Abstract
A quarter century after the collapse of East European communism, there is little doubt that the simultaneous transitions from communist dictatorships to multiparty democracy, and from a command economy to a market economy, have been successful almost exclusively in those states which were able to tie their post-communist reforms to the EU’s conditional offer of membership. However, the reasons why the opportunity for EU accession has not been used with the same effectiveness in all three regions of post-communist Europe to whom it was initially offered in the early 1990s remain far less obvious. While many scholars and political analysts tend to explain these reasons by primarily highlighting the different structural abilities of particular groups of states to adopt EU (“Western”) values and norms, and consequently meet EU accession conditions, this chapter focuses on the importance of “practical policy” measures and agent-driven actions.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
The PHARE (Poland, Hungary, Assistance to the Restructuring of the Economy) programme was launched in 1990, and soon after it became the main programme of pre-accession financial assistance for the countries included in the 2004/2007 enlargement round. The programme primarily focused on development of the necessary institutions and administrative structures to implement the acquis accession requirements (see below). Through PHARE as well as The Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession (ISPA) and Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) programmes launched in 2000 for supporting projects in infrastructure, agriculture and rural development, the EU distributed nearly 23.5 billion euro (EUROPEAID 2015, pp. 25, 68) to 10 beneficiary post-communist states during the period from 1990 to 2006 (when these programmes ceased to exist).
- 4.
There were 31 acquis chapters for the candidates which opened their accession negotiations with the EU in 1998/2000. For the candidates who opened their accession negotiations after 2005, the number of chapters increased to 35 (see the discussion in the ensuing sections).
- 5.
On the other hand, the increasing FDI inflow did not come about all that automatically as soon as particular countries had acquired the status of an EU accessory state; it resulted from the introduced economic reforms (particularly those related to the large-scale privatization) and specific actions these countries had made, often under the pressure of the EU during the accession negotiations (see Bandelj 2008, 2010).
- 6.
Why the inflow of FDI was more important than the other forms of financial assistance for post-communist reform can be easily seen when comparing the total amount which the countries of the 2004/2007 enlargement received as pre-accession assistance from the EU during the period 1990–2006 (see note 3) with the figures given in Table 2.2. This comparison clearly shows that the former was three times less than the amount of FDI which was received solely by Bulgaria and Romania in the same period.
- 7.
Similar comparative results can be obtained from other international organizations or projects specializing in monitoring and assessing democratisation, marketisation and human rights and political and civil liberties protection around the world (such as the Global Ranking Association, the Varieties of Democracy project etc.). In this chapter, we will stick with the above three organizations as the widely recognised and most often used. Although it is already included in the NIT’s democracy score (which looks at the state of play of political rights, civil liberties, corruption, the rule of law, media, civil society and the electoral process), the level of corruption in the respective countries as measured by the TICPI is also given here as a separate indicator – in order to address the importance of this factor of democratisation, which is often used as an expression of not only the existing level of corruption in the public sector but also of the general stability of democratic institutions and the rule of law in the respective countries.
- 8.
This is despite the fact that six of these states have been included in the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy, since 2003 and in the so-called “Eastern Partnership” since 2009 (see e.g. Petrovic and Klatt 2015).
- 9.
With the exception of Albania in 1991, the first multiparty post-communist elections in which non-reformist ex-communist or national populist parties were elected in all of these states were held during the course of 1990 (see Petrovic 2013, Chap. 1).
- 10.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, since 2008.
- 11.
After the death of Croatia’s authoritarian president Tudjman in December 1999 and the overthrow of Serbia’s post-communist dictator Milosevic in October the following year.
- 12.
These culminated in the adoption of the Thessaloníki Agenda in 2003 which declared that all the Western Balkan states “will [ultimately] be an integral part of united Europe” (EU General Affairs and External Relations Council 2003, Art. 41).
- 13.
The so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreements (SAA), which were basically similar to the Europe Agreements on primarily asymmetrical economic/trade concessions signed with the countries of the 2004/2007 enlargement in the early 1990s (see Table 2.3). However, the SAA contained additional requirements regarding stabilisation, reconciliation and mutual cooperation among the post-Yugoslav states in accordance with the SAP, launched in 1999.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Kosovo’s independence (declared in February 2008) is still not officially recognised by Serbia, the United Nations and many other states (including five EU member states), but it is recognised by over 100 members of the UN and most other international organisations, such as the IMF, World Bank and (de facto) the EU itself.
- 17.
The civil/ethnic war in Bosnia and Herzegovina which broke out in April 1992 was terminated by the Dayton Peace Accords, which were initiated and agreed to in November and formally signed as “The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina” by the leaders of Bosnia–Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia in Paris on 14 December 1995. This Agreement established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a de facto confederative state consisting of two semi-independent entities – the “Republika Srpska” and “the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” (i.e. the Bosniak-Croat entity) – with a feeble federal Bosnian-Herzegovinian government (the agreement is available in full at http://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/BA_951121_DaytonAgreement.pdf).
- 18.
The Kumanovo Agreement is a document signed between the International Security Force “KFOR” (initially NATO) and the governments of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro) and of the Republic of Serbia which ended the NATO intervention (bombing) of Serbia and Montenegro and prohibited the presence of “any Forces of the FRY and the Republic of Serbia” in the territory of Kosovo (art. 4). The agreement (available at: http://www.nato.int/kosovo/docu/a990609a.htm) was authorised by the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999 which de facto placed Kosovo under the UN protectorate.
- 19.
The Office of the High Representative (OHR) for B–H was established by the UN Security Council “[to] oversee implementation of civilian aspects of the Peace Agreement ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina” and “to ensure that Bosnia and Herzegovina evolves into a peaceful and viable democracy on course for integration in Euro-Atlantic institutions” (OHR website), but all High Representatives were from EU countries and the EU is the main donor of the Office. Furthermore, the UN legislative and police mission in B–H (UNBIH) established after the adoption of the Dayton Peace agreement has been replaced by the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) from 1 January 2003 (ceased to exist by 2012 – see Chap. 7 in this volume for more details) and the UN (de facto NATO) military mission “Stabilization Force” (SFOR) was replaced by presently still active (with some 600 military personnel) EU military mission EUFOR ALTHEA on 2 December 2004 (for more details see: www.euforbih.org).
- 20.
Since the late 2000s, the EU requirements have defined the necessity of the country’s constitutional change in the above direction as the sine qua non for its progress in the SAP process and towards EU accession (see e.g., European Commission, Annual Progress Reports on Bosnia-Herzegovina for all years in the period 2007–2015 available from the Commission’s website).
- 21.
After an open armed rebellion by the Albanian minority in early 2001, internal ethnic peace was re-established in Macedonia by the Ohrid Agreement of August 2001 along with many difficulties and the strong involvement of EU Commissioner and High Representative for Foreign Affairs Javier Solana. On several occasions, Macedonia received EU envoys who brokered peace deals between the disputing ethnic and political parties. The latest such a visit occurred in July 2015 when EU Commissioner Hahn came to stop everyday street protests and break an agreement about the “tender truce” and the early elections in 2016 between the Gruevski government and the major opposition party Social Democrats (SDSM), who have been boycotting parliament for almost a year since alleging fraud in the last parliamentary election of April 2014 (see e.g. Bechev 2015).
- 22.
Due to its potential expansionistic connotation regarding the northern Greek province with the same name, Greece strongly opposes the use of the domestically preferred term “Macedonia” as this country’s name. As a result, the country was admitted to the UN in 1992 under the “provisional” name (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), which is still in official use by the UN, international organisations and those states which accept Greek argument, and will remain so until the two parties find a mutually acceptable solution. It is solely for reasons of simplicity, and without any attempt to interfere in the ongoing “name debate” that this country is referred to as “Macedonia” in this chapter.
- 23.
Macedonia and Greece had agreed already in 1995, when they formalised bilateral relations to negotiate this problem under the auspices of the United Nations; however, these negotiations are very occasional and informal and are without any resolute political incentive which could have moved them forward.
- 24.
Because of “stealing from Bulgaria’s history and badmouthing [it]” (EurActiv 2012).
- 25.
As stated in note 20, all the Commission’s annual progress reports on B–H in recent years have insisted on the changes to (i.e. centralisation of) the constitution, particularly after the so-called Sejdić-Finci ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on the (non-)electability of representatives of national minorities to the Bosnian and Herzegovinian collective presidency. While there seems to exist consensus among the representatives of all three major ethnic groups about the necessity of amending the constitution in this respect (see European Commission 2015a, p. 21), the demanded changes are more problematic for the Bosnian politicians in the area of the current (mainly consensual) decision-making process in the federal parliament and the jurisdiction of the federal institutions over the regional levels of government, particularly over the Serbian entity and the so-called Croatian Cantons in the Bosniak-Croat entity.
- 26.
While the Serbian officials explain their participation in the Brussels talks as participation in talks with the government of the “autonomous province of Kosovo” (hence the name “Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue” instead of “Serbia-Kosovo Dialogue”), Kosovo’s officials have defined the same talks as “intergovernmental” and as Serbia’s de facto acknowledgment of Kosovo’s independence.
- 27.
Montenegro, which has been an official candidate for EU membership since 17 December 2012, is the only post-communist state in Europe which has never experienced an electoral change of ruling party or leader. Prime Minister Milo Djukanović and his Democratic Party of Montenegrin Socialists (formerly the League of Montenegrin Communists) have been in power throughout the whole period of post-communist (and even the last few years of communist) history of the country. Djukanović himself has served six terms as prime minister and one as president of the country during this period. In several occasions (last time in October and November 2015) there have been organised large street protests led by the opposition against the alleged government corruption and mafia style rule of “the thief” Milo (see e.g. BBC 2015; Hopkins 2012; Vachudova 2014).
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Petrovic, M. (2017). Chapter 2: Post-Communist Transition Under the Umbrella of Uneven EUropeanisation: East Central Europe, the Baltic States and the Balkans. In: Fish, M., Gill, G., Petrovic, M. (eds) A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43437-7_3
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