This is interesting
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic is cited today as saying that Serbia has to find a solution for Kosovo before it can enter the EU, which might happen by 2015. This is not new, nor is it as promising as it sounds at first reading, because he adds:
Such compromise would guarantee economic and political autonomy of Kosovo, without jeopardizing Serbia’s territorial integrity….We cannot have a long-term peace if we support one nationalism against the other. It’s good to support the European kind of compromise which is not satisfactory but it is functional.
It is also said that he cited two precedents: Hong Kong and the two Germanies. Both of these are cases in which reintegration into a single sovereign state was the eventual result.
Anyone who follows Kosovo knows that autonomy within the context of even nominal Serbian sovereignty is no longer possible, if it ever was. Nor will reintegration happen, except in the context of EU membership for both Belgrade and Pristina. Belgrade cannot hope to govern Kosovo the way China today governs Hong Kong or Berlin governs East Germany. That’s a pipedream.
Djelic’s statements are nevertheless interesting, as they suggest that Belgrade is beginning to think seriously about what it has to do about Kosovo in order to get into the EU. This should be the vital question for Belgrade. It is also urgent, since the EU is unlikely to move quickly on an application for membership from a state that cannot define its own borders.
It should also be the vital question for Brussels, which so far has not spoken unequivocally about the need to resolve the Kosovo issue before Serbia can enter the EU. It is of course hard for Brussels to speak with one voice on this subject, as 22 of its member states have recognized Kosovo and 5 have not. Some of those 22 are sure to block Serbian membership so long as the Kosovo issue remains unresolved and have said as much publicly and privately. Getting an unequivocal statement out of the 27 would go a long way to clarifying the situation. You don’t need to have recognized Kosovo to know that EU membership for Serbia is impossible without resolving the Kosovo issue.
Washington will also have to be clear with Belgrade about the need to resolve Kosovo before Serbia can enter NATO. This is less urgent, as Serbia understandably shows few signs of really wanting NATO membership. But no one should be encouraging Belgrade to think that anything less than a full resolution of the Kosovo issue is vital to Serbia’s long-term relationship with the United States.
Pristina should take notice too. It would be perilous for Kosovo if Serbia were to enter the EU first, even if it has accepted Kosovo as a sovereign state. Belgrade would then have a veto on Pristina’s EU membership. The only reasonable solution to this problem is for Pristina to accelerate its own efforts at preparing for EU membership. It has done well to meet the EU technical requirements for the Schengen visa waiver, and I hope the EU will come to its senses and allow that to go forward. But there are many other areas in which Pristina is lagging. It needs to get its own house in order. Governing well is the best revenge.
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Thoughts of Cyprus should help stiffen EU resolve to ensure that Serbia is not allowed to join while still claiming Kosovo. Why would Europe want to allow inside its peaceful borders what Serbia has threatened will be an unending attempt to return Kosovo to its control? The government carefully talks of “more than autonomy, less than independence,” but Serbs talk of sending in the army and police and dealing with the traitors. The papers are predicting Seselj’s imminent return in triumph from the Hague and an active role in Serbian politics, perhaps the presidency. The EU may have had its best chance to deal with Serbia, and dilly-dallied it away.
Belgrade keeps talking of a compromise, allowing their citizens to imagine that they’ll be getting either reincorporation of Kosovo under some arrangement that will allow them to keep claiming that Kosovo je Srbija, or at least a special relationship for the North. Which would then serve as a starting point for quiet attempts to restore greater control in the future. (Look at their on-going efforts in Montenegro.)
But Ahtisaari gave away all of Kosovo’s bargaining points in his Plan – in particular, they had to renounce, forever, any attempt to rejoin Albania, which would have been the preferred choice of just about every Kosovar and Serbia’s greatest fear. Serbia is now taking everything that Ahtisaari gave them to encourage them to accept Kosovo’s independence and treating it as a starting point for further negotiations, saying it’s not fair that one side won everything and one side lost everything. Do they really expect more concessions out of Prishtina – foreign-territory rights for the Church lands, for example? The only concession here should be by the EU, to allow Serbia to continue its progress towards membership. It’s not Prishtina that is interfering with Serbia’s economy, or holding its museum’s holdings hostage, or blocking the working of its courts, after all.
Good luck to the negotiators, but their chances might be better if they had started with a EU guarantee that Kosovo will enter the EU before Serbia. Or perhaps that other Union, as the 51st state. Finding enough US flags in the country shouldn’t be a problem.