This year, the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) marks 10 years of active efforts to bring the region closer to the European Union and support the capacity-building of the region’s countries for membership. Over the past decade, BiEPAG has strived to advance its main goal through research, advocacy, and policy recommendations. From the very beginning, its members have been directly or indirectly involved in all processes related to European integration and the democratization of the region.
About how the enlargement policy has changed over the past ten years, the state of democracy in the region, and BiEPAG’s contribution during the previous decade, we spoke with Aleksandra Tomanić, Executive Director of the European Fund for the Balkans, which, together with the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz (CSEES Graz), launched BiEPAG in 2014.
European Western Balkans: This year marks the 10th anniversary of BiEPAG. When it was founded, one of its main goals was to promote the EU integration process of the Western Balkans. Where do the region’s EU integration efforts stand ten years later? What has changed, and to what extent?
Aleksandra Tomanić: Probably nobody would have believed that 10 years later all countries of the Western Balkans will still be outside of the EU and in basically very early stages of the accession process. 10 years ago, the optimism regarding the whole process was more concrete and its credibility still existent.
Today, the promise of Thessaloniki has lost its meaning. The EU has degraded the accession process into a purely technical and economic one, abandoning its political dimension and leverage. EU enlargement policy used to be the biggest soft power tool of the EU. This has been given up for short term gains, which turned out to be illusionary.
Now geopolitics has brought back enlargement into everybody’s attention. But without deep reforms and a proper preparation of the EU itself, this has not much real credibility beyond politically necessary lip service at this point of time. For the integration of the Western Balkans, particularly institutional reforms would be necessary when talking about integrating 6 countries that together have the GDP of Slovakia.
Talking about Ukraine, we need to see serious budgetary preparation. Ukraine would not only be among the biggest member states in line with Spain or Poland, but a heavily agricultural country with immense budgetary implications. We don´t see anything of this happening but are expected to still believe in the process.
EWB: Over the past decade, BiEPAG experts and researchers have dedicated significant attention to the state of democracy in the region. How would you assess the current state of democracy in the Western Balkans today?
AT: Luckily, I don´t have to assess anything. We have a broad number of international indicators that show us that regarding democracy, media freedom, human rights etc this region is in steady decline. We see an increase in SLAPP lawsuits, smear campaigns, open threats, so that it takes true courage to speak up, to exercise basic civic rights, and that is unacceptable. We have in numerous countries attempts to further shrink space for civil society through initiatives towards so called “foreign agent laws”, so far not successful. Not yet.
We just recently had election fraud on a broad scale in Serbia, internationally observed and documented, but without any follow-up.
Linguistically, the term stabilocracy was popular in the past years, we have a new term coming from Italy, which is democratura. All this tries to somehow catch new realities, where we in fact agree that there are other forms of democracy. In my opinion, a democracy is either free, or it is not a democracy anymore.
EWB: Are European integrations still the only guarantee for the democratization of the region?
AT: The answer to this question can be found in the bare question already. For too long, too many have relied solely on the EU “to guarantee democratization of the region”. But there are some construction errors in this assumption.
First, the EU has own problems with democracy, not only in its own institutional set-up, but unfortunately in more and more member states.
Second, it was never in the mandate of the EU, not the EU accession process to “guarantee” democracy. That is not even possible. What was expected from the EU is to support the establishment of accountable institutions, media freedom, rule of law, free and fair market access, basically everything covered by the Copenhagen criteria.
Third, this construction has taken away power and importance from citizens of the region as sovereigns of their states. Only their voting behaviour and demands as citizens can “guarantee democracy”.
Currently we see that citizens across the region are increasingly getting involved in numerous topics and are demanding to be asked, realizing that they have the power, that decision makers are on their payroll, which I think is a great development when we speak about democracy.
EWB: Over the past ten years, has the space for experts and civil society organizations to influence decision-makers in the EU and the region’s countries narrowed?
AT: When we speak about the region, we can agree that we have state capture across the region. This is not only something we live every day, but something that even the European Commission has acknowledged numerous times in various reports. In that kind of state set-up, there is no real policy making, nor policy development. Expertise and involvement from civil society is seen as a threat, not as complementary and democratic input. Public hearings have completely lost their sense either because they have become a pure tick the box exercise, or are shortened, put in the middle of holiday seasons or skipped completely.
Regarding the EU, and focusing on the enlargement portfolio, that portfolio also has been captured, too. So, the only hope is that with the new European Commission at least there some things will change.
EWB: What would you highlight as BiEPAG’s most significant contributions so far? And what will the priorities be in the future?
AT: BiEPAG members have been directly or indirectly involved in all processes related to EU integration and democratization of the region from the very beginning.
Over 50 practical policy proposals have been prepared and active advocacy for elaborated recommendations was done. Some of them, such as the inclusion of the Western Balkans into the rule of law instrument, were accepted. Another concrete example is BiEPAG´s initiative and – in accordance with its proposals – the adoption of the Resolution on Bilateral Disputes in Vienna in 2015 within the Berlin Process summit. But as many good documents signed within these formats, what remains questionable is the credibility of the signatories when we look into follow-up and implementation.
Within BiEPAG anniversary activities, we have asked all members what BiEPAG means to them and I liked what is behind the statement of our member Srdjan Cvijić. He said that BiEPAG „empowered experts from the Western Balkans and removed a kind of neo-colonial bias from the expertise about the region.“
If we have contributed to emancipate expertise and knowledge from the region and helped voicing them – we can be satisfied with the results of BiEPAG so far.