Tag: Balkans
The difference Brexit makes in the Balkans
I enjoyed a meeting today with Kosovo’s foreign minister, Enver Hoxhaj, some of Kosovo’s ambassadors stationed in European capitals and foreign ministry staff. They were concerned mainly about the implications of Brexit for their country. Here are the notes I used in my presentation:
Brexit makes no difference to some important things
- The EU isn’t going away. The single market that allows the free flow of goods, services and capital will continue, even if constraints on movement of people increase.
- Brussels will continue to try to coordinate foreign and security policy and will remain an important interlocutor for the US. Brexit may even make it easier for France and Germany to unify EU policy prescriptions.
- The EU is moving to close the gap with NATO, which was a luxury no one can afford any longer.
- Brussels will try to have a common policy on immigration, albeit one without the UK and much less welcoming than in the past.
- The euro will survive Brexit, though it may still face serious challenges from bank weakness in Italy and elsewhere.
- Even enlargement will continue, as promised recently at the Paris summit, since the Balkans are not a heavy burden and their cheap labor will be welcome, especially if it stays at home.
But Brexit will change some other important things
- The UK, or more likely England, will continue its relative economic and political decline, in particular if Scotland and possibly Northern Ireland leave.
- EU investment and growth will slow.
- All EU countries, seeing the political risks, will treat illegal immigration much more harshly.
- Standards for EU accession will be enforced more strictly, especially those pertaining to rule of law.
- Europe’s global political weight will continue to decline and its engagement abroad will decrease.
- The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership the EU and the US hoped to conclude is likely in suspense, if not moribund.
- Putin’s Russia will gain and feel encouraged to expand its anti-EU and anti-NATO efforts, in particular in the Balkans.
- The world will continue to look to the US for leadership, especially as financial flows looking for a safe haven boost the US dollar (and maybe its economy).
- The Balkans countries will be expected to handle more of their own issues: clamping down on foreign fighters and illegal immigration, resolving the remaining interstate conflicts, and building up regional physical, financial economic and cultural infrastructure.
What does this mean for Kosovo? If I were a Kosovar, I would want to use the next 5-10 years, when the EU will be preoccupied with itself, to complete my country’s sovereignty and enable viable candidacies for both NATO and EU membership. This entails domestic as well as diplomatic efforts. I would want:
- The Kosovo courts to become fully independent and capable of providing a fair trial with due process to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, without the participation of international prosecutors or judges.
- The work of the Special Court to try crimes that occurred after the war to be created and complete its work as quickly and competently as possible.
- To ensure that radicalization in Kosovo is reduced to a minimum through effective preventive (not only law enforcement) measures.
- To grow the economy, and in particular jobs, more rapidly through improvement in the business environment and reducing corruption to levels at least comparable to the average within the EU.
- To create an army with representation from all of Kosovo’s citizens, compatible with NATO standards and capable of contributing to NATO missions, whose chief of staff should meet regularly with those of all of Kosovo’s neighbors, including Serbia.
- To settle all issues with Kosovo’s neighbors, including in particular the demarcation of the Montenegrin border (which should enable the EU to liberalize its visa requirements) and the Serbian border/boundary as well as full implementation of all agreements already reached with Belgrade.
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Shape up, anything else is coddling
I disagree with much of what two of my dearest SAIS colleagues and their associate say in a recent Foreign Affairs article advocating greater EU and US backing for the Balkans. They argue that in the wake of Brexit,
European leaders, and perhaps those in Washington too, need to roll out a bold new plan for Europe. Enlarging the union by finally extending a hand to the Balkans would be a good place to start.
That’s wrong on two counts.
First, the Union has been extending a hand to the Balkans for more than twenty years, with some positive results: Slovenian and Croatian membership above all, as well as progress in Albania, Montenegro and Serbia. Even Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia, which are stymied by their own internal problems, have gained important access to EU markets and have begun adopting the acquis communautaire. None of the non-members will be ready before 2020, but some could hope for accession shortly after that.
Second, EU accession has in fact become more difficult due to Brexit, no matter what Chancellor Merkel (or my colleagues) say. The Brexit campaign unabashedly used immigration from the Balkans as one of its talking points. No one should imagine that ratification of an accession treaty with Albania, Montenegro or Serbia would be easier today than it was a couple of weeks ago. Brexit has consequences. The EU club has become harder to get into.
The only concrete advantage the Foreign Affairs article offers as an example of the advantages of additional Balkans membership in the EU is this:
For example, if the Balkans were incorporated into the EU, Brussels could help fund temporary shelters for Syrian refugees that land in the Balkans and facilitate better registration and processing.
But the EU could do what they suggest without adding any Balkan members, just as it has already done with Turkey. And the article suggests many good reasons why the EU should hesitate on accession: ethnic strife, corrosive politics, corruption, and organized crime.
The right lesson to be drawn from Brexit is not that the EU should open its arms wider. That isn’t going to happen, because EU members are all democracies that have to reckon with domestic political reactions. The right lesson is that non-EU Balkan countries need to shape up and meet the increasingly stringent requirements the EU has imposed since the arguably premature accession of Bulgaria and Romania.
The long pole in the EU membership tent throughout the Balkans is rule of law, which is weak and inconsistent. When a Serb can get a fair trial in a Kosovo court without international judges or prosecutors, when crooked politicians and their organized crime enablers are routinely prosecuted in Albania and Bosnia, when Serb politicians and generals answer for their 1990s war crimes in Serbian courts, then the Balkans will be ready for EU membership. If I were a citizen in one of the potential EU members, I would be doing everything I could to hasten the day, not pleading for special dispensation that is unlikely to come.
None of the non-EU Balkan countries is so big or problematic as Turkey. The largest is Serbia, at a bit over 7 million and declining (less than 10% of the population of Turkey). They will all be minor burdens on the EU budget and suppliers of needed cheap labor and taxpayers. Three are majority Muslim (Bosnia by a hair, Albania and Kosovo by more), but their Islam is fundamentally moderate. The Islamic State had a spurt of success recruiting in the Balkans, but that appears to have subsided in the wake of its military defeats and Balkan government crackdowns.
The best backing friends of the Balkans can give is to help them shape up for EU membership as soon as possible. Anything else is coddling.
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Accountability should finish at home
I signed this open letter concerning Serbian lack of prosecution of war criminals, in particular the murderers of the Bytyqi brothers, but let me add that I feel no less strongly about Kosovar, Bosnian and Croatian failures in this domain. All their now more or less democratic governments need to take a hard look in the mirror and get busy with the difficult business of holding people accountable for horrendous crimes in the 1990s. Accountability may not start at home, but it should finish there.
OPEN LETTER TO
JOSEPH BIDEN, THE U.S. VICE PRESIDENT,
JOHN KERRY, THE U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE,
FEDERICA MOGHERINI, HIGH REPRESENTATIVE OF THE E.U. FOR
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND SECURITY POLICY,
JOHANNES HAHN, E.U. COMMISSIONER FOR EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY & ENLARGEMENT NEGOTIATIONS,
THE EUROPEAN UNION FOREIGN AFFAIRS COUNCIL,
THE U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, AND
THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
As former representatives of the United States government, authors, human rights activists, and academics who have closely followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and Serbia’s subsequent efforts to resolve the many war crimes committed during that period, we are deeply concerned by the slow pace of Serbia’s domestic war crimes prosecutions, including its failure to resolve the murders of Ylli, Agron, and Mehmet Bytyqi, three brothers who were executed and dumped on top of a mass grave seventeen years ago today.
Since the position’s inception in 2003, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor has indicted no senior Serbian military or police officials, no government officials, and no persons of any rank involved in the removal from Kosovo and reburial in Serbia of more than 900 Albanian bodies – a deliberate “cover-up operation”.[i] Prosecutors filed only seven indictments in 2014, the majority of which were the result of complete investigatory files transferred from prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[ii] In 2015, they only issued two, neither of which was confirmed.[iii] This is not a record to be proud of.
In the Bytyqi case, a Serbian President[iv] and the two most recent Prime Ministers[v] have repeatedly promised resolution since 2006, but have failed to take adequate steps to secure this result. Instead, reports indicate that a primary suspect has intimidated witnesses and remains close to senior members of the current government.[vi]
International and domestic NGOs, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Commission, have diagnosed numerous problems with Serbia’s war crimes record. Uniformly, each cites a lack of political will and political interference as impeding accountability.[vii]
Similarly, witnesses will never come forward and cases will not be resolved when government Ministers host “welcome home” parties[viii] for returning convicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and suggest there be a political loyalty test when selecting the chief war crimes prosecutor.[ix]
Though the ICTY is winding down, the hard work for its countries of focus is nowhere near complete. Across the Balkans, tens of thousands of victims and their families deserve closure. Henceforth, only domestic prosecutions will have the ability to deliver them justice.
To date, Serbia’s record has been a dismal one that is ultimately unacceptable. Therefore, we urge you and the entities you represent to take constructive steps to ensure better commitment and effort by Serbia’s leaders and institutions to resolve war crimes cases, including the Bytyqi Brothers case. This issue should be raised as part of your continuing dialogue with the Serbian government, parliament and civil society leaders.
Sincerely, Read more
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Turning the clock back
I received this long letter (only slightly edited for spelling and other minor errors) from a group of people listed at the end. I was amused by its accusation that I favor Republika Srpska, since the authorities in that part of Bosnia and Herzegovina regard me as one of its sworn enemies. That said, the letter raises interesting questions about the validity of the Dayton constitution, without however offering any practical alternative in my view.
We are writing to you following the interview you gave to Aljazeera Balkans of June this year where you made a number of claims and statements in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina that we find unacceptable, and some of them also untrue and incorrect.
As you also used a pronoun ‘we’ in the same interview, we would like to ask you to confirm to us if you were speaking on behalf of the US State Department or if it was just a ‘slip of the tongue’? The way you presented your views and analysis to the critical judgement of the public in the interview left us under the impression that you were trying to impose them on the public as the only possible solutions. One would have expected you to act as an independent and well-meaning analyst. However, given the way you made your claims we felt that you were favoring Serbia and its interests of safeguarding the genocidal creation called Republika Srpska (further referred to as RS).
We would like to reflect on some of the claims you made during the interview:
– You claimed that the genocidal entity called RS was in the state of ‘transitional democracy’. We have never known a language where ‘transitional democracy’ is synonymous to Fascism and Neonazism, neither of which bear even a slightest resemblance to even the most primitive form of democracy. Therefore, apart from that claim of yours being untrue and incorrect, we find it also to be a very damaging and unacceptable promotional stunt favoring RS.
– You claimed that the Dayton Constitution has to be amended (or ‘reformed’). As someone who worked closely with Richard Holbrooke on creating Dayton Peace Accords one would expect you to reflect on it over the time, and to admit to yourself, at least from this time distance, what we all already know. And we have known for long that Dayton Peace Accords are a criminal agreement in that it rewarded genocide, war crimes, and aggression, and suspended the only legal Constitution – the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that had already extsted. It was a move that nobody had either a moral or legal right to make. We believe that you are familiar with the fact that the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was confirmed by the majority vote of the Bosnian citizens at the referendum of 29 February and 1 March 1992 as an expression of the highest level of democracy.
On the other hand, Annex IV of Dayton Peace Accords, which is considered to be the Bosnian Constitution at present, is illegal as it has ever been endorsed by the Bosnian Parliament, and as it is being breached by everybody, and in particular by Dodik on a regular basis.
We believe that you are well aware that Dayton Peace Accords, and Dayton ‘Constitution’ alike, are completely dysfunctional. Therefore, we are struggling to understand why you still continue to persist on it? The only reason we can see behind it could be that it is the only way to preserve the genocidal creation called RS as Serbia’s criminal war gain. So, we would like to ask you to put forward the arguments in your response to us that would prove us wrong with respect to those intents.
One cannot talk of any changes or ‘reforms’ to the Dayton ‘Constitution’ as the ‘Constitution’ itself is contrary to the basic international laws, Conventions, and the UN Charter. Such a ‘Constitution’ is contrary to the human rights and freedoms which explains why it has been defeated, and in effect, terminated several times at the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.
It may be that due to the way you feel about Dayton Peace Accords as its co-author you don’t seem to want to concede that Dayton Peace Accords, and ultimately Dayton ‘Constitution’, are the main and only obstacles to any progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina including the progress towards the Euro-Atlantic integrations which, at the same time you yourself (sic!) seem to be favoring.
– It is an unbeatable fact that Dayton ‘Constitution’ has to be terminated, and not changed or ‘reformed’ as you say, as it is morally and legally unacceptable, and as much as the whole of Dayton Peace Accords, it is the main obstacle to any progress of our country. Besides, the International Community have meant [the] Dayton Peace Accords to be only a temporary solution that was to stop the war. Please don’t try to affirm it as a permanent solution.
– In the same interview of June you were staunchly defending the April Package of the constitutional changes that you also co-authored. That was a ‘package’ of requests made by Milorad Dodik which the US State Department tried to push through via McElhaney and some of our politicians led by Sulejman Tihic. Its one and only aim was to preserve the genocidal RS, and to give it a right to veto as well as the decision-making powers that would be based on ethnicity which would have copper-fastened the genocidal entity, and made Bosnia and Herzegovina dissolve.
Although the Bosnian Parliament rejected the April Package, given your criticism of Haris Silajdzic in your interview of June this year, it appears that you still intend on continuing to pursue the April Package. And, we believe that you are well aware of the facts that the April Package would have copper-fastened the genocidal apartheid called RS. Therefore, all of us who took part in preventing an attempt to copper-fasten the genocidal creation called RS, strongly condemn and fully reject any such criticism of yours.
We would like to invite you to work hard on terminating the genocidal creation called RS, being led and guided by the international laws and Convention on Genocide Prevention and Punishment. Although we believe that you are well familiar with the International Court of Justice Judgement of 27 February 2007 which declared RS guilty of act of genocide, we would still like to remind you of it. Anything that has been created on genocide cannot continue to exist as it is legally invalid and void. Article 297. of the Judgement reads as follows:
297. The Court concludes that acts committed in Srebrenica, which fall within Article II(a) and (b) of the Convention, had been carried out with a specific intention to destroy in part a group of Bosnian Muslims as such; and accordingly, those represent acts of genocide which were committed by the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) in Srebrenica and the surrounding area starting on 13 Juy 1995.
Based on that Judgement the genocidal entity RS is legally untenable – bearing in mind the ius cogens principle, the UN Charter, and the Convention on Genocide Prevention and Punishment, and with genocide having been committed in all of the country, and not just in Srebrenica. The fact that Annex VII of Dayton Peace Accords has been breached due to the Fascism and apartheid that is being carried out by the genocidal creation RS, only means that genocide continues. The fact that one of the key conditions of Dayton Peace Accords continues to be breached makes Dayton Peace Accords legally void and voidable as per Contract law.
According to both the country’s and international laws, the citizens have every right to revert to the previous Constitution which is the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is no need to reform that Constitution as it is a civilian and European one, and as it is based on civil rights and freedoms.
– At 13:57 minute of your interview of June, speaking of the ‘constitutional reforms’ you contradicted yourself by saying:
‘We need to strengthen the government in Sarajevo’, and ‘That also means devolution of powers to entitites, cantons, and municipalities’.
Do not those two statements exclude each other?
Your statement on ‘devolution of powers’ led us to conclude that you support not only the preservation of the genocidal RS, but that you are also very much in favor of further decentralization of the Federation, which is unacceptable, and leads to the total destruction of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and gettoization of its Bosniak-Muslim majority population which would be squeezed to live on 24% of its territory till they finally disappear. At the same time RS would remain unitarian, monoethnic creation built on genocide of Bosniaks and Bosnian Catholics.
– In the same interview you also stated that you would ask Serbia for help with devolution of powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is both unacceptable and illegitimate for anyone to ask or encourage a foreign country to interfere or intervene in our internal affairs. And, to make it sound even worse than it already is such an ‘invite’ is being made to the country that committed an act of aggression on us, and occupied half of our territory having also committed genocide in the process. Is not inviting Serbia to interfere in our country in any way, including ‘help with devolution of powers’ an act of aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina? Having signed Dayton Peace Accords, both Serbia and Croatia in effect admitted to committing an act of aggression on our country. By signing Dayton Peace Accords they both agreed to respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country, and not to continue the aggression on our country. Or, perhaps you are inclined to interpret their signatures as their right to intervene and interfere in our country any way they want- be it as they please or with the help and encouragement of the international community? Does that not constitute an act of aggression in international law?
Never in its 1,000 years old history has any part of our country been part of Serbia. But Sandzak which is now part of Serbia historically has been part of our country. Applying the same logic of ‘asking for help with devolution of powers’ would mean that we have even a much greater (and historically well founded) right to interfere in the internal affairs of Serbia and the way it should be organised as a state. Finally, given that for us Serbia is an aggressor, and still a Fascist country (judging by who sits in its government and Parliament), we would like to ask if you would find it acceptable for Nazi Germany (if it, hypothetically, still existed) to be a ‘tutor’ to one of the countries with the majority Jewish population, that it had occupied, and where it had committed Holocaust and war crimes?
– We would like to remind you of the historic fact that no Serbs or Croats ever lived in our country until the second half of the 19th century. There was only one people- Bosniaks of three different confessions that also welcomed Sephardic Jews from Spain who settled in our country, and have been living with us since. And our country was never part of either Croatian or Serbian territory. Unlike Serbia, we do not base our history on myths and lies, but on the actual historical facts and documents that nobody has any right to either deny or disregard. Read more
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Surprise!
Yes, the “leave” vote surprised me. I expected economic rationality and political equanimity to prevail over distaste for immigrants and flag-waving England firsters. Identity politics has triumphed once again. Let it be a lesson to me.
The immediate economic implications are already clear: a sharp fall in the British pound, a sell-off in stock markets worldwide, an even shakier euro, and more than likely renewed recession in Europe as well as a sharp slowdown elsewhere. The US may be the exception for a while, as many people will seek safe haven in the dollar, but that will drive it up, weaken exports, and slow already slow growth. Uncertainty will persist: Scotland will proceed with a second referendum, Wales may follow suit, and Catalonia will try to do so. Will the Netherlands or France put the EU to a vote?
What about the Balkans and Middle East, where my attention is focused?
In the Balkans, both the immediate and longer term effects are dire. The region is heavily dependent on European trade and investment, which are going to be hit hard right away. But perhaps more important will be the political impact. Balkanites (that’s what I call people who live in the Balkans) have already been finding it hard to believe in their European prospects, which seem farther away than they did five years ago. Now they would be fools not to doubt the willingness of Europe minus UK to accommodate their membership.
These doubts will open the door to increased Russian influence, not only in the Balkans but also in Ukraine. No one gains more politically than Putin does from the UK referendum: it weakens his antagonists in the UK and the EU, makes his annexation of Crimea and occupation of southeastern Ukraine look more acceptable, and validates his ethnic nationalism. The vodka should be flowing freely at the Kremlin today. It will also flow into the Balkans. Putin will no doubt intensify his efforts in Serbia, in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and in Macedonia to wean Slavs from their EU and NATO dreams.
The Middle East is a harder call. There are a lot of wealthy Gulf sheikhs with money and property in Britain. They won’t like seeing the pound collapse, and some may already be so strapped by low oil prices that they panic and get out. But my guess is that most will hang on. Slowed world economic growth will however crimp oil prices once again, after their recent rise to $50 and change. So the future of Gulf money in Britain is likely dimmer than it was in the past.
Britain’s role in the Middle East may also change. It has been a major European contributor to intervention not only in Iraq but also in Libya and Syria. A more inward-looking and reduced Britain is not going to have the same resources and will to underwrite such efforts.
Britain will of course raise its barriers to Middle Eastern immigrants, but it hasn’t been taking many of them in any event. The main focus of resentment has been against East Europeans and the threat of immigration from the Balkans. Young Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks and Macedonians are going to lose both education and job opportunities that many have been enjoying in recent years.
Ironically, one of the many problems that need to be resolved during the two-year negotiation to implement Brexit, will be Brits abroad living in the rest of Europe, who number 1.2 million. Three million people from other EU countries live in the UK. If no accommodation is reached to allow these people to stay, we could see a massive population movement with unpredictable implications. Even if they are allowed to stay, this kind of migration is finished. The next British government will have to do everything it can to prevent foreigners from reaching its soon to be diminished shores.
Net net: Brexit is bad news for the UK, the EU, the US, the Balkans and the Middle East. It is good news for Vladimir Putin. My friends and I will not be celebrating.
PS: It took a couple of days, but John Oliver did a great, if pretty gross, explainer:
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Counting on the census
A: I doubt that is the path President Ivanic wants to go down. But the way Bosnia and Herzegovina works he has to always appear to be protecting Serb interests. The problem is constitutional. The Dayton constitution provides no incentives for politicians to gain support across ethnic lines. This is just the latest exemplar.
The political controversy around the census results is a serious embarrassment for anyone who is concerned about the country as a whole, which is what a president would normally be concerned about. A census should be a technical exercise with political implications, not a political exercise that affects the techniques used.
Q: At the same time Dodik is calling the Assembly of Republika Srpska (RS) to reject the census results as irrelevant.
A: I assume the RS Assembly will do as Dodik commands.
I doubt the crisis has peaked. Dodik will take any opportunity he is offered to reject whatever the state government decides. He seems to me quite determined to take RS down a road that keeps himself in power right now but leads to disaster for his constituents in the longer term.
Q: Can the international community tolerate manufacturing crisis from RS officials in such an important moment for BiH?
A: Can Bosnians tolerate it?
So long as Dodik continues to be reelected you will face crises of this sort. The international community has a lot bigger problems right now than publication of the census results in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The EU has delineated a clear path for Bosnia and Herzegovina towards reform. It also pays a lot of the country’s bills. The war ended over 20 years ago. Isn’t it time Bosnians accepted responsibility for their own census?
Q: At the same time we have a meeting of [Serbian Prime Minister] Vucic and [Croatian President] Grabar-Kitarovic who signed a declaration on relations between Serbia and Croatian, but problem child is against – RS! Their leaders obviously do not want reconciliation. Your comment?
A: RS under Dodik defines itself as opposed to Croat and Bosniak interests. Why would it welcome reconciliation?
It seems to me the divide between Belgrade and Banja Luka is getting bigger. What Dodik is doing is clearly not in Serbia’s interest. He is damaging Serbia’s EU prospects and championing a diehard Serb nationalist cause that has been defeated repeatedly both in war and in peacetime elections, except in RS.
I imagine Vucic will try to rein Dodik in, but I am not certain he’ll succeed. Dodik likes EU hard currency, but he is bent on making RS a Russian satellite. He has no serious interest in EU membership, unless he can achieve it as an independent and sovereign state. That isn’t going to happen.
I think the census results should be published, along with all the technical issues and how they have been resolved. Let the chips fall where they may.
Erol Avdo, also of Avaz, followed up with some additional questions later today:
Q: In today’s interview you are quoted to say that Aleksandar Vučić “will try to curb Dodik.” In what way and with which instruments Mr. Vučić can really curb Dodik, and does the Serbian leader want to do that? Or could it be that there is a change of mood in Belgrade (could they become more openly pro-Russian, with pro-Russian position (Šešelj radicals and others) in Serbian parliament?
A: You’ll have to ask Prime Minister Vucic whether he is comfortable with the Russophiles in Belgrade and whether he feels the pressure coming from them. It seems to me that giving in to them is a sure way of blocking his goal of EU membership.
As for curbing Dodik, the reasons to do so are clear: Dodik’s advocacy of RS independence puts Serbia in a lose-lose position. I’ll leave it to the Prime Minister to figure out what instruments to use, but I suspect that money is the prime leverage that would work with RS right now. Dodik is pretty desperate.
Q: Also, could Mladen Ivanic, who is an experienced and old politician, actually have a new assessment of that “change of heart” in Belgrade — and — in the worst case scenario — decide to show more resistance to all this EU accession process?
A: Ask him, not me, whether he has had a change of heart. In my way of thinking, he is not going to be able to outflank Dodik on the nationalism side, so he may as well stick with the EU.
Q: Or this is only all about census? Could Ivanic become more pro-Russian as well?
A: Russia is a declining regional power. Anyone who wants to tie the future of his country to a petro-state that lacks enough revenue to fund its budget is welcome to do so. Just don’t expect the U.S. or the EU to pay your bills or welcome you into their clubs if that is the choice you make.
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