Serbia likely to put EU conditionality to the test
Eric Witte July 15th, 2008
In an interview with a Serbian newspaper, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has described Serbia’s progress toward EU membership in remarkably sensible terms: “This is not a process that is led based on a calendar, but in which progress depends on full completion of clearly defined conditions.” The Commission may just be reflecting the backbone displayed by The Netherlands and Belgium in refusing to ratify Serbia’s Stabilization and Association Agreement until Belgrade fully cooperates with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). In the same newspaper interview cited by Serbian broadcaster B92, Rehn specifies that “Serbia needs to have full cooperation with the international court in The Hague. We are calling on the new government to continue to improve the positive development of the situation and to take all necessary steps towards achieving this condition.”
If this is in fact the EU’s new policy on Serbia, it would be a welcome development. In the past, EU “conditionality” often has been muddied by shifting goalposts and capitulation to nationalist obstinance. Comments also reported in B92 from Serbia’s new interior minister - the head of former President Slobodan Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia - indicate that EU resolve is likely to be tested again. Minister Ivica Dacic’s contempt for the tribunal could hardly be clearer: “”I don’t think that the Hague cooperation is a priority, because, miserable is any state that makes this a priority - to cooperate with the Hague!” He goes on to traffic in unfounded craziness about how the ICTY has killed Serb detainees who have died of natural causes while in custody. Dacic does, however, acknowledge that cooperation with the ICTY is Serbia’s international legal obligation. Whether he and other members of the government act on that obligation is likely to be determined by EU policy.
Three ICTY fugitives remain at large: Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic. Clint Williamson, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, told a Sarajevo daily on Monday that top fugitives Karadzic and Mladic are believed to be in Serbia.
