Power sharing – can the EU impose sustainable arrangements?

David Madden

18 February saw the sixth seminar in this term’s series on “Revisiting Convergence in South East Europe”. The title was “Power-Sharing: can the EU impose sustainable arrangements". The speakers were James Ker-Lindsay and Cvete Koneska, the discussant Richard Caplan, and I chaired, and agreed to report for our blog. Discussion covered all the relevant subjects: Cyprus, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. There was a detailed and valuable Q and A session, with many challenging points from the audience.
   Cyprus represented a failure, in that it entered the EU without a political solution. But there were mitigating circumstances. This was a complicated and long-running problem. Once the Treaty of Accession was signed in April 2003, there was less scope for influencing the Greek Cypriots, and moves on the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot sides counted for less. The EU had little way of advocating the Annan plan, and there was considerable misrepresentation of what it contained, during the referendum campaign. The situation was also complicated by the fact that there were 10 entrants: future enlargements were more likely to see trickle candidacies. Some important principles were established. Countries outside the EU, e.g. Turkey and Russia, had no right to say who could or could not accede.

1st South East European Ministerial Conference

Jonathan Scheele

Some 140 participants attended the First SE Europe Ministerial Conference jointly organised, on 14 February, by the International Business and Development Exchange (IBDE) and SEESOX, at Europe House, Smith Square, London SW1. Key speakers included: Mimoza Kusari-Lila, Deputy PM of Kosovo, Majlinda Bregu, Albania’s EU Integration Minister, Alexandar Pejovic, Montenegro’s Chief Accession Negotiator, Alain Bregant of the Bled Strategic Forum, Oleg Levitin, Senior Political Advisor at the EBRD, Rudi Guraziu CEO of IBDE, and David Madden, Jonathan Scheele and Max Watson from SEESOX.

The conference was divided into two sessions, the first on the challenges of political reform and regional cooperation, and the second on progress on economic reform. Inevitably, these two areas are not independent and the discussion switched between the two throughout the afternoon. As well as the main speakers, there were also some challenging questions raised from the floor.

Economic uncertainties and political risks

Max Watson

In South East Europe, the impact of the global and euro area crises has been particularly severe, with political as well as economic implications. The crisis arrested the incomplete progress made over the previous decade in overcoming a number of historic vulnerabilities. If the decline in employment and living standards is not soon reversed, there are risks that serious political-economic tensions in the region could re-surface. These were among the key messages from the fourth seminar in this term's core SEESOX series, which asked whether the impact of the crisis on the region will prove reversible.

In this region, it was pointed out, the crisis had affected particularly seriously the most vulnerable groups in society. The response of governing elites had been piecemeal and not very effective, and this had further undermined the population's trust in public administrations. Moreover, the apparent failure of the previous decade's growth model had raised questions about the EU as a catalyst of economic convergence. So far, the impact of the crisis had been cushioned to some degree by work in the informal sector, and by family-based support mechanisms; but if today's recessionary conditions were not soon reversed, the limits of such cushions might be reached.

Europeanisation of the Balkans or Balkanisation of EU?

Renee Hirscon

On 28th January, a stimulating and provocative seminar by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi Europeanization of the Balkans- the Corruption Test addresses a key question : whether “the process of Europeanization is capable of changing the governance in the accession countries if it is different from the European norm?”. Three generations of countries were noted: previous – Italy, Greece, Spain; current – Romania, Bulgaria; next-- Croatia, Macedonia. The presentation contained rich information, statistically based and drawn from international sources, centring on a series of slides with various indices of corruption in the 27 countries of the EU. Not surprisingly, the clusters of least corrupt countries were those of northwestern Europe /Scandinavia while those of central, southern and SEE were spread in various distributions, highlighting the variability and specificity of each country’s response to accession.

The speaker noted some of the constraints which would be effective in bringing about good governance, such as an independent and accountable judiciary, and the capacity of the population to check that the state becomes autonomous from private interest, through media, civil society, enlightened voters (with Internet access). She also noted that certain policies favour corruption- allocating more funds to areas prone to discretionary spending, like big projects (for instance EU funds) instead of universal health coverage is associated with more corruption. The same happens with lack of fiscal transparency and red tape as they create a favourable environment for corruption that no prosecutors can afterwards cure.