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.

   In both Macedonia and BiH, it was possible to challenge received wisdom that political progress was stymied by issues of ethnicity. Of course ethnic vetoes could be disruptive, but if both/all sides had symmetric vetoes there could be progress. People who could not be outvoted might be more willing to compromise. Similarly, territorial autonomy could assist inter-ethnic compromise. And post-conflict societies could develop informal practices rather than what was laid down in the constitution to make progress. Leaders meeting behind closed doors might not be very democratic, but it could work. The alternative ethnic parties in Macedonia meant that political differences were not viewed in solely ethnic terms.
   In Kosovo, there seemed to be a start of real progress, and greater realism. It could be the harder line leaders who were needed to take matters forward.
   Looking ahead towards EU entry, veto rights could be an issue in future enlargements. Slovenia/Croatia could be a foretaste: e.g. Croatia/Serbia, Greece/Macedonia, and others. National champions of specific accessions seemed a declining feature.
   It had become gradually accepted that the EU could broadly speaking impose arrangements as a normative practice in SEE. It was a question of importing EU values and social learning.
   The EU needed to be careful about conditionality. It could work at the right time: but hard conditionality could be high risk.
  Power–sharing had created disfunctionality; but there were exceptions. Whether power-sharing worked depended crucially on political will, political maturity and political inclusiveness.
   The session finished with a question about political culture. Did this determine how sides to a conflict would react? Not necessarily. Things could change. And pragmatists could gain the upper hand.