematic. The attempt to make moral judgments or definite conclusions about the “truth” was lost in the privileging of interpretations that favor the use of morally neutral, relativistic categories in order to create the perception of equality of guilt and the assignment of equal responsibility for collective violence and mass killing.

Much of such relativist discourse was grounded in a more general negativity towards Balkan nationalism, thus assuming a particular brand of nationalism that is always seen as the underlying cause of the Balkan wars. In many accounts, a common point of departure for analysis “seems to rely on an undeviating causal chain: people in the Balkans are nationalists, [which] generates mutual hatred, which under particular circumstances might lead to bloodshed”.[110] In this case, Balkan nationalism was seen as a “virus” and very little attempt was made to come to terms with new political realities in Southeast Europe. As the language used by both policy and opinion makers is not neutral, the result was highly relativistic. Indeed, “labelling nationalism as a pathology places it beyond human control [and] avoids the issue of culpability by seeing all parties as equally infected” and therefore equally responsible.[111] This rhetoric is both ahistorical and atheoretical. It does not distinguish among nationalisms representing different ideological developments with different political consequences, but glosses over a failure to come to terms with the complexities of different political and instrumental ideologies.

This style of relativistic discourse was evident across a broad range of ideological positions within West European and international press, scholarship and politics, which have done much to reduce Southeast European collective memories and temporalities to an immutable core. Essentialist views have been also purveyed in some of the many publications on the Balkan wars by international scholars, who have reflected the atmosphere of the time in the titles of their books, by using “historically pregnant names”.[112] They have included such expressions as Balkan babel, Balkan inferno, Balkan ghosts, broken bonds, Balkan tragedy, death, chaos, horrors, slaughterhouse, or “Third” and “Other” Balkan Wars.[113]

So far, it cannot be coincidental that the international response to the Bosnian crisis “produced constellations remarkably reminiscent of the alignments of the Great War: with the former Central Powers backing Croatia and the former Entente Powers indulging Serbia”.[114] The conflict over Kosovo dramatized this issue in even more subtle ways. However, the marked differences dictated both by national contexts and by national agendas were somehow levelled by the unprecedented situation of crisis where the member states of the European Union were drawn, directly or indirectly, into a major war on the same side over an issue that united their interests. In these conditions, it is hardly surprising that during the military campaign there was a degree of synchronization in the focus of public attention mediated through the press, as a comparison between the French, German and British establishment press clearly showed.[115]

The German Defense Minister, for instance, speaks of a Serbian “policy of genocide”,[116] while the German Foreign Minister speaks of a European standard, against which the actions of Serbian leadership must be measured: “a throwback to the Europe of the 1930s” that “is not ours”, thus stressing the need to present the war as a moral imperative in Germany.[117] The German press was sensitive to the complexities of Serbian culture and politics, while emphasized a deep-seated cultural issue.[118] This was related to the mystifications in the Serbian intellectual discourses of the symbolic importance of the Kosovo myth that plays an instrumental role in the Serbian national myth, especially for speaking out Serbian victimization and asserting that there is a world conspiracy against the Serbian people.[119] Even before the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s started, the Serbs actually believed in that myth. However, the instrumentality of the myth during the Kosovo campaign made it possible for Serbian political leadership to hope strengthening power by NATO air strikes and expect see Kosovo partitioned,[120] which is something that had been already recommended by the notorious memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in 1986 and many Serbian intellectuals afterwards.[121] Similarly, while the British media take the straight line of treating the Serbian regime as an enemy that needs to be defeated, the message was relayed that this was a fight against evil. Even though the tone was generally dispassionate and pragmatic with only occasional lapses into emotive language,[122] mainly when referring to the plight of Kosovo Albanians,[123] the long-term historical origins of the conflicts in Southeast Europe were often detailed in an analysis that drew inspiration from a “clash of civilizations”.[124]

By contrast, one of the features of the French coverage of the war was a willingness to consider the Serbian case with more sympathy and some support or at least with a refusal to demonize the Serbs as a group. Often French intellectual and political elites consider what they perceive as lies and exaggerations in the western account of the war.[125] French commentators continually stress a process of demonization in other national press coverage. They note in the German political press a tendency to use the vocabulary of the Third Reich such as concentration camp, genocide or Völkermord, and to directly compare the events in the Balkans to the Nazi ethnic cleansing.[126] This is understood as a “diabolisation necessaire” to pull the Germans into the war. While political perceptions are reported in the German press together with other factors such as cultural and historical issues related to France’s historical support for the Serbs, French journalists stress the long tradition of Franco-Serbian friendship in a constant call for a negotiated settlement and diplomatic initiatives.[127]

Similarly, British politicians and press are also shown in French press to be engaged in the elaboration of a discourse that demonized Serbian political leadership and distorted the information into a propaganda machine.[128] French journalists had been very circumspect in the reporting of alleged atrocities. The stories of Albanians used as human shields were mainly reported in French press as unverified, with extensive use of inverted commas, the conditional and the subjunctive, all stylistic devices to indicate that the writer cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information being given.[129] As a corollary, there is an underlying criticism that the full debate was not being heard in the UK, while the war was purposely portrayed to the British public as a fight against evil and for morality and human rights.[130]

One cannot understand such trends solely by examining the objective facts of history. A critical interrogation and concrete sociological analysis are demanded, which must also examine the cultural system of the West European-styled international society that frames hegemonic representations and political policies. As we show in more detail elsewhere,[131] this is important because these accounts defined the cognitive frames and terms of discourse with which several scholars and observers framed their own essentialist beliefs and relativist interpretations of the Balkan wars into public and hegemonic representations of Southeast Europe in international society.

Essentialist beliefs and relativistic interpretations worked not so much because they were the dominant element of discourse on the Balkan wars. Rather, their transformation into international hegemonic representations was possible precisely because these beliefs and interpretations were largely grounded in the rhetorical commitment to the supposed social-scientific and balanced interpretation of historical events. By drawing on the rhetoric of objectivity, they appeared reasonable and plausible regardless of their empirical validity. In this way, they attained a representational status and exerted their public effect in international society not simply as a reflex of the social positions of the intellectuals who produced them. Once created as hegemonic representations, they became active and independent cultural forces that served as important frames of reference and typifications to guide the formation of subsequent ideas and political practices in other sectors.[132] Indeed, these representations guided much of West European understanding of the Yugoslav conflicts and legitimated the international political choices of inaction, indifference and non-intervention to prevent genocide in Southeast Europe.[133]

More specifically, the reduction of collective memory to an essentialist core and the elevation of nationalism to the status of a mystical causal agent make it difficult to break free from the conceptual framework of primordial, timeless and unchanging ethno-religious hatred, violence and atrocities. The relativism of this conceptual framework “distracts the reader from examining relevant evidence”,[134] which may warrant different, more critical and more politically informed interrogations. This is even more the case when this unsound and hazardous conceptual framework is often taken at face value to fuel public international representations of Southeast Europe without a proper problematization. The same essentialist approach, which intersects with both social and political analyses of wars, is often reproduced in academic writings on international relations to claim that war in Southeast Europe has an essentially different and culturally distinct character.

In this respect, these accounts should and must be considered in regard to their moral and ethical implications, which were unspoken and masked, but nonetheless crucial to political outcomes. As shown in relation to the Kosovo conflict,[135] the international representations worked out by similar essentialist and relativist accounts may still affect significantly the attitude of the international community and its actual involvement in the current international affairs towards the region. These representations create imagined boundaries that prevent a free movement of ideas and people between the West and the Southeast of Europe, reaffirming the scenario of a “cordon sanitaire” that amounts to saying: “Since these countries are still trying to solve their old problems, well, we can just wait and see before addressing the issue of their integration”.[136]

The essentialist and relativist assumptions then inform international attitudes towards Southeast Europe that result in acts of security containment. This is, for instance, what makes it necessary for Western Europe, in its quest for security and containment, to adopt a selective stance in the endless process of “differentiated integration”,[137] of the so-called “Western Balkans”.[138] As long as this attitude is comforting to those in Western Europe, it will continue to support the Balkan image of Southeast Europe in international representation as inherently prone to war and justify an international politics of further containment and otherization.

Anachronistic discourses

The accumulated narrative associated the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 with the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s as “meaningful coincidences” in a kind of synchronicity, despite the events having occurred in different temporal contexts and with no apparent causal relationship. As in cases of extrasensory perception, rather than a question of cause and effect, it is a question of thinking all of the events together in time, in a kind of simultaneity, about which psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung coined the term synchronicity “to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation”.[139] This kind of synchronicity is a psychic factor that is independent of space and time and gives rise to relationships that cannot be explained by conventional efficient causality.[140]

Remarkably, Balkan wars and Yugoslav conflicts are also thought to be connected by a certain meaning, as meaningful coincidences, with the cause and effect supposed to occur simultaneously at the same time. It can be inferred that the authors of the accumulated narrative of Balkan wars are simply dealing with a paranormal reality. Obviously, this is quite absurd and no one would argue about that. Rather, the synchronicity behind all these narratives shows a cognitive bias of inductive inference or a form of selection bias towards searching for and interpreting information in a way that confirms their own preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations that contradict changing realities across temporal contexts.

In so doing, they might have created what Johannes Fabian called an “allochronic discourse” on other people in another time, as “a discourse whose referent has been removed from the present of the speaking/writing object”.[141] Similarly, the Balkan narrative is simply a kind of anachronistic discourse in which the temporal context of the discourse has been removed and the referent of the discourse has been alienated or otherized. Consequently, in most types of narrative on later politics and wars in Southeast Europe, the early Balkan wars are invoked and used discursively as if they had not taken place in a completely different time and context. Selected events of the past are represented as if they were of the present time, based on the assumption that Southeast European societies do not change.

Anachronism points a quite scandalous chronic phenomenon that could explain why in the West European perspective, Southeast Europeans or the “Balkan other”, like any other “non-European”, never occupy the same historical time even when they are contemporary to West European observers. This created a certain stereotype of “a land of the living past”,[142] which promoted a new figure of Southeast Europe and Southeast European peoples in West European imaginations that illuminates the simultaneous acts of exclusion and inclusion in the history of European ideas. It is a mixture of the exoticism and “Balkanism”,[143] of a “terra incognita”,[144] in the “margins of Europe”,[145] which contributes to the logic of many “nesting orientalisms”,[146], partaking of “the Orient within”,[147] and signifying the potential of being an “exotic other and stigmatized brother” at the same time.[148] As a result, whether the accounts of the Balkan wars are sensationalist stories or essentialist assumptions, they are similar in that they originate from a common construction that is a pure act of ethnocentrism. The accounts simply aim to identify continuous exoticized patterns of conflict. As such, they are not unlike what Edmund Leach once unforgettably denounced as “the butterfly collecting” of older forms of anthropology.[149]

The discussion on this topic, which acquired a wider audience especially after the publication of Orientalism,[150] has traced the West–East temporal spatialization and mental mapping of cultural differences to their intellectual roots in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.[151] Since the 1950s, however, as shown in more detail elsewhere,[152] Lévi-Strauss in his Tristes Tropiques had already deplored similar stances in travel writing and anthropology.[153] To borrow his terms, the literature on Southeast Europe would represent another instance of the same mistake of an entire profession or an entire civilization in believing that men are not always men, and that some are more deserving of interest and attention, merely because in the midst of an otherwise relatively homogenous Europe they seem to astonish us by the apparent strangeness of their customs, attitudes and behaviour.

The prevailing socio-political conditions of early state-building and the alternating episodes of regional and international politics notwithstanding, war has remained a sure indicator of a Balkan predisposition towards destructive violence and the primary reading path to an abnormal history of an indisputably non-modern, uncivilized Balkans.[154] Remarkably, wars in Southeast Europe were exploited from the early to the late twentieth century in very similar ways. In the context of Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s, adventurous fact-finders rediscovered the Balkans as a “new exotic land”.[155] Various narratives established a continuity with the past, even though particular events are paradoxically products of changing circumstances. Massacres, the destruction of villages and cities, the plight of refugees, and ethnic cleansing produce the same effects. They are always selected as instances from the past to give rise to subsequent historicizations.[156]

Most of the commentators aimed at predicting the course of conflict and attempted to “see the end in every beginning”.[157] By looking to discover a past that could explain the present, the Balkan wars and their causes were ahistoricized and atemporalized. They are seen as applying to all times, on the invalid assumption that the historical and temporal contexts in which the events are placed will not change. As indicated elsewhere,[158] this interpretation of events may have prevented the arising of conditions under which a critical theoretical narrative and alternative representation of war in Southeast Europe could be constructed and developed.

Arguably, the ahistoricizations and atemporalizations of the Balkan wars and their circumstances are examples of a vision in which temporal journeys into an imagined past fuse to construct an imagined present. They will persist through time imbued with a particular intentional meaning, not about wars in general, but about the influential idea of violence as a significant occurrence that is urged to be recognized as the defining cultural characteristics of Southeast European peoples and societies. Quite often, banal narratives and competing representations of the Balkan wars have cherry-picked and interpreted historical facts to create a new body of putative facts that construct international hegemonic representations, which often tend to cast Southeastern Europe remote from the rest of Europe, especially as a place of immemorial ethno-religious hatred, nationalist watersheds, ethnic tribalism, barbaric brutality and civilizational incompetence.

However, this constant characterization in terms of civilizations places Southeast and Western Europe at odds with each other and must not be taken at face value. We also need to consider the creative and constructed aspect of politics and the role it plays in this representation. Indeed, the development of hegemonic international representations is much more complex than a series of spurious, impressionistic, anachronistic, ethnocentric and xenophobic utterances, or even more complex than a mere linear process of intentional manipulation of human minds designed to prompt certain reactions. As shown in the case of various international interventions in Kosovo,[159] more than conflict resolutions, such representations serve the purpose and vested interests of control and domination, which are not necessarily named and personalized or made explicit. This is even more apparent when the goal is to redefine a geopolitical location in the hierarchy of relations within the Western order of things in international affairs.

Conclusion

By all accounts, the reading of the narrative legacies of the Balkan wars, and the rationale applied by the professional communities and the “expert milieu” of scholars and observers, requires a closer sociological analysis of the social actors who participate in this process. Different factors influence any narrative legacy and all play a role in the selection process of narrative media production. What is selected, presented and represented as significant narrative depends on factors such as the personal and professional background of scholars and observers, the media routines, the organizational framework, and the societal, political and ideological context. The exploration of the precise channels through which narratives of the Balkan wars circulated, the uses made of these writings, how they affected state policies and how these policies were elaborated by specified decision-making elites, is an issue in its own right. Even though any given study cannot address at once all levels of this “hierarchy of influences”,[160] an awareness of these multiple perspectives helps keep our thinking open. In particular, by juxtaposing various form of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy making, truth claims and expert accounts, we tried to consider and recognize the different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars against a background of the ideologies of history and politics. If this sociological approach to knowledge may allow attaining a new level of objectivity,[161] we may conclude that the circulation of ideas and practices, their reception and their use, in this case as in others, are contingent upon different political situations and experiences, with systematic implications for foreign policy and public debates, including the scholarly theorizing on the meaning of war and international affairs.

The pervasive discourses on the Balkan wars may appear unusual and difficult to grasp, if one employs traditional categories that are developed in sensationalist and essentialist accounts of media industry and pseudo-academism. However, an analysis of the narrative legacies, when linked to a careful examination of the historical contextualization of different accounts from an ideological perspective, can result in a more critical understanding of the hegemonic role of anachronistic and ethnocentric politics of international beliefs and representations of Southeast Europe. In attempting to analyze the history and the politics of the Balkan wars, the aim of this article was to frame the argument in such a way as to focus on a critical reassessment of narrative legacies and move away from the close association of Balkan wars with the essentialization of Southeast Europe. The concluding argument is that the discursive practices of different narratives have constructed a distorted representation of Southeast Europe in international society, which may have resulted in a potential underestimation of the pressing problems at both regional and global levels, whereas Southeast Europe must be considered an integral part of European history and politics.

In methodological terms, we undertook a comparative analysis of ideas rather than a search for an extended positive proof. We adopted a critical approach to ideological conceptions of history and politics by focusing on the political processes and power relations that define narratives of wars and their place in social relations. The aim of this article was not to write a history of Balkan wars, but rather to examine how various narrative legacies and the political implications of those discursive practices have defined the West European imagination of Southeast Europe. While this approach might not have resulted in an exhaustive treatment and certainly a number of questions remain open, it is hoped that the discussion herein will provoke at the very least a non-stereotyped debate on the effects of narratives and representations and will result in further, deeper inquiries in this direction.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at a series of international conferences: The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: A Conference to Mark the 100th Anniversary, organized by the Faculty of History, University of Oxford (U.K.), 17-18 October 2012; From Balkan Wars to Balkan Peace Project: The EU Integration, organized in Tirana (Albania) by the Center for Strategic Research, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 16 May 2012; The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: An International Academic Conference, organized in Tirana (Albania) by the Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung, Regensburg (Germany), 10-11 June 2013. We have benefitted greatly from the comments, encouragements, discussions, and presentations of all participants, as well as from numerous friends and colleagues who read parts of this paper at various stages and helped to improve our argument: Nicholas Onuf, Sabrina Ramet, Mark Almond, Robert Evans, Tom Buchanan, James Pettifer, Maria Todorova, Bernd Fischer, Conrad Clewing, Leen d’Haenens, Thomas Lindemann, Chris Wright. We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations.

Notes on Contributors

Albert Doja is a University full Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Lille, France, and an Ordinary full Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Albania, holding the first Chair of anthropology. He was awarded with distinction a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 1993 from the Paris School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and a Professorial accreditation (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in sociology and anthropology in 2004 from Paris Descartes University, Sorbonne, qualifying for full University Professorship within the French academic system. He has been an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Anthropology at University College London, on secondment (temporary assignment) to the United Nations Development Programme as the founding Vice-Chancellor of the new University of Durres in Albania, and he has held several academic positions in France, Britain, Ireland and Albania, lectured in social anthropology and conducted extensive fieldwork research in many other countries. He is on the editorial board of international academic journals and he has so far published a couple of books and many original articles in international peer-reviewed journals (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5378-8362, https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/rid/C-1637-2008). Special interests include politics of knowledge, power and ideology; political anthropology of symbolism and religion, intercultural communication, interethnic relations and international migrations; ethnicity and nationalism; cultural heritage and social transformations; international politics of hegemonic representations; comparative politics of identity transformations; instrumental politics of civic ideas and ethnic motivations; comparative politics of European identity and European integration; identity structures, discourses, practices, and processes; political technologies of the self, personhood, gender construction, kinship, and reproduction activism; anthropology of politics and history; political-anthropological theory, structural analysis, post-structuralism and neo-structuralism. (https://pro.univ-lille.fr/en/albert-doja/)

Enika Abazi obtained her Ph.D. in International Relations from Bilkent University in 2005. She is now the Director of the Paris Peace Research Institute and an adjunct professor of International Studies at the University of Lille (France), while being a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations at the European University Tirana (Albania). She held visiting positions at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences and the Doctoral College, University of Lille; and at the Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po, Rennes (France). She has been a former research fellow of the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (Denmark) and principal investigator in many research projects at several European research institutions, including Lille Center for sociological and economic research (Clersé, France), Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF, Switzerland), Hellenic Foundation of European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP, Greece), Women in Security Studies (WIIS, US), Center for Strategic Research (SAM, Turkey), Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA, Turkey) and Turkish Asian Centre for Strategic Studies (TASAM, Turkey), Albanian Institute of International Studies (AIIS, Albania). She has significant experience in the management of higher education, serving on secondment (temporary assignment) to UNDP as a founding Dean at the University of Durres and later as a Deputy Rector of Research and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the European University Tirana (Albania). She also dealt with issues of Albanian membership to WTO and EU while being from 1991 to 1997 the head of Multilateral and Bilateral Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Economic Affairs (Albania). Her research interests cover a broad range of topics across international relations, sociology and history, especially on narratives and international representations of war, conflicts and interventions after the Cold War, European integration and politics in Southeast Europe, security challenges and defense reforms, transformation of social sciences and societal crises in post-communist countries, etc. She has presented her work in several international symposia and conferences and she has so far published a couple of books, many book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed and indexed academic journals (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/P-3083-2015). She has developed a series of courses taught in English, French and Albanian, such as Peace and War in the Balkans, Geopolitics of International Trade, Theories of European Integration, Ethnic Conflicts, Diplomatic History, International Law in IR, Contemporary Debates in International Relations Theories, etc.

[1]  Prof. Enika Abazi is senior  Researcher at Paris Peace Research Institute, France.

and senior Associate Researcher at the Albanian Institute for International Studies( AIIS) Tirana Albania.

 Albert Doja is professor at the Institute of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Lille, France. Professor Doja also is member of Editorial team of Tirana Observatory, The Albanian Journal of International  Relations published by  the Albanian Institute for International Studies, (AIIS)

Notes

[1] The meaning and role of international representations as a cultural system of international society is examined in full detail elsewhere: Abazi and Doja, “International Representations”.

[2] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 8.

[3] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia p. 266.

[4] Connelly and Welch, War and the mediad’; Baines and O’Shaughnessy, Propaganda; D’Almeida, histoire mondiale de la propagande; Welch, Propaganda, power and persuasion.

[5] Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing consentday.

[6] Dayan and Katz, Media events.

[7] Durkheim, Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse.

[8] Couldry, Hepp and Krotz, Media events in a global age.

[9] Beck, Kosmopolitische Blick.

[10] Chouliaraki, The soft power of war; Chouliaraki, The ironic spectator.

[11] Koselleck, The practice of conceptual history.

[12] Stewart, “Dreams of Treasure”, p. 481.

[13] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 28.

[14] Petrovic, Long Way Home, p. 29.

[15] Abazi, “Albania in Europe”, pp. 229-235.

[16] Wachtel, The Balkans in world history.

[17] Hall, Consumed by war; Hall, War in the Balkans.

[18] Anderson, The Eastern Question; Macfie, The Eastern Question.

[19] Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453; Hösch, The Balkans; Jelavich, History of the Balkans; Castellan, Histoire des Balkans; Mazower, The Balkans; Hall, The Modern Balkans; Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe.

[20] Sipcanov, Correspondants de Guerre; Kiraly and Djordjevich, East Central European Society and the Balkan Wars; Damianova, “La Fédération Contre l’Alliance Militaire”.

[21] Berri, Assedio di Scutari; Durham, The Struggle for Scutary; Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report; Tucović, Srbija i Arbanija; Trotsky, The Balkan Wars; Hanotaux, La Guerre des Balkans et l’Europe; Young, Nationalism and War in the Near East.

[22] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[23] With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the coalition of national forces in the first Balkan war, for instance, a series of transformations were initiated in international politics, marked by the end of empires, the building of nation-states, the spread of communist ideas and the shaking of the old international order, even though these transformations are often attributed incorrectly to World War One.

[24] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans.

[25] Almond, Europe’s Backyard War; Mestrovic, The balkanization of the West; Mestrovic, Genocide after emotion; Cushman and Mestrovic, This time we knew; Campbell, National Deconstruction; Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania; Bjelić and Savić, Balkan as Metaphor; Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”; Gagnon, The myth of ethnic war; Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”; Hammond, “Uses of Balkanism”; Garde, Le discours balkanique; Green, Notes from the Balkans; Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse analysis and the Bosnian war.

[26] Hansen, “Past as Preface”; Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912–1913; Farrar, “Aggression versus Apathy”; Kolev and Koulouri, The Balkan Wars; Kévonian, “Enquête, Délit, Preuve”; Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”; Michail, “Western Attitudes”; Simić, “Balkans and Balkanisation”; Todorova, “War and Memory”ibid.; Trix, “Peace-mongering”; Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[27] Naimark and Case, Yugoslavia and its historians; Cohen and Dragović-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe; Biondich, The Balkans; Vujačić, Nationalism, myth, and the state.

[28] Terrett, The dissolution of Yugoslavia; Glaurdić, The hour of Europe.

[29] Doja, “aDémocratie et stabilité dans le Sud-Est Européen: facteurs humains, culturels et sociaux”; Abazi, Intrastate Conflicts, International Interventions and their Implications on Security Issues, Case of Kosovo; Abazi, “Kosovo, War, Peace and Intervention in a Nutshell”; Abazi, “Kosovo Conflict and the Post-Cold War Order: Russia and Turkey Policies”; Abazi, “The Role of International Community”; Abazi, “A New Power Play in the Balkans”; Abazi, “Çështja e Kosovës”.

[30] Bellamy, Kosovo and international society.

[31] Abazi, Ethno-national Conflict and International Relations: The Case of Kosovo conflict.

[32] Stokes, Lampe, Dennison and Mostov, “Instant History”; Fleming, “Balkan Historiography”; Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia; Djokić and Ker-Lindsay, New Perspectives on Yugoslavia; Njaradi, “Balkan Studies”; Ingrao and Emmert, Confronting the Yugoslav controversies; Bieber, Galijaš and Archer, Debating the end of Yugoslavia.

[33] Fleming, “Balkan Historiography”, p. 1227.

[34] Daskalov and Marinov, Entangled Histories I; Daskalov and Mishkova, Entangled Histories II; Daskalov and Vezenkov, Entangled Histories III.

[35] Mishkova, Trencsenyi and Jalava, Regimes of Historicity.

[36] Michail, “Western Attitudes”.

[37] Roudometof, “Social Origins of Balkan Politics”; Farrar, “Aggression versus Apathy”; Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”.

[38] Dorn-Sezgin, “Between Cross and Crescent”.

[39] Kolev and Koulouri, The Balkan Wars; O’Loughlin, “Inter-Ethnic Friendships”; Dimitrova, “Balkan War Evidences”.

[40] Campbell, National Deconstruction.

[41] See: Balkany i balkanskaia voina, http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotm083.htm (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[42] Trotsky, The Balkan Wars.

[43] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 8.

[44] Trotsky, The Balkan Wars, pp. 282-283.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 19.

[48] Founded in 1910 the Carnegie Endowment was a non-governmental organisation zealously engaged in the pacifist movement. Its objectives were the promotion of international public awareness, by providing evidence and information about the effects of war on civilian population, in order to support international laws and organizations for the arbitration and peaceful settlement of disputes among states. The best way to support these goals was to give compelling examples, by exposing the wrongdoings of secret diplomacy and power games leading to wars. This would induce sufficient indignation either to prompt humanitarian intervention or to encourage the creation of international legislation on the treatment of civilians in war and on the limitation of the political and socioeconomic implications of war.

[49] Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report.

[50] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 29; Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 158.

[51] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 9.

[52] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 151.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 9.

[55] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 152.

[56] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 21; Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 153.

[57] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 121.

[58] Duggan, “European Diplomacy”, p. 633.

[59] “The Balkan War Enquiry”, The Economist 79 (18 July 1914), 106. The column must have been signed off by Editor Francis W. Hirst who had participated in the 1913 Carnegie inquiry on the Balkans Wars.

[60] Spencer, “The Balkan Question”, p. 581.

[61] Young, Nationalism and War in the Near East, pp. 378-379.

[62] West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, p. 375.

[63] Gong, The Standards of Civilization.

[64] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 148.

[65] In the 1990s, a reprint of the 1913 Inquiry with a gratuitous caption, Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars., and with a substantial introduction, Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”., left no room for doubt that conflict inherited from a distant tribal past prevailed in the same Balkan world. Later, a sequel tried to show the endurance of the pattern. Carnegie Endowment, Unfinished Peace. In a simple Google books search, just a single passage — “Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred… such were the means used by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians” Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report, p. 151. — is reproduced, sometimes verbatim in extenso, though more often truncated, in no fewer than 70 books and many thousands of press and journal articles, policy reports and other documents dealing with the wars of the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. See https://www.google.com/search?q=Carnegie+1914+homes+ashes&btnG=Chercher+des+livres&tbm=bks&tbo=1&hl=fr&gws_rd=ssl#newwindow=1&hl=fr&tbm=bks&q=houses+and+whole+villages+reduced+to+ashes%2C+unarmed+and+innocent+populations+massacred+with+a+view+to+the+entire+transformation+of+the+ethnic+character (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[66] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 8.

[67] Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars.

[68] Winter, “The Generation of Memory”.

[69] Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report; Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars; Carnegie Endowment, Unfinished Peace.

[70] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Gutman, Witness to Genocide; Rieff, Slaughterhouse; Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia; Judah, The Serbs; Judah, Kosovo; Nation, War in the Balkans; Gallagher, The Balkans; Hislope, “From Expressive to Actionable Hatred”.

[71] Stokes, Lampe, Dennison and Mostov, “Instant History”, p. 141.

[72] Gutman, Witness to Genocide, p. 175.

[73] Lenard J. Cohen, “…And a mad, mad war” Washington Post, 15 December 1992, p. 23.

[74] P. Beaumont and N. Wood, “Fragile Peace Shatters as Balkan Hatred Overflows” The Observer, 11 March 2001.

[75] Anderson, Imagined communities.

[76] I. Traynor, “Ghosts of Ethnic Feuding Revive in the Balkans” The Guardian, 26 February 1990, p. 7.

[77] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Gutman, Witness to Genocide; Rieff, Slaughterhouse; Judah, The Serbs; Judah, Kosovo.

[78] Herzfeld, Anthropology through the looking-glass.

[79] Recurrent efforts by academic circles and political elites to de-balkanize Greece have always been perceived as a major political and symbolic issue, but see “Generations of Pork: How Greece’s Political Elite Ruined the Country”, Der Spiegel Online, 05 May 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/generations-of-pork-how-greece-s-political-elite-ruined-the-country-a-772176-druck.html (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[80] Doja, “The Beautiful Blue Danube and the Accursed Black Mountain Wreath: German and Austrian Kulturpolitik of Knowledge on Southeast Europe and Albania”; Doja, “From the German-speaking point of view”.

[81] Todorova, “Trap of Backwardness”, p. 153.

[82] “Balkan warriors abroad fight the good fight”, The Economist, 18 April 2015, print edition Europe, p. 25, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21648697-western-balkans-peace-some-go-abroad-look-war-fight-good-fight (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[83] Ibid.

[84] Abazi, “Albaniens Weg zur Religiosität: Glaube im Wandel”; Doja, “The Everyday of Religion and Politics in the Balkans”.

[85] “Balkan warriors abroad fight the good fight”, The Economist, 18 April 2015, print edition Europe, p. 25, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21648697-western-balkans-peace-some-go-abroad-look-war-fight-good-fight (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[86] “Belgrade chaos fed off centuries of rivalry between Serbia and Albania”, The Guardian, 15 October 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/15/belgrade-chao-centuries-rivalry-serbia-albania (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89] “Serbia-Albania brawl impossible to believe… in years of covering football at home and abroad, NOTHING had come close to this”, Daily Mails, 15 October 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2793384/the-scale-albania-s-brawl-serbia-impossible-believe (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[90] Cohen, Broken Bonds, p. 270.

[91] Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, p. 86.

[92] Ramet, Balkan Babel, p. 1.

[93] Doja, “The Beautiful Blue Danube and the Accursed Black Mountain Wreath: German and Austrian Kulturpolitik of Knowledge on Southeast Europe and Albania”; Doja, “From the German-speaking point of view”.

[94] Doja, “Évolution et folklorisation des traditions culturelles”; Doja, “From the native point of view”; Abazi and Doja, “From the communist point of view: Cultural hegemony and folkloric manipulation in Albanian studies under socialism”.

[95] e.g. Murzaku, Politika e Serbisë.

[96] Boyar, “The impact of the Balkan Wars”.

[97] e.g. Brown, Nationalism, democracy, and security in the Balkans.

[98] e.g. Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia.

[99] Veremis, “Scholarly Predilections on Balkan Affairs”.

[100] e.g. Banac, The national question in Yugoslavia.

[101] e.g. Mestrovic, Letica and Goreta, Habits of the Balkan heart.

[102] e.g. Dragnich, Yugoslavia’s disintegration.

[103] e.g. Hayden, Blueprints for a house divided; Hayden, From Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans.

[104] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”.

[105] The debate followed in the issue 4(4) of Anthropological Theory (pp. 545-581).

[106] Cox, “Social Forces”, p. 128.

[107] It has been argued that the rhetorical strategies and discursive practices in these accounts are an intellectual reworking of several nationalist themes of the formal Serbian propaganda in order to convert them into respectable accounts that served to justify and legitimate Serbian military aggression and genocide in former Yugoslavia. “Such discourse imagines itself as critical of a ‘one-sided’ discourse and, in offering the ‘Serbian side of the story’, claims to establish balance in the debate. Balance is achieved, but often at the expense of making confusing analytical and empirical distinction by the misapplication and decontextualizing of theoretical concepts, or by stressing one set of facts over another. In this sense, [these accounts] might be seen as ‘relativistic performances’ which demonstrate their partisanship, not only by what they include but by what they exclude.” Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 21.

[108] The Oxford conference in October 2012 stressed, with few exceptions, the supposed neutrality of Britain and Western Europe before the outbreak of the Great War. Pettifer and Buchanan, War in the Balkans. Tirana conference in June 2013 that was sponsored by the Regensburg Institute showed ethnic atrocities perpetrated by Serbian armies against non-belligerent Albanians. Tirana conference in May 2012 that was sponsored by the Turkish Foreign Ministry saw the insinuation of a supposed Albanian allegiance to Ottomanism. Other cases in point are the massive proceedings of a commemorative conference held in the US with the sponsorship of Turkish agencies in which voice was frequently given to current Turkish views of Neo-Ottomanism, Yavuz and Blumi, War and Nationalism., or a special issue of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Journal of International Affairs that was aimed at “overcoming prejudices, building bridges and constructing a common future” between Turkey and the Balkans. Perceptions, no. 18 (2), 2013.

[109] Simms, Unfinest hour.

[110] Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”, p. 31.

[111] Lytle, “U.S. Policy”, p. 304.

[112] Campbell, National Deconstruction, p. 40.

[113] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno; Garde, Vie et mort de la Yougoslavie; Woodward, Balkan tragedy; Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia; Ramet, Balkan Babel.

[114] Wheeler in Carter and Norris, The changing shape of the Balkans, p. 3.

[115] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”.

[116] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 March 1999.

[117] “Slobodan Milosevic représente l’Europe des années 30: Ce n’est pas la nôtre”, Le Monde, 24 April 1999.

[118] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 310.

[119] Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia; Bieber, “Nationalist mobilization and stories”; Gagnon, The myth of ethnic war.

[120] E.g. Die Zeit, 11 February 1999.

[121] Dragovic-Soso, Saviours of the nation.

[122] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 306.

[123] E.g. “Murder Drives out a Suffering People”, Financial Times, 5 April 1999; “Agony and Tears for Families in Exodus”, The Daily Telegraph, 5 May 1999; “Nightmare of a Ruined Land Lies in Wait”, The Independent, 7 May 1999; “The Hell of Tent Cities”, The Independent, 10 May 1999; “Kosovo’s Trail of Misery”, The Independent, 12 May 1999; “The Hard and Warped Face of Balkan Man”, The Daily Telegraph, 17 May 1999; “Kosovo Capital Faces New Wave of Serb Terror”, The Daily Telegraph, 26 May 1999; “Serbs Went on a Rampage of Violence”, The Independent, 3 June 1999.

[124] “Christendom’s ancient split filters today’s view of Kosovo”, Financial Times, 4 May 1999.

[125] Le Monde, 13 May 1999.

[126] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 309.

[127] Ibid.

[128] «La Grande-Bretagne a, dès le début du conflit, été en pointe dans l’entreprise de la diabolisation de Slobodan Milosevic», in “M. Blair est déterminé à faire tomber M. Milosevic”, Le Monde, 22 April 1999: 3).

[129] “Kosovo: l’OTAN dénonce les «boucliers humains», mais sans «preuve formelle»”, Le Monde, 18 May 1999.

[130] For more details, see: Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”.

[131] Abazi and Doja, “International Representations”.

[132] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[133] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 11.

[134] Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia, p. 3.

[135] Abazi, “The Role of International Community”.

[136] «Les frontières de l’Europe», Entretien d’Europe n°27, http://www.robert-schuman.eu/fr/entretiens-d-europe/0027-les-frontieres-de-l-europe-dialogue-entre-michel-foucher-et-bronislaw-geremek (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[137] Dyson and Sepos, Whose Europe?

[138] Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans; Braniff, Integrating the Balkans; Bechev, Constructing South East Europe; Sotiropoulos and Veremis, Southeastern Europe Doomed to Instability; Dzihic and Hamilton, Unfinished Business.

[139] Jung, Synchronicity, p. 8.

[140] Jung’s theory of synchronicity, the view that the structure of reality includes a principle of acausal connection which manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of meaningful coincidences in time, is the culmination of his lifelong engagement trying to justify the paranormal. Jung, On synchronicity and the paranormal.

[141] Fabian, Time and the Other, p. 143. In spite of the awkward term, many scholars have appropriated the notion of “allochronism”, even though often without adequate acknowledgement.

[142] Durham, High Albania.

[143] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans.

[144] Pandolfi, “Albania as terra incognita”.

[145] Herzfeld, Anthropology through the looking-glass.

[146] Bakic-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms”.

[147] Neuburger, The Orient within.

[148] (Buchowski 2006)

[149] Leach, Rethinking anthropology.

[150] Said, Orientalism.

[151] Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe.

[152] Doja, “From Neolithic Naturalness to Tristes Tropiques: the emergence of Lévi-Strauss’s new humanism”.

[153] Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques.

[154] Michail, “Western Attitudes”, p. 226.

[155] Skalnik, “West meets East”.

[156] Stewart, “Dreams of Treasure”, p. 489.

[157] White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representaion of Reality”, p. 24.

[158] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[159] Doja, “aDémocratie et stabilité dans le Sud-Est Européen: facteurs humains, culturels et sociaux”; Abazi, Intrastate Conflicts, International Interventions and their Implications on Security Issues, Case of Kosovo; Abazi, “Kosovo, War, Peace and Intervention in a Nutshell”; Abazi, “Kosovo Conflict and the Post-Cold War Order: Russia and Turkey Policies”; Abazi, “The Role of International Community”; Abazi, “A New Power Play in the Balkans”; Abazi, “Çështja e Kosovës”.

[160] Shoemaker and Reese, Mediating the message.

[161] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia p. 266.

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                  Abstract

The paper, which analyses Albania’s long and tumultuous journey to the EU, is structured into four distinctive sections: the first focuses on the democratisation road that Albania embarked after the collapse of communism and the impact of legacies on this process. The evolutionary path from an isolated authoritarian political system towards a liberal democracy went through a “dual transformation” process, combining political democratisation and economic transformation. However, the democratic transition in Albania, as the paper argues, proved to be quite challenging and painful, mainly as a result of certain historic, political, cultural and socio-economic legacies. These legacies from the past, as well as the setbacks of 1997-98, were responsible for hindering Albania’s successful transition to a modern liberal democracy, in particular in the first decade. The paper points out, however, that the main factor that has prevented Albania achieving good results in democratic reforms, has been the poor, incompetent and irresponsible political leadership.

The subsequent section analyses Albania’s path to Europe. On its road of democratisation, Albania was immediately oriented towards integration into the EU and North-Atlantic structures. “Return to Europe” became the most important ideological orientation for masses, intelligencia, youth and even political parties. The paper highlights the main milestones of Albania’s journey to the EU, starting with her inclusion in 2001 in the regional framework of the Western Balkans, known as the SAP, the efforts to fulfil the EU conditionality and criteria, the completion of SAA and the bumpy road of the visa liberalisation and candidate status.

The third part focuses on the domestic obstacles of Albania in the journey to the EU. The next milestone was the start of accession negotiations, but the EU was reluctant for many years to give the green light for that, due to not completion of key priorities in five areas, namely: the rule of law, judicial system, organised crime, corruption and public administration. This section of the paper analyses two of them, the judicial system and the organized crime.

The last section of the paper describes the efforts for launching the EU membership negotiations, which finally happened in 2022. The paper then identifies three factors upon which the pace of the negotiations is depending, including the speed of the domestic reforms and alignment of the country with EU laws; the political will, both the domestic and the European; and the EU absorption capacity and geo-political situation concerning the Ukrainian war. The paper concludes that lots of work still needs to be done to tackle all the current political, economic and social problems, including the further reform of the judiciary and the other stumbling blocks: the rule of law still weak, the corruption remains pervasive in many areas, the organized crime has become even more problematic (most notably in the areas of drugs and money laundering), public administration continues to be plagued by lack of professionalism and high levels of corruption and politization. Hence, Albania seems a long way off to join the club.

Collapse of communism and impact of legacies on the first decade of democratic transition

Albania is considered one of the weakest of the former communist states and one that has been amongst the least successful in negotiating the transition to democracy. In Albania the communist regime collapsed in 1990, providing the opportune conditions for the process of democratisation and transformation. Change came as a result of a “velvet revolution”, as in most of the other countries of the Eastern communist block, avoiding, in this way, the bloodshed of similar scenarios such as Tienanmen Square or Romania.[2] Because of the determination of the Albanian old communist caste not to follow the other Central Eastern European countries in their path towards democratic reforms and to open up, and because of terrible isolation and lack of information about what was going on in the rest of Europe (most Albanians did not even know that the Berlin Wall had fallen), the wind of change started to blow late in Albania. It started with the “invasions” of foreign embassies in the summer of 1990, followed by the students’ movement (their protests and hunger strikes),[3] street demonstrations and protests by the masses (mainly in Tirana) and in 1991 with a nation-wide strike of workers. Finally, the last bastion of Stalinism fell in 1991 (officially on the 4^th of June with the resignation of the last communist government), bringing to an end forty- seven years of communist rule in Albania.

According to Pridham[4] democratisation is the whole process of regime change from totalitarian rule to the setting up of a new liberal democracy. It is a multi-stage and multi-dimensional process, which involves the following stages: authoritarian regime collapse, pre-transition liberalisation, democratic transition, democratic consolidation and, finally, the entrenchment of liberal democracy. Since 1991, Albania started the evolutionary path from an isolated authoritarian political system towards a liberal democracy. However, the democratic transition has been long, painful and tumultuous. This has been, mainly, as a result of certain historic, political, cultural and socio-economic legacies.

Political legacy is related with the fact that Albania endured one of the toughest dictatorships in the communist bloc, being considered Europe’s most Stalinist country. There was an extreme degree of totalitarianism, which attempted to control every aspect of life. Albania was considered a ‘special case’ and an ‘exception’, even within the communist bloc. Political and civic pluralism and democratic institutions were forbidden, freedom of expression and independence of thought were completely crushed and ‘class struggle’ was invoked in a paranoid manner. It was also the country’s infamous self-imposed international isolation. The lonely ‘fortress Albania’ with its sealed borders, was even more isolated than its communist sister-states, which made it perhaps the most isolated country in the world, never mind Europe. Isolation thus became the keynote of Albania’s foreign policy. This meant that for decades the country was cut off from any kind of economic, political and cultural links with the outside world, being turned into a “gigantic prison”, with its people “locked” inside barbed wire fences.[5] This pathological isolation imposed by a xenophobic communist dictatorship prohibited the free movement of people and information (media, literature and art) and did not allow the existence of any international organisations in the country until 1991.

In terms of the economic legacy, Albania had a very low socio-economic starting point in the ‘90s with a background as the poorest country in Europe. Albania came out from communism as a very backward country, where feudal-medieval features were combined with those of a tough communist regime. The extreme poverty was a consequence of the communist regime’s centrally planned and collectivist economy, the full collectivization of agriculture, state ownership over everything and regulation of business, paranoid adoption of the principle of national self-reliance, and the worse of all, the abolishment of private property. The economy and society in general depended on a Spartan egalitarianism and on the Marxist-Leninist dogmatic ideology, the highlight of which was the creation of the ‘new socialist man’, indoctrinated with the communist ideology. A socialist society ‘blessed with social and economic equality’, forbade all religious institutions and beliefs, following the model of Chinese Cultural Revolution, and proclaiming Albania ‘the only atheist country in the world’.

Besides short-term legacy of the communist period, there was, however, an important longer-term historical dimension. Albania was, for 500 years, part of the Ottoman Empire, with its sultanate imperial system and legacy of patrimonial and personalistic rule. From this, it inherited an agrarian and largely feudal country with a great mass of peasantry, an under-developed state-society relationships, weak institutional capacity and a fragmented civil society. Albania, unlike Visegrad countries, who had been under Prussian and Hapsburg empires, did not share some of the history of Western Europe and experiences such as the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and 19^th century urbanisation.

Albania, therefore, did not have a strong tradition of capitalism and democracy, unlike some of the other Central and Eastern European former communist countries which embarked on the ‘era of changes’ with varying potential levels of these traditions.[6] Albania was experiencing democracy for the first time in its history and was clearly the country with the longest journey to travel from a rigid Stalinism to democracy.[7] Albania’s task of overcoming this legacy and ‘catching up’ with the West was therefore, challenging, even compared to other former communist states.

Subsequently, the first decade of democratic transition was turbulent and with some serious political setbacks, where the most notable were the unrest of 1997, caused by the collapse of pyramid schemes which brought the country on the brick of a civil war, as well as the Kosovo crisis in 1999 which provoked a huge flow of refugees into Albania.

These legacies from the past, as well as the setbacks, were responsible for hindering Albania’s successful transition to a modern liberal democracy, in particular in its first decade. However, the main factor that has prevented Albania achieving good results in democratic reforms, has been the poor, incompetent and irresponsible political leadership.

On the other hand, compared to other Western Balkan states, Albania has had some advantages on its road to democratisation. There is, for example, the fact that it has been a state (for more than 100 years), unlike other former entities of the Russian and Yugoslav Federations, which, after 1990, had to create new states as a result of the disintegration of their federations. Furthermore, in the Balkans, some of its neighbouring states managed, only recently, to sort out their constitutional and territorial status as well as their borders. Albania, on the contrary, has a strong advantage of having been, for a century, an independent state.Secondly, Albania, despite its location in a region of Europe that is a mosaic of overlapping ethnic and religious communities, has itself no major domestic inter-ethnic problems. The reason for this is that it is almost entirely ethnically homogeneous. Thirdly, Albania is also remarkable in that it has experienced little if any of the religious conflict between its three religious groups, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims,[8] which has been an important factor in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Albania remains a country of a good religious tolerance where the three main religious communities have lived in peace and harmony for centuries and still do. The mutual harmony of the religions in Albania is thus a factor of stability in an ethnically and religiously divided region. Albania can give a good example to Europe as a country with one of the most moderate Muslim populations in the world and a country of inter-religious understanding and tolerance, within a secular state. Unlike elsewhere in the Balkan countries and societies, where politics, religion and ethnicity are three key elements, in Albania and for Albanians only the first one has a big importance.[9]

In the beginning of the 1990s, Albania found itself having to build a system of democratic governance from scratch, starting the so-called “dual transformation”, which according to Pridham combines political democratisation and economic transformation.[10] Despite its dreadful history of paranoid self-imposed international isolation and dictatorship, Albania got off to a good start in the early years of the transition. Albania committed itself to political pluralism and on the 31^st of January 1991 the first multi-party elections were held. The initial phase of transition saw speedy and surprising progress, which won Albania a place among the most advanced former communist countries in terms of the rate and intensity of the reforms. Within a few years democratic institutions were set up and a democratic legal framework was introduced. Albania was accepted as a member of international political and financial institutions such as CoE, IMF, WB, and EBRD. Good results were also seen in the economy over a three-year period, about 70% of the economy was privatised, prices and trade were almost entirely liberalised and tight monetary and fiscal policies led to an admirable micro-economic stability. The newly emerging private sector proved to be highly dynamic, making the greatest contribution to overall economic growth. During 1993-1996, Albania experienced an annual growth rate of 9.5%. The analysis made by foreign experts and institutions during this period considered Albania a special case of successful transition and it had been seen by many mainstream commentators in the West as a model for post-Communist economic development.[11]

The path to Europe

In terms of foreign policy, Albania was immediately oriented towards integration into the EU and North-Atlantic structures. ‘Return to Europe’ became the most important ideological orientation for masses, intelligencia, youth and even political parties. It was synonymous with the rejection of communism and ‘Europe signified ‘democracy’. The ‘Land of the Eagles’, about which everyone knew so little, re-appeared on the European political map. The EU as the most important foreign policy goal was not only a priority of domestic politics, but also a matter of national interest, because it was perceived by all as might will offer tremenduous political, economic and socio-cultural benefits. Therefore, successive Albanian governments placed European integration as a priority on their political agendas. Relations between Albania and the (then) European Community (as the European Union was called before the Maastricht Treaty) started in 1991. In 1992 a “Cooperation and Trade Agreement” was signed between Albania and the EU. Albania was the first South-Eastern European country to conclude such an agreement. This agreement was established mainly to encourage trade and democratization with Albania, but it was also a response to the humanitarian crisis of 1991. Right after signing the agreement, Albania became eligible for funding under the EU Phare programme.

At the beginning of 1995, Albania officially asked for the opening of negotiations for an accession agreement with the EU. An evaluation undertaken by the Commission on the possibilities of free marketing of goods, services and capital in Albania, concluded that a ‘classic’ agreement like those that most countries have with the EU about their membership would be a premature step for Albania.[12] In January 1996, the EU Council of Ministers asked the Commission to compile a proposal for a new agreement that would strengthen Albania-EU relations (even though this was not on the level of a “European Agreement”). Unfortunately, the events that followed that year with the disastrous parliamentary elections in May and a year later after the collapse of pyramid schemes put a serious question-mark over Albanian democracy and the readiness of the country to progress towards integration, leaving this issue in stagnation. 

Three years later, in 1999, a very important step was undertaken by the EU: the European Commission proposed a “Stabilisation and Association Process” (SAP) for five Balkans countries, named the Western Balkans (WB) including Albania.[13] This was endorsed by the Fiera Council in 2000, which confirmed that the EU’s goal was the fullest possible integration of all WB countries into the economic and political mainstream of Europe, as well as recognized them as potential candidates for EU membership. The 2000 Zagreb Summit was also an important step in the commitment of the EU to the WB. It confirmed all of them as ‘potential candidates for EU membership. The Summit also established the SAP and its two components: a tailor-made contractual relationship called the “Stabilisation and Association Agreement” (SAA) and a new economic aid, called CARDS programme, both specifically designed for the SAP countries.

The SAP represented a historical turning point for Albania, because, for the first time, a concrete path was offered to Albania in its rapprochement with the EU. The SAA offered stronger incentives for pushing ahead with the reform process and also created more demanding political and economic conditions for the country. But, rather than pressures, they had to be considered more as opportunities that Albania could take or leave.

After the Zagreb Summit, Albania made considerable progress in fulfilling the commitments for opening negotiations. At the European Council Meeting in Gothenburg in June 2001, the European Commission concluded that it was appropriate to proceed with the negotiation of a SAA with Albania. In November 2001, the President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, declared in Tirana that the opening of negotiations would be in March 2002, but the political stability of the country was made a condition for these to start. This, unfortunately, did not happen, because of a severe internal crisis within the Socialist Party in power during the second half of the year, which had negative implications for the reform process and the country’s political stability.[14] Nevertheless, the Council adopted the directives for opening the negotiation of a SAA with Albania at its meeting in Luxembourg in October 2002. The negotiations were officially launched on 31 January 2003.[15]

This was followed by three years of negotiations and finally the SAA was signed in June 2006 in Luxembourg. The next step to be taken was the ratification by all the Member States. However, it took three years for the ratification process to be completed and on 1 April 2009 the SAA entered into force.

The signing of the SAA and its ratification lasted long, respectively six and three years, longer than the other WB countries. Albania had a tough time also for reaching two other important milestones in its rapprochement with the EU. One was visa liberalization. The other was its acceptance as a ‘candidate country’.

Albania and Bosnia were the only countries in the WB to be rejected the visa liberalization request, which was granted only the second time. In November 2006 the European Commission decided to start visa facilitation negotiations with Albania, which was the first step toward a full abolishment of the visa requirements. In April 2007 the visa facilitation agreement was signed in Zagreb and on 1 January 2008 it entered into force.  In March 2008 EU Commissioner Franco Frattini opened in Tirana the dialogue toward the liberalisation of the visa regime between Albania and EU, which would enable citizens of Albania to travel to Schengen countries without needing a short term visa. On 27 May 2010 The European Commission proposed visa free travel for Albania and on 8 November 2010 the Council of the European Union approved visa-free travel to Schengen Area for Albanian citizens. After 4 years since the process started, on 15 December 2010 visa-free access to the Schengen Area entered into force, making it possible that the long dream of Albanians for the free movement in the EU to finally come true.

The ‘candidacy status’ had an even more complicated journey. Albania was the only applicant country in the whole history of the EC/EU to be rejected the candidacy’ three times ,[16] in December 2010, in October 2012, and in 2013. The EU countries, most notably Holland, decided not to grant the status to Albania due to not completion of 12 key priorities in five areas, which were conditions to be met in order to achieve official candidate status and start accession negotiations. On 24 June 2014, under the Greek EU Presidency, after 5 years, Albania was finally granted the ‘candidate status’.

The persistent obstacles in the journey to the EU

On 28 April 2009 Albania formally applied for membership in the EU. In November 2009 the Council of the EU asked the European Commission to prepare an assessment on Albania’s readiness to start accession negotiations. Five months later, in April 2010 Albania submitted answers to the European Commission’s questionnaire. Five years later, in March 2015, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement notified Albania the setting of a start date for accession negotiations to begin. It still required two conditions to be met, firstly, the government needed to reopen political dialogue with the parliamentary opposition, and secondly Albania must deliver quality reforms for all the five key areas, namely: the rule of law, judicial system, strengthening the fight against organised crime, developing a solid track record in the fight against corruption, and depolitisation of public administration. I have focused my analysis on two of them, the judicial system and the organized crime.

Judicial system

The most imperative reform was the one on judiciary. Many reports by international organizations (European Commission, Transparency International, Council of Europe, Freedom House, British Foreign Office, US State Department, Amnesty International etc.) have repeatedly pointed out that the judicial system in Albania is weak and continuous to be plagued by three problems: corruption, unprofessionalism and not independent (from politics and organized crime). Apart from lack of efficiency, the political influence on the institutions of the criminal justice system, as well as corruption in the judiciary, continued to be major causes for concern. The European Commission has constantly identified corruption in the judiciary as the No.1 obstacle of the progress of Albania towards the European Union, “the new legislation tackles many shortcomings related to the justice system’s lack of independence, efficiency and professionalism. However, corruption is widespread and remains an issue of concern”.[17] The justice system has been considered as the sector with the highest level of corruption in Albania. According to the 2018 annual study of the Freedom House “Nations in Transit”, Albania’s judicial framework and independence rating remained unchanged at 4.75,[18] with no progress made, since 2012. The report states, “High levels of corruption, combined with low levels of efficiency, characterized the Albanian judiciary”.[19] The problems in the judicial system were also identified in the US Department of State “Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Albania”, which noted that “Although the constitution provides for an independent judiciary, political pressure, intimidation, widespread corruption, and limited resources sometimes prevented the judiciary from functioning independently and efficiently”.[20]

Therefore, one of the concerns of the Socialist government after coming to power in 2013 was the reform of the judicial system. However, the genuine call for the reform has not been led by Albanian political party leaders, but by diplomats in Tirana, most notably the then US Ambassador Donald Lu. Mr. Lu has been the most outspoken person for the judicial reform. In an interview to BIRN, Lu described it as “the most important reform in the 25 years since the fall of communism…It has the possibility of ridding the Albanian judicial system of corrupt judges and prosecutors who steal the money of ordinary citizens and allow organized crime figures, murderers and corrupt politicians to buy justice”.[21]

The justice reform process launched in July 2015 with a set of amendments that changed one third of the Albania’s Constitution. The reform aimed to tackle existing shortcomings in the sector, including weaknesses linked to independence and accountability of judges and prosecutors, lack of efficiency and professionalism.[22] The justice reform is being implemented ever since and its main features have included measures to fight corruption, by establishing a new Special Anti-Corruption and Organized Crime Structure (SPAK); measures to reduce the influence by the parliament and the executive on the judiciary; measures to increase accountability of judges and prosecutors, measures to increase justice efficiency and access to justice.[23]

In addition to the institutional restructuring of the judiciary and as part of measures to fight corruption and re-establish public trust in the judiciary, the reform process foresaw the launch of a generalized re-evaluation of all currently serving judges, prosecutors and legal advisers, called the ‘Vetting’. The vetting started in October 2017, firstly with the establishment of the first-instance vetting body, the ‘Independent Qualification Commission’ (IQC), as well as the International Monitoring Operation (IMO), deployed under the aegis of the European Commission, which is supervising the Vetting process and exercising independent oversight. Since the Vetting started, over 800 professionals have been undergoing scrutiny. At the very start of the process a number of high-ranking judges and prosecutors resigned, refusing their assets to be verified, and some asked to retire.[24] By 2020, more than 286 dossiers have been processed, resulting in 62% dismissals, mostly for issues related to unjustified assets, or resignations.[25]

Even though the justice reform had the cross-party support, the Opposition has contested the follow-up process as being biased and controlled by the Socialist Party in power, starting with the individuals selected and appointed as the members and heads of the Vetting bodies, such as the IQC, the High Judicial Council (KLGJ) and the High Prosecutorial Council (KLP). They are the main self-governing bodies of the judiciary that are supposed to be independent from the government. The Opposition pretended that the dismissal of judges and prosecutors from the part of Independent Qualification Commission has been selective and biased, favoring the ones who have the support of the Socialists. As the opposition paper Exit.al points out, “It is becoming increasingly clear that the Independent Qualification Commission is not, in fact, completely independent. Now that nearly a hundred judges and prosecutors have passed through its ‘filter’, it seems that certain figures fulfilling ‘key roles’ in the recent capture of the judiciary are able to slip through the cracks”.[26] All this have put into question the credibility of the current “reform of the Albanian judiciary”. The vetting process and its results remain crucial to restore public trust in the judiciary and law enforcement bodies of the State.[27]

The other step in the judicial reform has been the “Law on Decriminalization”, which consists on barring people with criminal records from holding public office or most civil service jobs. The law, approved by the Albania’s parliament in December 2015, was in fact proposed by the Opposition, in response to a series of political scandals in which MPs with criminal convictions or facing serious charges (the so-called “law-breakers turned into law-makers”) have been exposed by journalists and political opponents. However, the “decriminalization law” has had only minor results in removing incriminated officials from public office and has not yet made a dent in the problem of state infiltration by organized crime.[28] Law breakers continue to be / become law-makers.

The then EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, while on a visit to Tirana, warned that Albania cannot be considered for EU membership until it thoroughly cleanses the justice system, “A deep reform of the judicial system will open the way to the beginning of negotiations for Albania to become part of the EU.” [29]

Organised crime

Organized crime gangs in Albania and abroad operate mostly in the areas of drugs, money laundering, human trafficking and smuggling. I will be focused on the first one, the drugs, which has been quite problematic during the last decades of transition and for which Albania has been heavily critisised by the EU and international organisations.

After coming to power in 2013, the Socialist government started a huge police operation in the village of Lazarat,[30] known as Europe’s “marijuana mountain”, the home base of gangs that produced marijuana with an estimated street value of $5.9 billion in 2013, equivalent to roughly half of Albania’s gross domestic product.

However, as the Freedom House “Nations in Transit” 2017 report pointed out “Two and a half years after the start of a government crackdown, drug dealers managed to plant at least 2.4 million cannabis seeds across the country, and to traffic across Albania’s borders tons of marijuana worth billions of dollars. The opposition accused the Prime Minister and Interior Minister of protecting drug lords in exchange for illicit proceeds and support”.[31] The report continues saying that “Albania still has a poor track record in investigating, identifying, prosecuting, and convicting key figures in drug trafficking and other organized crime activities. Despite police raids and crackdowns, financiers and traffickers managed to extend their cannabis plantations across the country, taking advantage of poor farmers and corrupt state officials”.[32]

The opposition called this ‘Cannabization of Albania’ and accused the ruling Socialist Party for turning Albania into a ‘Columbia of Europe’. According to an article of Independent Balkan News Agency, “During 2017, at least 2.5 million roots of cannabis were cultivated in Albania, according to official sources. This quantity was four times higher than in 2015. Furthermore, this reported quantity is based on police information which are believed to be several times lower than the real cultivated amount”.[33] The State Police and Interior Ministry leaders were consistently targeted by the opposition Democratic Party, which accused them of implications and involvement in this criminal activity, spreading cannabis enclaving or co-operation with organized crime. What was worse, the opposition has made repetitive allegations that the huge revenues from cannabis were used to buy the votes in the June 2017 parliamentary elections, which according to them explained the unexpected big victory of the Socialist Party in these elections. Over the last two years, large amounts of narcotic substances of cannabis, worth of billions of euros, were seized by Greek authorities while crossing Albanian-Greek border, or caught by Italian “Guardia di Finanzia” in the Adriatic waters, or while transported by small helicopters. This “historical record in cannabisation of the country”, has been reported almost every day in the media. According to the above article, “Recently, many quantities of processed drugs are being attempted to be trafficked to EU member countries. In different operations conducted in the recent days, Albanian, Italian and Greek police have seized several tons of marijuana. Many people believe that this is a small part of the quantity that is being taken out of Albania”.[34] 

The prestigious British newspaper “Independent” in an investigative article also describes Albania as a ‘Columbia of Europe’ and the country the HQ of drugs in Europe.[35] Both US and European law enforcement officials, says the article, have described Albania as the largest provider of cannabis to the EU, as well as an important transit point for heroin and cocaine. Based on the value of drug seizures, some estimate that the marijuana alone generates up to $4bn (£3bn) a year, half of Albania’s GDP. Cocaine comes in shipments of bananas and palm oil from Colombia. On 28 February 2018, authorities intercepted 613kg of cocaine disguised as a banana shipment from Colombia. Heroin is smuggled into Albania via clothing and shoe imports brought in from Turkey, one of the world’s largest textile exporters.[36] The article notes that “the traffickers now use the same networks they established to move vast amounts of bulky cannabis to distribute cocaine from Latin America and heroin from Central Asia via Italy to the rest of Europe. Albanian gangs are considered among the world’s top heroin, cocaine and cannabis traffickers. The drugs are loaded on high-speed zodiac inflatable boats bound for the Italian coast from Albanian ports. Also shipped back to Turkey, along the same networks used to bring heroin into the country. Traffickers have also taken to the air, with what some officials estimate as between five and 10 small planes”.[37] What more disturbing is, as the article points out, that “it’s quite clear that all these gangs operate with a certain level of political and police protection and support. Many fear the money has thoroughly infected the political elite. While the government denies it, experts say the traffickers have thoroughly infected politics and commerce, at the deepest levels. Scores of high-level Albanian officials – from mayors to ministers – have been implicated in the drug trade, and perhaps enable it”.[38] Not only politicians, but also “police are directly involved in the growing, cultivating, packaging, transport and selling of drugs” and the cannabis plantations have become like “so-called ‘no-go’ areas, taken over by armed drug traffickers bound together by clan ties”. “Albanian officials concede that they only intercept 10 per cent of drug shipments in and out of the country. One Western diplomat said the number was more like 5 per cent, leaving traffickers with enough wealth to buy up port authorities from Rotterdam to Izmir. The sophisticated trafficking groups have gotten so powerful that they have networks all over the world”. The drug industry is influencing everything – all strata of society, says the article, that includes money laundering, and party financing. “Albania is no longer a hub of cultivation,” said one EU official. “It’s become a center of investment, distribution, and recruitment”. The article, quoting some Western diplomats, concludes that, “Albania, the drug producer and distributor of Europe has become a narco-state and they’d lose too much money getting out of trafficking to get into the EU”.[39] 

The Italian television RAI 3 broadcasted a long documentary about the widespread of cannabis cultivation and production in Albania, titled “Narcotics”.[40] Despite the Albanian government and the State Police declarations that cannabis cultivation dropped drastically in 2017 and 2018 and the plantations had been almost wiped out, as a result of government anti-cannabis strategy and successful police operations, the RAI documentary revealed the shocking news that “This year the cannabis plantations have extended to one third of the country territory”.[41] Guardia di Finanza officers declared that massive cultivation and production of marijuana have re-started again this year, five times more than last year and using more refined genetic modified varieties of cannabis.[42] The Italian prosecutors noted that in addition to cannabis, Albania has become one of the most important suppliers for cocaine to Italy from Columbia and Ecuador, competing with the notorious Italian mafia organization Ndrangheta.[43] Albania also has become an important route for the Afghan opium, which is brought through Balkan networks and is processed at the heroin laboratories, found in several places in Albania and Kosovo and managed by Albanian mafia.[44]

Efforts for launching the EU membership negotiations

Albania hoped to open membership negotiations by December 2016. The Commission recommended the launch of negotiations on 9 November that year, but Germany announced that it would veto the opening accession talks until 2018. In early 2017, the European Parliament warned the government leaders that the parliamentary elections in June must be ‘free and fair’, before negotiations started, to admit the country into the Union. However, the situation before elections was complicated with the discovery of million roots of cannabis being cultivated everywhere and Albania, as mentioned above. A few months after the elections, the shocking scandal of the alleged links between an Albanian–Italian mafia group (which had trafficked huge amounts of cannabis and guns) with the then Interior Minister, shattered the politics and public opinion, and shed lights in the gravity of the link of Albanian government with organized crime.[45]

Three years later, in March 2020, the Council of the EU decided to open accession negotiations with Albania. But France blocked the opening of accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia until a new methodology for future enlargement was agreed at EU level. Even when that was sorted out, Albania could still not start accession negotiations because its candidacy was linked to that of North Macedonia, which was vetoed by Bulgaria. In June 2022, Bulgaria’s parliament approved lifting the veto on opening EU accession talks with North Macedonia and subsequently the two countries received the green light to start accession talks that could ultimately lead to EU membership.[46] Finally, 11 years after the application, Albania managed to start the accession negotiations, officially launched on 19 July 2022.

The EU held its first intergovernmental conference with Albania in July 2022. The screening process is underway and no chapters have been opened thus far. Since the change of the enlargement methodology in 2020, the 35 negotiating chapters of the acquis Communautaire are now grouped into six clusters. In terms of the level of preparation, Albania is somewhat behind the rest of the candidates with active negotiation processes, at least according to the European Commission reports.[47]

The pace of the negotiations seems to depend on three factors: Firstly, the speed of the domestic reforms and alignment of the country with EU laws. A lot of work still needs to be done to tackle all the current political, economic and social problems and the five priorities set by the EU. Apart from the reform of the judiciary (which has produced some results), the four other priorities remain stumbling blocks: the rule of law still weak, the corruption remains pervasive in many areas, the organized crime has become even more problematic (most notably in the areas of drugs and money laundering), public administration continues to be plagued by lack of professionalism and high levels of corruption and politization. Secondly, the pace of the process will mostly depend on political will, both the domestic and the European. Thirdly, the EU absorption capacity: after the last enlargement – the ‘Big Ben’, when 10 countries joined at once, there has been a certain degree of reluctance for further enlargements. However, the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with fears over Moscow’s influence in the region, has increased the strategic importance of the Western Balkans to the EU. Therefore, an early decision to accept Albania and the other WB countries might be more for geo-political reasons, rather than fulfillment of the criteria and completion of reforms.

However, the prospect of EU membership and the whole process of integration and Europeanisation has proved to be very useful for Albania. Albanian democratization could have had a different trajectory without the presence of the EU pushing for and directing reforms. If it were not for the role of the EU and international community, Albania would continue to be a “Balkan Banana Republic”, left in the hands of irresponsible, incapable and egocentric politicians and governments, where corruption and organized crime would flourish, with the mafia, criminals and politicians, the country’s ‘nouveaux riches’, enjoying privileges, wealthy and luxurious lifestyles on the one hand, and the majority of the population living in poverty on the other.[48] 

Therefore, the EU remains the primary locus of Albania’s efforts in managing the difficult period of transition and its goal for the future, mostly because the prospect of EU membership is a credible prospect in its political horizon, a strong incentive and a powerful driving force for carrying out domestic reforms.

It is a positive fact that the EU is the only element of consensus that unites all political parties and all social groups. This leads us to believe that the two types of pressure:  the external one from the EU and from other international organizations on one hand, and internal pressure from the various domestic actors and the public who are interested in progress and EU membership on the other, will probably help Albania eventually to achieve the goal of accession. The help and support of external actors is important and necessary, but the reforms and all the steps of a successful integration process should, in the first instance, be the responsibility of the domestic actors, in particular the politicians. Putnam argues that “the quality of democracy depends on the quality of its citizens, so that every people gets the government they deserve”,[49] so hopefully Albanians will not continue to be labelled as ‘a people undone’ and be the last ‘catching the train to Europe’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Balkan Insight “US Diplomat urges Albania to end judicial corruption”, 6 January 2016.

• Bogdani, M. “Contributing actors to the regime change in Albania: The first phase of transition and the role of the Student Movement” in Rama, Sh. (eds) The end of communist rule in Albania: Political change and the roe of the Student Movement. Routledge, NY & London. 2020.

• Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey towards Integration and Accession. I. B. Tauris. London – NY, 2007. 

• Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the EU: European Integration and the Prospect of Accession. Dajti 2000. Tirana, 2004.

• Biberaj, E. Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy. Westview Press, 1998.
• Brzozovski, A. “Next steps for Albania and North Macedonia, as the EU agrees to start accession talks”. Euractiv. 19 July 2022.

• European Commission, “The Stabilization and Association Process for South East Europe”. Second Annual Report. Brussels, 26 March 2003.

http://europa.eu.int/external_relations/see/sap/rep2/com03_341.htm

• European Commission, “Albania: Stabilization and Association Report 2003”. Second Annual Report. Brussels, 26 March 2003.

http://europa.eu.int/external_relations/see/sap/rep2/com03_339.htm.

• European Commission, “Albania 2016 Progress Report”. Brussels, 9 November 2016.   https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhoodenlargement/sites/near/files/pdf/key_documents/2016/20161109_report_albania.pdf

• European Commission, “Albania 2018 Progress Report”. Strasbourg, 17 April 2018.   https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20180417-albania-report.pdf  

• European Commission, “Albania 2020 Progress Report”. Brussels, 6 October 2020.

https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/albania_report_2020.pdf

• Exit.al, “Prokuroret italiane per RAI 3: Ne Shqiperi lulezon trafiku i droges, ka rifilluar kultivimi masiv i marijuanes”. 8 August 2019.

• Exit.al, “Vetting Commission again confirms Government favorite”, 5 February 2019.

https://exit.al/en/2019/02/05/vetting-commission-again-confirms-government-favorite/

• Freedom House, “Nations in Transit”. 2017 Report Albania. https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2017/albania

• Freedom House, “Nations in Transit”. 2018 Report Albania.https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2018/albania

• Ivkovic, A. “What is the EU perspective of North Macedonia and Albania a year after opening negotiations?”. European Western Balkans,14 August 2023.

• Independent, “Colombia of Europe’: How tiny Albania became the continent’s drug trafficking headquarters”, London. 27 January 2019.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/albania-drug-cannabis-trafficking-hub-europe-adriatic-sea-a8747036.html?fbclid=IwAR1DNZH4xJ1jjIgj-AuT8oCkIau3GKYCkFgF9rdE2mwzYTaxa6aEuxFPJIw

• Independent Balkan News Agency, “One and a half tons of drugs goes through Albanian customs, Greek customs officials discover it”, 17 February 2017.

http://old.balkaneu.com/one-and-a-half-tons-of-drugs-goes-through-albanian-customs-greek-customs-officials-discover-it/

• Meksi, E. “The Albanian dimension of integration” in Debating Integration, AIIS, 2003.

• Milo, P. Bashkimi Europian“. pp.277-99. Tirana:Albpaper, 2002.

• Pridham, G. The Dynamics of Democratization: A comparative approach London and NY: Continuum, 2000.

• Putnam, R.D. et al. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. 

• Rama, Sh. “Who slew the dragon? The collapse of communism, political change and the student movement in Albania” in Rama, Sh. (eds) The end of communist rule in Albania: Political change and the roe of the Student Movement. Routledge, NY & London. 2020.

• Transitions Online “Albania urged to reform Judiciary”, 4 March 2016.

• Zeneli, F. “Sektorët prioritarë të ekonomisë dhe investimet e huaja”. Shekulli, Tirana, 4 October 2003.

• US Department of State “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Albania”. April 2018.https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/#wrapper

[1] Author and Scholar of EU Politics & European integration, Prof. Assoc. Mirela Bogdani , currently teaching at University of New York Tirana

[2] Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey towards Integration and Accession. I. B. Tauris, London – NY. 2007. 

[3] Rama, Sh. “Who slew the dragon? The collapse of communism, political change and the student movement in Albania” in Rama. Sh (eds). The end of communist rule in Albania: Political change and the roe of the Student Movement. Routledge, Ny & London. 2020.

[4] Pridham, G. The Dynamics of Democratization: A comparative approach London and NY: Continuum, 2000, pp.16.

[5] Bogdani, M. “Contributing actors to the regime change in Albania: The first phase of transition and the role of the Student Movement” in Rama, Sh. (eds) The end of communist rule in Albania: Political change and the roe of the Student Movement. Routledge, Ny & London. 2020.

[6] Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the EU: European Integration and the Prospect of Accession. Dajti 2000. Tirana, 2004.

[7] Biberaj, E. Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy. Westview Press, 1998.

[8] According to a poll conducted in the time of Monarchy the religious composition in Albania was: 70 per cent Muslim, 20 per cent Greek Orthodox and 10 percent Roman Catholics. However, these figures are not only out-dated, but also inaccurate and unreal, given a history of 30 years of imposed atheism during communism, when two generations grew up without any religious faith whatsoever, and then the religious’ revival after 1990 when lots of people have been embracing various religions sometimes totally different from that of their roots.

[9] Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey towards Integration and Accession. I. B. Tauris. London – NY, 2007. 

[10] Pridham, G. The Dynamics of Democratization: A comparative approach London and NY: Continuum, 2000.

[11] Zeneli, F. “Sektorët prioritarë të ekonomisë dhe investimet e huaja”. Shekulli, Tirana, 4 October 2003.

[12] Meksi, E. “The Albanian dimension of integration” in Debating Integration, AIIS, 2003.

[13] European Commission, “The Stabilization and Association Process for South East Europe”. Second Annual Report. Brussels, 26 March 2003.

[14] Milo, P. Bashkimi Europian“. Tirana:Albpaper, 2002.

[15] European Commission, “Albania: Stabilization and Association Report 2003”. Second Annual Report. Brussels, 26 March 2003.

[16] Only Turkey was rejected once, in 1997.  

[17] European Commission, “Albania 2018 Progress Report”. Strasbourg, 17 April 2018.

[18] Freedom House, “Nations in Transit”. Albania 2018 Report.

[19] Ibid.

[20] US Department of State “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Albania”. April 2018.

[21] Balkan Insight “US Diplomat urges Albania to end judicial corruption”, 6 January 2016.

[22] European Commission, “Albania 2016 Progress Report”. Brussels, 9 November 2016.

[23] Ibid, pg.3.

[24] European Commission, “Albania 2018 Progress Report”. Strasbourg, 17 April 2018. pg.3.

[25] European Commission, “Albania 2020 Progress Report”. Brussels, 6 October 2020, pg.5.

[26] Exit.al, “Vetting Commission again confirms Government favorite”, 5 February 2019.

[27] European Commission, “Albania 2020 Progress Report”. 6 October 2020, pg. 24.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Transitions Online “Albania urged to reform Judiciary”. 4 March 2016.

[30] Lazarat, a village in the south of Albania, had been effectively off-limits to local police for over a decade, becoming synonymous with uncontrolled crime.

[31] Freedom House, “Nations in Transit”. 2017 Report Albania.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Independent Balkan News Agency, “One and a half tons of drugs goes through Albanian customs, Greek customs officials discover it”, 17 February 2017.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Independent, “Colombia of Europe’: How tiny Albania became the continent’s drug trafficking headquarters”, London. 27 January 2019.

[36] Ibid

[37] Ibid

[38] Ibid

[39] Ibid

[40] Exit.al, “Prokuroret italiane per RAI 3: Ne Shqiperi lulezon trafiku i droges, ka rifilluar kultivimi masiv i marijuanes”. 8 August 2019.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Balkan Insight, “Albania ex-Minister accused in drug-smuggling scandal”, 17 October 2017.

[46] Brzozovski, A. “Next steps for Albania and North Macedonia, as the EU agrees to start accession talks”. Euractiv. 19 July 2022.

[47] Ivkovic, A. “What is the EU perspective of North Macedonia and Albania a year after opening negotiations?”. European Western Balkans,14 August 2023.

[48] Bogdani, M. and Loughlin, J. Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey towards Integration and Accession. I.B.Tauris: London – NY, February 2007. 

[49] Putnam, R.D. et al. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1993. pg.3.

The post Albania’s rocky road to the European Union: How far from joining the club? appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Introduction

Rule of law issues have increased in prominence in the European integration process during these last years. Allegations of violation of the principles of rule of law by some member states and calls for the activation of article 7 of the Treaty of European Union which allows to take measures against a member state which violates or threatens to violate the values on which the EU is founded have multiplied, regarding, especially, relations between the EU and Poland and Hungary. Problems with systemic corruption and connections between politics and organized crime are also present in EU’s relations with other EU member states, among them Bulgaria and Malta. This deterioration of rule of law in some EU countries – and the problems this creates for the EU – has brought to the forefront the significance of a solid set of rule of law principles as a prerequisite for any future accession to the EU, in particular, regarding the countries of the Western Balkans.

Although rule of law is included in the Copenhagen criteria and constitutes a prerequisite for candidate countries, its effective application and measurement of fulfillment varied in previous accession negotiations; accession was often determined more by political expediency rather than through an objective, means-based fulfillment of specific scoreboards. The recent developments inside the EU regarding rule of law violations have also affected the importance of rule of law in new accessions and led to making these criteria more measurable across the board.

This article examines the implications of rule of law in the negotiations and discussions between the EU and candidate states. It analyses how rule of law issues were treated in the previous enlargements, how these issues obtained prime significance as of lately and looks to the extent that rule of law is dealt with in the current accession context towards the countries of the Western Balkans. It examines how these considerations are introduced by the EU during the negotiations and its efforts to maintain relevant pressure even after formal negotiations end. Finally, it examines the effective significance of rule of law in the relations between the applicant states and the EU and the reaction of the latter but also candidate states in the way these matters are treated in the current negotiations. In addition, it examines weather the Russian invasion on Ukraine and the European perspective of Ukraine which opened in 2023 might influence the  possible changes on

Rule of law in the European Union

The European integration process contained from the start an implicit prerequisite of liberal and democratic values for its member states. Though the Treaty of Rome did not include any explicit reference to the democratic credentials of its own as well as applicant states, it was manifest that only countries which respected democratic  principles could be or become members of the EEC.[2] Following the 1967 military coup in Greece, the association agreement between the EEC and Greece was frozen. In a relevant resolution adopted on 2 June 1967 the European Parliament insisted that “the association agreement cannot be applied in its various facets unless the democratic institutions and civil liberties were restored in Greece” (European Parliament, 1967, 1).[3]

The Declaration on European Identity adopted by the heads of state of the EEC in Copenhagen (December 1973) specified that member states shared “the same attitudes to life [and were] determined to defend the principles of representative democracy, of the rule of law, of social justice — which is the ultimate goal of economic progress — and of respect for human rights”, all of these being fundamental elements of the European Identity (Council of Ministers, 1973). In its opinion on the Greek application, in 1976, the Commission reiterated that “given […] Greece’s return to a democratic form of government, there can be no doubt, in the view of the Commission that the Community must now give a clear positive answer to the Greek request” and concluded that “the consolidation of Greece’s democracy which is a fundamental concern not only of the Greek people but also of the Community and its Member States, is intimately related to the evolution of Greece’s relationship with the Community”. (European Commission, 1976). The military coup in Turkey in 1980 also led, albeit belatedly and with reluctance, to the freezing of the country’s association agreement with the EEC.

Rule of law, as one of the fundaments of European integration, appeared in the considerations of the (then) European Court of Justice in its Opinion 1/91 on the EEA agreement, in 1991, which admitted that the EEC Treaty, albeit concluded in the form of an international agreement, none the less constitutes the constitutional charter of a Community based on the rule of law.

This requirement become clearer with the Treaty of Maastricht. Article F provided in paragraph 2 that “the Union shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms […] as general principles of Community law”. Almost in parallel, the newly-founded EU set up the so-called Copenhagen criteria to clarify the conditions for accession, in particular for countries of Central and Eastern Europe: the 1993 Copenhagen European Council while agreeing that these countries “that so desire shall become members of the European Union” added a number of conditions, among them that “membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities” (European Council, 1993).

Through successive EU treaty amendments, primary EU law also became clearer and more compelling. Attachment to the principles of rule of law is underlined in the preamble of the Treaty of Lisbon and became one of the foundational values of the EU in Article 2. In addition, adherence to, and commitment to promote the values or Article 2 were elevated into a formal condition for membership, as prescribed in Article 49 TEU.[4] In a parallel development and in recognition that rule of law should not only apply to candidates but also to member states, sanctions for its violation by member states were gradually introduced. The EU was enabled, albeit through a cumbersome and difficult procedure, to suspend the membership rights of member states whenever the values of article 2 TEU were being violated or, after the Treaty of Nice, there was a serious threat of them being violated. What is now Article 7 TEU introduces a permanent mechanism to monitor, among others, respect by member states of rule of law.

Political developments in some EU Member States which put at risk important rule of law elements at national level, increased the significance of rule of law in the EU legal order: the Union started looking at states’ performance that challenged its governance and good administration requirements. Thus, the concept, which originally was not clearly defined, gradually acquired more concrete features. Although the term continues to be understood in a slightly different manner by the various national legal orders, EU law, CJEU caselaw and doctrine have identified certain common qualities: among others the limitation of government by the law, changes of law following prescribed procedures, laid down in advance and publicly, the existence of legal remedies before an unbiased and independent judiciary, proportionality, and constitutionalism (EPRS, 2019). In various cases, starting with Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses (C-64/16), and in particular the two Commission cases v Poland (C- 619/18 and C-192/18), CJEU confirmed, as settled caselaw, that the Union is founded on the rule of law principle and in the last case underlined that the independence of courts is 

of cardinal importance as a guarantee that all the rights which individuals derive from EU law will be protected and that the values common to the Member States set out in Article 2 TEU, in particular the value of the rule of law, will be safeguarded (paragraph 106).

Thus, during recent years, especially, after 2018, the “existential threat to the functioning and long-term survival of the EU legal order” obliged the CJEU to deal more extensively with the values of Article 2 TEU and “to mobilise [these fundamental values and principles] to progressively articulate a more comprehensive, coherent, and effective system of rule of law protection” (Pech-Cochenov, 2021, 14). In this process, the Court reshaped the meaning and scope of the rule of law principle which now can be much better applied both internally and in accession negotiations. In one of its latest cases regarding rule of law, Repubblika v Il-Prim Ministru (C-896/19), the Court further stressed that

compliance by a Member State with the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU is a condition for the enjoyment of all of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to that Member State. A Member State cannot therefore amend its legislation in such a way as to bring about a reduction in the protection of the value of the rule of law’ (paragraph 63).

Rule of law in accession negotiations

The centrality of rule of law requirements for the countries that aspired to join the European Union was clear from the start: the Copenhagen criteria were introduced specifically to provide more specific conditions to the very general at the time accession provisions of the Treaty and to assuage, to some extent, fears that states with weak or unstable democratic foundations could join the EU. In practice, the political criteria, in particular the state of democracy in the accession countries, gradually took precedence over the other criteria, at least in the EU prerequisites (Kochenov, 2004). The 1997 Luxembourg European Council (12-13 December 1997) set up the European Conference which opened negotiations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and, in its conclusions, it went further and specified more clearly that “compliance with the Copenhagen political criteria is a prerequisite for the opening of any accession negotiations” (European Council, 1997,25).

The first enlargement negotiations following the adoption of these criteria (to the Scandinavian countries and to Austria) did not raise any major issue regarding rule of law, and relevant discussions went relatively smooth.[5] The following wave of accession negotiations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was more complicated for the EU, both because of the size of the enlargement envisaged and due to the weaker democratic institutions and failings in rule of law among several of these countries. In this context, two specific negotiating chapters were shaped with the aim to assist enlargement countries to establish a society based on rule of law and to measure their progress in that area: chapter 23 (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights) and chapter 24 (Justice, Freedom and Security) covered a wide variety of issues, in the fields of justice, internal security, fundamental rights and the fight against corruption and organized crime.

Rule of law turned even more problematic during the subsequent accession negotiations, with Bulgaria and Romania, which were considered to suffer from widespread systemic corruption and to lack sufficient breadth in their national constitutional systems to guarantee steady and permanent adherence to these principles. Croatia’s accession was also marred by issues relating to the rule of law, mostly due to its unsatisfactory cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and general corruption allegations – and border issues with Slovenia (Szpala, 2011).

In a recognition that rule of law was an absolute prerequisite for accession and, to a large extent, to alleviate fears that the EU would accept states which could later turn rogue or fall victims to corruption and maladministration, the EU introduced the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) for Bulgaria and Romania. The Mechanism, although conceived as a transitional measure to assist the two countries to remedy these shortcomings, was a testimony to the fact that these two countries had not achieved sufficient progress in the fields of judicial reform and corruption, as well as the fight against organized crime for Bulgaria. Still the outcome demonstrated that political considerations were, in the event, more decisive and conclusive to the acceptance of their membership, sidestepping the rule of law criteria set by the very EU.

Nevertheless, the accession negotiations with these two countries demonstrated that, in fact, there was little direct relationship between improvements in rule of law and the progress in these negotiations: the EU was caught in a “Rule of Law dilemma” (Nicolaidis -Kleinfeld, 2012, 15). A clear end-based approach might be considered as aiming to stall enlargement as no state could sufficiently prove its rule-of-law credentials. A means-based reading of the Copenhagen criteria would bypass benchmarks and obligations in favour of a longer-term perception of these conditions. In either case, it proved difficult to use in an objective manner the criteria in the context of 2004 and 2007 enlargements. Political considerations eroded the mere enunciation of the principles, and it was, in both cases, more the avowed declarations of governments rather than objective developments that finally led the way.

The EU enlargement to the Western Balkans

Discussions on EU enlargement to the Balkan countries which were not members of the EU, generally called Western Balkans[6], date back to 1999. To establish a cooperation framework with the Balkans, the EU adopted the Stabilisation and Association Process to govern its relations with the countries of the region. Later, the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe became a broader initiative involving all key international players of the region aiming to provide an economic and political perspective for the Balkans. At the first EU-Western Balkans summit meeting, in Thessaloniki in June 2003, the two sides confirmed their attachment to “the values of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human and minority rights”. The final declaration endorsed the EU’s “unequivocal support to the European perspective of the Western Balkan countries” and next day’s European Council confirmed “its determination to fully and effectively support the European perspective of the Western Balkan countries, which will become an integral part of the EU, once they meet the established criteria” (European Council, 2003, point 40).

Despite this commitment, the region’s European perspective remains quite illusory even today.  The “established criteria” are still far from being considered to have been “met”. It took a long time for the Western Balkans to apply for membership and even longer for formal negotiations to start. Twenty years after Thessaloniki, only two countries, Serbia and Montenegro, have officially opened accession negotiations and even with these two countries, discussions have stalled. In July 2022, the first intergovernmental conferences on accession negotiations took place with North Macedonia and Albania, following the resolution of Bulgaria’s veto over the former country’ s accession.

Montenegro, which became independent in 2006, applied for EU membership in December 2008, was granted candidate status in December 2010 but was the first to open accession negotiations in June 2012. Serbia submitted its application in December 2009, was granted candidate status in March 2012 and accession negotiations opened in January 2014. North Macedonia was the first Balkan country to apply for membership (as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in March 2004) and was granted EU candidate status in December 2005. For many years, though, it was unable to open accession negotiations due to the dispute with Greece over the country’s use of the name ‘Macedonia’. Even after the resolution of this issue, in 2018, the Council failed to authorize the effective start of these negotiations mainly, but not exclusively, due to the opposition of Bulgaria which was only raised in June 2022. Albania applied for EU membership in April 2009 and was granted candidate status in June 2014. Although the Commission had recommended to open accession negotiations with the country already in 2016 (and again later), the Council did not authorize this till March 2020. Again, and despite the Commission’s draft negotiating framework, the opening of the talks was delayed due to the obstruction of the negotiations with North Macedonia.

Finally, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Kosovo are further behind.  Today they qualify as potential candidate countries. Both have established a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU and BiH submitted its membership application in February 2016. The case of Kosovo is complicated because of the dispute with Serbia and the fact that five EU member states have not recognized Kosovo’s independence and Kosovo has not been included in the EU visa liberalization regime.

The delays are due to inherent problems with the countries of the region – notably rule of law issues- and to the EU’s less than wholehearted embrace of further enlargement. The EU’s “enlargement fatigue”, following the 2004 accessions, has a persistent impact on accession discussions of the Western Balkans. This fatigue is strengthened by retrospective assessments of Bulgaria and Romania’s governance capacity which conclude “that ‘they were not ready’ to join in 2007 and that the EU should not have admitted them as members” (O Brennan, 2014, 225). The botched efforts to bring these two countries into the EU while their economies and state structure were insufficiently prepared and adapted to the EU norms, reverberate in accession negotiations both among the member states and, increasingly, among their citizens.

In addition, the various crises that the EU faced after the last enlargement (the eurozone crisis, Brexit, the refugee emergency, and the pandemic) weakened, in general, the EU’s appetite – and capacity- for expansion. The crises also modified the power relations within the EU, weakening the role of the Commission in favour of intergovernmental institutions (both the Council and, especially, the European Council). In enlargement politics this change meant that national politics, and even more domestic considerations, took more prominence in accession talks. This was already viewed with the Slovenian veto to Croatia’s accession on the grounds of their border dispute and, till recently, in Greece’s (till 2018) and Bulgaria’s more recently blocking the start of negotiations with North Macedonia over issues of the country’s name in the former case and identity, language and history in the latter (among others, the latter country’s failure to recognize an ethnic Bulgarian minority and disputes over the origins of the Macedonian language).

In parallel, European public opinion grew significantly cooler over enlargement. Replies to the standard Eurobarometer question whether “Further enlargement of the EU to include other countries in future years” gave increasingly negative answers. In autumn 2016 39% of EU28 citizens were in favour of further enlargement, as opposed to 51%. Only 28% among French and 25% among Germans supported enlargement. (Eurobarometer 86, 2016). In 2003, those supporting enlargement were 47% and those against 32% (Eurobarometer, 61, 2003). Although this erosion of support did not particularly refer to the Western Balkans but rather to Turkey – and, before the Russian invasion, Ukraine – it echoed in political positions at national and European levels. France introduced, in 2008, a constitutional provision that would allow the president to submit to a popular referendum any accession of a new country to the EU. In 2019, the same country blocked accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia and suggested a renewed approach to the accession process (which led to the Commission’s new methodology).

Reflecting this erosion, in his statement in the European Parliament plenary session ahead of the vote on the College of Commissioners newly-elected Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put an official hold on the accession and stated that “there will be no new members during this Commission’s term of office: it is totally unfeasible” and stressed that the EU “must not let those waiting at the door think that it might open in the next five years” (Juncker, 2014). He qualified this negative since “enlargement negotiations will continue with the same vigour, the same drive, the same commitment as in the past”. In his 2017 State of the Union address, he  re-affirmed that “If we want more stability in our neighbourhood, then we must also maintain a credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans” (Juncker, 2017). But the message that went through to the Balkan countries was that despite their efforts, accession would be a very long and distant goal.

Rule of law in the EU enlargement to the Western Balkans

Already then, Juncker had underlined that candidates should “give the rule of law, justice and fundamental rights utmost priority in the negotiations.” Concerns over the rule of law violations among member states who had joined after the 2004 and the 2007 enlargement, turned rule of law issues into one of the most central elements of the accession talks with the Western Balkans. Already in 2011, the EU identified strengthening the rule of law “as a continuing major challenge and a crucial condition for countries moving towards EU membership” (European Commission, 2011, 5). The issue has been given greater attention and the rule of law chapters – Chapter 23 on judicial reform and fundamental rights and Chapter 24 on freedom, security, and justice – were opened at an early stage in the negotiations both for Montenegro and for Serbia.

In the 2018 Strategy for the Western Balkans, the Commission set an indicative date for the accession of Serbia and Montenegro which could “potentially be ready for membership in a 2025 perspective” (European Commission, 2018, 2).  In 2020, the European Commission adopted a revised methodology on accession negotiations. The aim is to enhance the accession process based on four principles: “credibility, predictability, dynamism and stronger political steer”. In practice the new methodology groups the accession chapters into six groups of issues (“clusters”), making negotiations more overarching and comprehensive and is supposed to act as an incentive on the side of the accession countries to accelerate their reforms and allow to move negotiations faster if they deliver faster (European Commission, 2020).

The policy of “fundamentals first” means that that political, economic, and institutional fundamentals are indivisible and mutually reinforcing. Thus, the Commission gives emphasis on the effective implementation of rule of law rather than mere legislative reforms and in mainstreaming rule of law. The revised accession methodology adopted in 2021 renders rule of law even more central in the accession negotiations, for example through the mainstreaming of anti-corruption measures. As the Commission text stipulates “negotiations on the fundamentals will be opened first and closed last and progress on these will determine the overall pace of negotiations” (European Commission, 2020, 3). In addition, these negotiations will include a “roadmap for the rule of law chapters equivalent to the previous action plans” which will be considered as “the opening benchmark”, as well as interim benchmarks. The conditionality is reinforced by the assertion that no other chapter will be provisionally closed before these benchmarks are met (European Commission, 2020).

The ongoing negotiations with Serbia and Montenegro were adapted to cater for the requirements of the new methodology although the content of the negotiations did not fundamentally change. The intergovernmental conference on the accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia which opened in July 2022 adopted fully the new methodology.

It is true that in the years after the 2004 accession, the content and the contours of rule of law have become clearer; relevant discussions are currently more evidence-based than in the past. Since the 2000s an increasing number of indices on rule of law, democracy, human rights, and good governance have been compiled and represent useful tools in assessing rule of law. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index[7], the Bertelsmann Transformation Index[8], the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators[9] and Freedom in the World[10], among others,allow to measure better and more accurately the level of rule of law achievements of countries and to assess the Commission’s own assessment of countries, allowing for better accountability.

One lesson of the previous enlargements was that rule of law reforms focused on legislative or even constitutional changes, usually with outside technical assistance, rather than in changing the state’s legal philosophy.  Thus, reforms remain often in paper only and lack effective implementation. This is often because they are adopted under EU pressure with little effective “reform ownership” from the part of the state. Thus, laws are either ignored or there is simply no capacity enforce them. For laws to be effective they must “be supported by a strong State that enforces laws across the whole of its territory—an assumption that is rarely justified” (Nicolaidis – Kleinfeld, 2012,18).

As a result, the emphasis in the negotiations with the Western Balkans was to establish an ongoing “rule of law dialogue with the countries of the Western Balkans […in order to…] strengthen preparations at earlier stages of the pre-accession process, based on in-depth analyses of the justice and home affairs sectors” (European Commission, 2011, 6)

In a wider context, adopting and adapting to the EU acquis has become one of the main problems in accession countries, because of the sheer size of the acquis and the proliferation of the required new legislation. As a result, legislation is often adopted by candidate countries indiscriminately by merely copying EU legislation which does not necessarily fit their specific needs and frequently requires subsequent legal adaptation. Paradoxically, this increases legal uncertainty among citizens and businesses as to the actual legal framework. This is true for economic reforms and for rule of law and one main contentious issue in the case with the Western Balkans.

The regular European Commission enlargement reports point out to substantive deficiencies in the Balkan states regarding rule of law. Despite the courageous efforts and the technocratic language of these reports, these deficiencies largely remain the same through these years: “an increasingly hostile environment for civil society, freedom of expression and freedom of the media, and attempts to exercise undue influence and political interference on the judiciary”, a “sound enforcement of anti-corruption frameworks” and the mainstreaming of corruption measures, “coherent and consistent efforts to contain and effectively address elements of state capture”  (European Commission, 2022A, 8). These statements are not particularly different from previous years. The Commission’s 2019 regular enlargement communication stressed the region’s “shortcomings” related to “a lack of political will, institutional resistance and an increasingly hostile environment for civil society”, “the existence of certain elements of state capture”, “instances of widespread corruption”, “the ineffectiveness of criminal procedures, giv[ing] strong signals of impunity, and contribut[ing] to the risk of criminal infiltration of the political and economic systems” (European Commission, 2019, 4). Issues such as the need for an independent and impartial judiciary, the reduction of ruling by decrees, timely delivery of justice and enforcement of judicial decisions are also often mentioned in EU reports regarding Western Balkans.

Despite some improvement in some of these areas, most of the shortcomings identified are always present in the Balkans and have marred negotiations. Of course, it is not only rule of law that is an obstacle to accession: neighborly disputes, inter-ethnic tensions and the unstable economy are all contributing to the difficult road of the Western Balkans towards the EU. The unfulfilled promises of EU accession weaken the attractiveness of reforms. On the Western Balkans, there is no discernable trace of the virtuous circle that allowed the adoption and permanence of reforms in rule of law and in the economy because of the accession perspective. In fact, what can be seen in the countries of the region is “democratic stagnation” (Bieber, 2019) or even “backsliding”, for instance in the case of Serbia. The accession paradigm does not seem to work in these countries’ case, either because the level of state capture is higher or because the accession perspective is perceived to be unreal or unrealistic. As Bechev puts it “the region does not generate sufficient levels of instability to disrupt or threaten the EU” and the latter prefers the, albeit imperfect, status quo to a bold move (Bechev, 2022).

But status quo does not seem to be a lasting one. The Balkans are increasingly attracted by populist rulers with an authoritarian streak, a practice that has led to the establishment of a new type of illiberal political system “that formally commits to EU integration […] but continues to govern through informal rules and clientelism” (Kmezić, 2020, 56).

Rule of law after the Russian invasion to Ukraine

The Russian war of aggression to Ukraine, besides its devastating effect on the country itself and international relations, changed considerably the EU – and the West’s – security priorities. Ukraine (together with Moldova and Georgia) applied for membership to the EU and the widespread support for the country’s resistance led to a speedy recognition of Ukraine’s (and Moldova’s) candidate status by the European Council of June 2022 which invited the European Commission “to report to the Council on the fulfilment of the conditions specified in the Commission’s opinion on the membership application as part of its regular enlargement package” (European Council, 2022, point 12). The European Council emphasized that “The progress of each country towards the European Union will depend on its own merit in meeting the Copenhagen criteria, taking into consideration the EU’s capacity to absorb new members” (point 14). Rule of law was not specifically mentioned in what admittedly was a general, quite political, commitment – although immediately below in its conclusions regarding the Western Balkans, the Council reiterated the “the importance of reforms, notably in the area of rule of law and in particular those related to the independence and functioning of the judiciary and the fight against corruption” (point 17). The Commission’s opinion on Ukraine’s application although it concluded that “Ukraine is well advanced in reaching the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities” and recommended that “Ukraine be granted candidate status” stated that this would be “on the understanding” that a number of steps would be taken. Almost all referred to rule of law issues, such as the implementation of legislation on the selection procedure for judges of the Constitutional Court, strengthening the fight against corruption, ensuring the implementation of anti-money laundering legislation, implementing the Anti-Oligarch law (European Commission, 2022B, 20).

The same June 2022 European Summit conclusions on the Western Balkans did not modify officially the EU’s stance on rule of law for the Balkan countries: the Council confirmed its “full and unequivocal commitment to the EU membership perspective of the Western Balkans” but referred to the revised methodology and the “importance of reforms, notably in the area of rule of Law” for the countries.

Ukraine has altered the EU’s (and Europeans’) view of the world. The conviction that Europe must be “geopolitical” was already a mantra for the Von Den Leien Commission but, the Russian aggression made clearer to European leaders and to Europeans that politics, rather than the economy and trade relations, should drive EU policy-making. A clear expression of this approach was the establishment of the European Political Community, an intergovernmental forum conceived to foster political dialogue and cooperation, to address issues of common interest and to strengthen the security, stability and prosperity of the European continent.

 The crisis also made clear to Europeans that what Bieber (2018) called “stabilitocracy”, i.e. the European support to Balkan regimes that claimed to provide stability domestically and to espouse the European values while maintaining strong authoritarian trends and a dubious rule of law record was not viable in the long and even medium term: although tacit support for Russia, a traditional ally, was stronger in Serbia,  few politicians throughout the Balkans took a strong stance against the Russian aggression. The geopolitical developments became another puzzle for the EU’s enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans and for rule of law requirements, in particular. On the one hand, it became urgent to provide a viable path to accession that might deter the Russian and Chinese influence on the region. The unblocking of accession negotiations with North Macedonia was a tangible step towards the first direction. But a geopolitical emphasis also comes with discounts in other areas: to what extent should the EU tone down its rule of law requirements to address the security concerns over its southeast flank? The argument – an easy one to explain but much harder to implement – should be that the EU is stronger and therefore more attractive to candidates when it defends democratic values and rule of law within and outside its border. But this is not argument that would appeal to many leaders in Western Balkans and would seem ironic to many citizens of the region.

Conclusions

As rule of law becomes challenged within its borders, the EU tries to be more demanding from those states that request to join the EU. The Commission (2014, 1) underlined that “the rule of law is the backbone of any modern constitutional democracy” and “one of the main values upon which the Union is based”. This development renders rule of law prerequisites of paramount value for accession to the EU. In assessing observance of rule of law for Western Balkans countries, the EU tries to implement a multi-fold strategy which does not always sound coherent. It must mollify public unease over further enlargement, protect the EU from potentially illiberal or merely institutionally weak regimes trying to join the EU, provide a push for sustainability in institutional reforms and serve wider political objectives, in particular anchoring the countries of the Western Balkans to the EU enterprise. This strategy, up till now did not succeed.

Of course, rule of law requirements from candidate countries are not new: they equally applied to previous enlargements, too. But the outcome of those negotiations was not coherent. Although the EU had fleshed out specific conditions for democracy and rule of law, political considerations, especially at the time of the 2004 enlargement, took precedence. In the run-up to the accession, politics sidestepped substantive application of the democracy and rule of law criteria. During the 2004 negotiations, the EU put the rule of law threshold so low that, ultimately, the criterion was disregarded. To a large extent, “in the end the requirement to have the institutions guaranteeing democracy and rule of law in place was very similar to a formal condition applied in the previous enlargement rounds” (Kochenov, 2004). Political considerations prevailed even more during the 2007 and 2013 accession negotiations. The establishment of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism was the proof that the Copenhagen requirements could be bent if sufficient political will was exercised upon the EU institutions.

The negotiations with the Western Balkan countries take place on these contradictory foundations. Enlargement fatigue and Euroscepticism means that rule of law is seen (and sometimes used) as a means to postpone (indefinitely) enlargement. This mentality defeats the purpose of the accession negotiations – to strengthen in a steadfast manner democratic resilience in these countries. Although the EU, in particular the European Commission, provide extensive analysis of the rule of law failings in these countries, the reluctance to enlargement is less linked to these specific failings but rather to a wider “enlargement fatigue” and to national considerations among member states. There is certainly a widespread apprehension over other “Hungaries” joining the EU but the opposition – and support – for accession is not linked to the progress or delay observed in each country regarding the Copenhagen criteria but to an, often prejudiced, view over these states.

Thus, Balkan countries and governments see the goalposts being moved during the game and become disillusioned. In fact, the erratic manner by which the EU applies the Copenhagen political criteria weakens domestic pressure in favour of necessary reforms. Reforms are perceived as a ritualized process rather than as a required change of the mentality of states and societies who realize that other paths, support from member states, successful diplomatic initiatives or even the international context, might be more useful for their accession efforts.

In fact, rule of law has deteriorated in almost all Western Balkans during recent years. Looking at the overall Rule of Law score over time of the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index[11], in five out of the six states of the region there has been a deterioration of rule of law indicators with only Kosovo remaining stable. This does not bode well for the consolidation of rule of law before (or even after) EU accession.

As Kmezić (2020, 59) puts it “conditionality works well if membership criteria are clear, if the same criteria are applied to all applicants, if they are strictly but fairly monitored, if the findings are transparently communicated and if there is no doubt that the reward will come once conditions are met”. Evidence shows that this is not the case with the Western Balkans, increasing mutual mistrust.

The consequence of this is that Western Balkan countries turn to other alternatives which provide easy funding, do not ask many questions, and allow for the governing nomenklatura to continue ruling in a state capture context. Russia, but also Turkey and the Gulf states, and, increasingly, China provide various forms of financial and political support that compete and oppose the European approach. In the EU the anti-enlargement mood further complicates relevant discussions, and it is partly responsible for democratic backsliding in the Balkans, thus creating a vicious circle (Walldén, 2017).

The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded the EU – and, more importantly some of its more reluctant member states – of the geopolitical value of the Western Balkans and the need to “anchor” the region more decisively in the EU, limiting the scope for third powers (such as Russia) to foment tensions in the region. The immediate outcome was the reinvigoration of accession talks with the return of a more dynamic European diplomacy towards the region. The unblocking of the accession path of North Macedonia and Albania was the most visible example of this change of mentality.

In the end, enlargement is eminently a political decision, both for the EU and for the candidate state. If the EU considers that there are superior interests at stake, economic, geopolitical or political, it may – and did – interpret widely the rule of law criterion in the hope that participation in the EU will enhance and solidify the fragile democratic institutions. It worked in most cases of the 2004 enlargement. It did not work fully in 2007. The case of the Western Balkans seems to lead towards the latter rather than the former scenario. But geopolitical considerations are impending, perhaps more urgently now than before. And the EU – and its member states – are more uncertain today than in the past as to where they want to head το.

Bibliography

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Kmezić, M. (2020). Recalibrating the EU’s Approach to the Western Balkans. European View, 19(1), 54–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1781685820913655

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[1] Ioannis Papageorgiou  is Professor  School of Political Sciences Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

[2] It should be noted that the failed Treaty setting up a European Political Community of 1952 (which was drafted as a follow-up to the European Defence Community) stated in its preamble that member states were “determined to invite other European Peoples, inspired with the same ideal, to join with [them] in [their] endeavor” and in article 116(1) it provided that “accession to the Community shall be open to the Member States of the Council of Europe and to any other European State which guarantees the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms…”.

[3] According to point 1 of the resolution (in French) the EP « constate que l’accord d’association entre la Communauté européenne et la Grèce, qui prévoit l’adhésion ultérieure de ce pays à la Communauté, ne pourra être appliqué dans ses différentes phases que si les structures démocratiques et les libertés politique et syndicale sont rétablies en Grèce ».

[4] The first paragraph of article 49 TEU stipulates that “Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union”.

[5] The only reference to rule of law in the Commission’s opinion on the accession of Sweden (31 July 1992) was the sentence “Sweden’s democratic traditions and human rights record are as valid as her important place in European history and culture”.

[6] The term, in this paper, comprises the six Balkan states which are not yet part of the EU: Albania, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo. It is not, as the adjective denotes, include a geographical connotation; rather, it was coined by the EU to collectively qualify those countries in the Balkan peninsula which were not (yet) members of the European Union. As such, it is a political term: the group tends to shrink as countries will join the EU. For instance, Croatia, probably the westernmost Balkan country, ceased to be included in the group after its accession to the EU in 2013.

[7] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/2022

[8] https://bti-project.org/en/?&cb=00000

[9] https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/Documents

[10] https://freedomhouse.org/issues

[11] World Justice Project, rule of law rankings in  https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/2022

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Slovenia established its statehood in the period of the immense structural changes that accompanied the end of the Cold War. It proclaimed independence on June 25, 1991, and half a year later, on January 15, 1992, received international recognition from several states, including those of the European Community.

In the second part of the nineties, after starting institutional activities, aimed at the membership in the EU and NATO, Slovenia also announced its ambition for the nonpermanent membership in the UN Security Council (SC). It achieved this goal, being elected in autumn of 1997 at the 52 second session of the General Assembly, for the period of 1998-1999. It means that Slovenia achieved this major foreign policy goal less than six years after its international recognition. Still today, this echoes as a huge diplomatic success, unimaginable a decade before.

Almost a quarter of century later the major significance and most of the experiences are still current for Slovenia and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as well as for comparable small states, with rather small diplomatic service and network of diplomatic missions abroad. This is firstly, due to the fact that, theoretically speaking, the SC is in a constant session and functions as a de facto world government, and secondly, it is one of the most important global opportunities to cement a policy image of the state in question. Nothing spreads the image of a state within world’s diplomatic community so strongly as being one of the decision-making actors in the UN SC.

There are two groups of consequences for the small non-permanent member from this point of view: firstly, highly increased foreign-policy and diplomatic visibility, and secondly, increased workload for its diplomatic service. Albania has from the first point of view already important advantages, since it is already member of NATO and the candidate for the EU membership as well exercised the OSCE Chairmanship, among others. These and similar achievements already strengthen the visibility and image of the state. The nonpermanent membership in the UN SC adds significantly to this and strengthens the trend, but also raises expectation.

Not less important are influences on the diplomatic organization. They are twofold: positive (encouraging) and negative (burdening). Some of the most important consequences comprise of the following (usually both aspects, positive and negative, are intertwined):

a) Diplomacy is being faced on a daily basis with a huge workload of practically all of the important global political and diplomatic topics. A significant part of them has been previously of the scope, like overseas, African and similar topics.
b) The direct consequence of this is an upgraded and constant need for daily provision of information about those topics (diplomacy is an information-gathering machinery). This is a structural shock for a small diplomacy with small number of missions around the world. Slovenia had at that time approximately 42 missions altogether, only Cairo in Africa.
c) However, dealing with new topics broadens highly the policy horizon of diplomacy, deepens understanding of world affairs and decision-making on these issues brings the state in question firmly in the active part of global diplomatic community. It also develops foreign policy decision-making within the country.
d) From organizational point of view, this project should be settled with an ad hoc Task Force, dealing only with the membership activities. It should consist of career diplomats and be subordinated directly to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, with direct links to the Prime Minister’s and Presidential Offices for this purpose in particular.
e) Two aspects of this flexible and substance-oriented approach are important. There should be a constant communication with all the diplomatic missions abroad. Instructing and reporting for this purpose have to be top priority. Daily communication with the team in New York is a must, also close coordination with Embassies in the states, members of the SC (this author had almost daily consultations in the Swedish MFA, when in 1998 both states were members). The same goes for cooperation with Embassies of states-members of the SC, accredited to Albania. Some of the most important SC members tend to exercise persuasion, sometimes also pressure to accept their view in the voting process.
f) Permanent Representation – mission to the UN in New York must function as a well-oiled machinery. Horizontal and vertical communication and cooperation present a huge management challenge and illustrates the importance of introducing management expertise in diplomatic business. At the same time, this serves as the best diplomatic school for all diplomats.
g) From the very beginning of the membership, special preparations should focus on those two months, one in each membership year, when the member state is presiding the SC.
h) It is highly important to maintain some of the upgraded efficiency of the MFA also at later stage, when the membership is over. This overdrive manner of diplomatic work should not be lost later on.
i) In spite of this immense daily dynamics, related to the membership activities, the so called usual daily foreign-policy and diplomatic business should not stop. This is one of the most demanding challenges. It is a test of a self-assured and professional diplomacy.

The SC nonpermanent membership is a kind of postdoctoral study of diplomatic practice. Diplomatic learn to grasp the moment, establish deep understanding and knowledge of world affairs. Coordination, nonstop briefing, debriefing, following sessions, on – off the record, being active around the clock, this is diplomatic business. This assembly line does never stop.

Accumulation of expertise and knowledge is an enormous benefit for the diplomatic service and its professionalism, the best possible investment. Nowadays, topics that dominate, are still classical maintenance of peace and conflict prevention, but they take a postmodern shape: climate crisis, pandemics, energy supplies, global food chain maintenance, poverty, shortage of water supplies, drought, famine, to name but few. Democracy, rule of law and free individual, remain in the focus, with increasing ethical aspect. This all is diplomacy.

Dr. Milan Jazbec is a Slovene diplomat, professor of diplomacy, poet and writer, employed at the Slovene Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and member of the first generation of Slovene diplomats. He was Ambassador to North Macedonia (2016-2020) and to Turkey (2010-2015, accredited also to Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria). He published over sixty books and is the author of more than 130 articles on diplomacy and related topics, all in fourteen languages. From 2009 he is the founding editor of the international scientific journal European Perspectives. Views, presented in this article, are solely of his own and do not represent those of his employer.   

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