Keep EU agreement with Serbia on hold
Eric Witte August 8th, 2008
Kurt has a letter in today’s Financial Times in response to an op-ed last week written by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic. Djelic argued that with Serbia’s arrest of Radovan Karadzic, it was time to place the relationship between the EU and Belgrade on new footing by dropping policies of conditionality. He argued that the EU should approve Serbia’s Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) and advance it to the status of a candidate for EU membership, as well as immediately implement visa liberalization.
In his letter, Kurt argues that it was Dutch and Belgian insistance on Serbia’s cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as a prerequisite to SAA approval that led to Karadzic’s arrest, and that this policy should remain in place until the final two remaining fugitives are apprehended:
Sir, Bozidar Djelic, deputy prime minister of Serbia, asserts that it is time for the European Union to approach Serbia with a new policy of disciplined partnership between the EU and Serbia [which] yields much better results than the old one, based on conditionality and sanctions (“For the good of Europe give Serbia a chance”, August 4).
Yet it is precisely the application of conditionality, insisted upon by only two of the 27 EU member states – the Netherlands and Belgium – that compelled President Boris Tadic to arrest and transfer Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Had it been up to the other 25 and the EU machinery, that condition would have been waived, the stabilisation and association agreement’s interim benefits activated, and the process of ratification would have begun. The message is not that conditionality failed, but rather that it works when firmly applied.
None of this diminishes the credit to Serbia’s government for the arrest and handover of a man indicted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor does it undercut the need for a credible membership perspective for Serbia and its western Balkan neighbours Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania.
It does appear that the Serbian government is approaching the search for the remaining indictees – Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic and Croatian Serb political leader Goran Hadzic – with greater vigour with the installation of the new government. President Tadic has reaped domestic political advantages from the arrest of Mr Karadzic, helping him paint his Radical opposition as weak and binding the Socialists in his coalition ever closer, since their erstwhile allies and much of the party rank and file view the Karadzic arrest as treason.
Serbia is being given a chance by the EU, despite Mr Djelic’s aggrieved whimpering about unfair treatment. Serbia will prove its readiness for “partnership” with the EU when it arrests and transfers Mr Mladic and Mr Hadzic. Until then, the EU should not move forward on SAA implementation or ratification, let alone moving forward towards candidate status.
It would be best for Belgrade and Brussels if these loose ends were finally tied up by the time of visits by Serge Brammertz, the ICTY chief prosecutor, later this month.
