Managing the Risks of Instability in the Western Balkans
International Crisis Group, 07 July 2022
The Western Balkan six – five of the former Yugoslavia’s successor states plus Albania – remain outside the EU as war wounds fester and reform efforts stumble. Brussels should find means short of promising accession to help guide these countries back onto the right track.
What’s new? Twenty-plus years after the wars that followed Yugoslavia’s collapse, Western state-building efforts and the prospect of EU membership have failed to deliver hoped-for reforms in Western Balkan states or to resolve the region’s lingering disputes. Russia’s war in Ukraine has energised accession proponents, but EU enlargement remains a long-term project.
Why does it matter? A secessionist movement threatens to break Bosnia and Herzegovina apart, while Kosovo and Serbia remain at loggerheads over the former's status. Until these disputes are addressed, they will threaten regional stability. While the possibility of EU membership remains an important motivator for regional actors, it alone cannot solve these problems.
What should be done? With Washington’s support, Brussels should proceed on multiple tracks, putting crisis mitigation first. The EU and U.S. should work to defuse the Bosnian crisis and improve Serbia-Kosovo relations while promoting Kosovo’s international ties. The EU should consider ways to further encourage greater European integration before full membership is possible.
Executive Summary
As Russia’s assault on Ukraine wreaks fresh havoc in Europe’s east, war wounds that the Western Balkans suffered more than two decades ago continue to fester. The Dayton peace accord that has held Bosnia and Herzegovina together is unravelling. Efforts to resolve Kosovo’s dispute with Serbia over its independence are frozen. Montenegro has seen violent unrest. North Macedonia is a bright spot, but it has yet to begin accession negotiations with the European Union. Neither has Albania. Bad governance, sluggish economies, corruption and European ambivalence have stalled the EU process.
The war in Ukraine has spurred talk of jumpstarting enlargement efforts, but major acceleration seems unlikely for now. To promote regional stability and integration, Brussels should proceed on multiple tracks. With U.S. support, it should work to address tensions through diplomacy that does not rely on the prospect of EU accession as the primary incentive. Separately, Brussels and member states should explore ways to offer Western Balkan candidates nearer-term prospects for closer political and economic integration.
Yugoslavia fell apart violently at the end of the Cold War, spawning brutal wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991-1995), an Albanian insurgency and a Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo (1998-1999), and a brief Albanian uprising in North Macedonia (2001). Since then, the region’s fortunes have been mixed. Two Yugoslav successor states, Slovenia and Croatia, have since joined the EU; two others, Montenegro and North Macedonia, have become part of NATO, along with neighbouring Albania.
Bosnia struggles under an unwieldy constitution imposed by the Dayton agreement in 1995. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but its statehood is far from universally recognised and it is not a member of the UN. The region’s states that remain outside the EU all aspire to membership, and EU and U.S. efforts to stabilise the region have to date focused on accession as the overarching motivation.
But that strategy has its limits. The Western Balkan states are not developing into plausible candidates for EU membership in the near term. Part of the problem is that the EU and influential member states remain ambivalent about taking in new members or other steps toward greater integration; indeed, Brussels has reneged on or delayed some of its promises to Balkan states. Three years after Kosovo completed the EU’s wish list for visa-free travel, it remains the only Balkan country without that privilege.
North Macedonia changed its own name to satisfy Greek demands, but that has not cleared the way for it in Brussels, as fresh Bulgarian objections now stand between it and membership. The war in Ukraine has generated warmer feelings in European capitals toward that country’s closer association with the EU, with some backing its desire for swift accession. The war also catalysed Moldova’s efforts to gain EU candidate status. Both achieved this status in June, but that is unlikely to lead to a quick membership process for any other country, particularly for the more troubled Western Balkan states.
The main causes of Balkan stalling on the EU road lie within the candidate countries themselves. There are economic issues: at their current pace, it will take them decades to be ready to sustain the competitive pressures of the common market. None of them has a functioning market economy and the region’s standard of living is far below the EU average. Still bigger impediments relate to governance. Respect for the rule of law is wearing away in some states, as are democratic norms.
In Serbia, the region’s largest and most influential country, democratic institutions have suffered systemic erosion. Government power is concentrated in a small circle around the president and separation of powers is a fiction. The state enjoys a near monopoly over the mass media and intervenes in the economy to reward loyalists and punish critics. There is extensive overlap among government, business and the criminal underworld. Montenegro and North Macedonia were until recently on similar trajectories and could easily find themselves drawn back in that direction.
The Balkans are also home to knotty disputes that the EU may not wish to import. Bosnia and Herzegovina is disintegrating in slow motion. Its Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska, is gradually separating itself from the central government’s oversight. The aim could be independence, or far greater autonomy, but either way the manoeuvring is a source of instability. Ethnic Serb leaders have announced a range of steps they intend to take short of formal secession, including separation from the joint armed forces, border police, judiciary and internal revenue system, though they walked back some of these under Western pressure.
They have paused these efforts while the conflict in Ukraine unfolds, but there is little to suggest their goals have changed. Meanwhile, the Bosniak majority is internally divided and at odds with the country’s third main ethnic group, the Croats, over electoral reform. Absent a deal, Croats threaten to block government functions after the October national elections, which would deepen the crisis.
Kosovo and Serbia have put their long-running dispute over Kosovo’s independence in a deep freeze, though politicians on both sides bring it up when seeking to raise the nationalist temperature. Promising steps toward a comprehensive agreement fell through in summer 2020. Belgrade and Pristina are far apart and appear content to let their disagreements persist for years if need be, notwithstanding the costs of the dispute. These costs – the barrier the standoff creates to EU accession for both, Kosovo’s exclusion from the UN and many other international organisations, tensions over the governance of Serb-majority areas in Kosovo and the sustainment of an open wound in the heart of the region – are likely to persist.
The situation calls for a two-track approach that separates out urgent crisis and conflict management tasks from long-term planning for EU accession. Stabilising Bosnia and Herzegovina is the most pressing need. There, the U.S. and EU should work quickly to broker a rapprochement between Bosniaks and Croats in order to save the October vote, and follow up by supporting efforts to develop a sustainable and shared vision of the country’s future. While exploring ways to advance recognition of Kosovo’s statehood, including by Serbia, they should help it further integrate into international institutions. Recognising that the Belgrade-Pristina relationship may stay frosty for years, Brussels and Washington should press both to treat their respective minorities with greater respect and promote economic and cultural ties.
As for the goal of EU accession, Brussels should be blunt: even with the new momentum for greater unity created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, full membership does not lie around the corner. All governments in the region need to show much greater capacity and conformity to EU norms before accession becomes a realistic possibility. That may take decades, a period during which the EU should consider other ways to deepen its ties and strengthen political and economic cooperation with the Balkans through means short of full membership.
Brussels, 7 July 2022
For the full report, visit: https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/balkans/managing-risks-instability-western-balkans
