Serbia’s long and winding road to EU accession

natalie hamill, 1 December 2011

By Lucy Hatton

Next week’s EU Summit provides the perfect opportunity to review Serbia’s progress towards EU membership – a contentious issue since Serbia applied in 2009.  Earlier this year it was suggested that Serbia might be granted official candidate status at the EU Summit on Friday (9^th December), yet this is looking increasingly unlikely, due to Serbia’s unresolved issues with Kosovo.

Although Serbia is a potential EU candidate country, its hostile relationship with Kosovo (which, under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, is also considered a potential EU candidate) is a major barrier to its membership bid. The historical tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have resulted in violence on many occasions, not least during the Kosovo War of 1998-1999, during which the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) sought independence from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Serbia. During the war humanitarian atrocities were committed by Serbian officials, and Serbian President Slobodan Milošević was charged with crimes against humanity. The violence only ended after NATO intervened and undertook a 78 day bombing campaign.

However, despite the close of the war, political conflict is ongoing and has prevented Serbia and Kosovo’s candidatures from progressing further. Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia in February 2008 and is now viewed as such by the vast majority of EU member states, with the exception of Spain, Greece, Romania, Cyprus and Slovakia. Serbia has faced repeated calls from the EU to accept Kosovo’s independence in order to continue seeking membership. In September last year, the Serbian Government agreed to participate in EU-sponsored talks with Kosovo in an attempt to resolve their issues. Additional progress was made with the successful arrests of former Serbian military leader Ratko Mladić and former Serbian politician Radovan Karadžić who were wanted for war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars. These were viewed as significant and positive steps for Serbia’s pursuit of candidate status, but unfortunately it seems to have been a case of one step forwards and two steps back.

Renewed violence was sparked this summer by the murder of an ethnic-Albanian Kosovar policeman in northern Kosovo, which the 90% Albanian Kosovar population are reported to believe was ordered by Serbian politicians. An attempt by ethnic-Albanians to regain control over some border checkpoints in an area of northern Kosovo inhabited primarily by ethnic-Serbs was met with violence, and NATO forces intervened with rubber bullets and tear gas. Despite offering words of condolence to the family of the Kosovar policeman who had been murdered, Serbia later called off the EU-arranged talks with Kosovo as a consequence of the violence and NATO intervention. There remains a Serbian controlled enclave in northern Kosovo which is reported to receive money and weapons from Serbia and refuses to permit the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo into the area.

As a result of the continued conflict, Serbia’s hopes of being granted candidate status by the end of this year seem, to many in the EU, unachievable. The European Commission’s annual Enlargement report recommended that Serbia be granted candidate status, but only on the condition that it re-engages in talks with Kosovo. The current Polish EU Council presidency has stated that it is not particularly in favour of Serbian accession, and Denmark’s permanent EU representative has also spoken out to say that he does not expect any progress to be made on Serbian accession during the upcoming Danish Council presidency in the first half of 2012. Furthermore, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has issued a warning to Serbia – it must give up Kosovo if it wants to join the EU.

Whether or not it will do so no one knows. The Serbian foreign minister has continually reasserted the position that Kosovo will never be recognised as independent by the Serbian Government, and the Serbian interior minister has gone as far as to suggest that Belgrade should prepare for war over northern Kosovo. Until the issue is resolved, it remains doubtful that consensus will be reached in order to allow Serbia to progress towards accession.

Next week’s summit seems unlikely to have an outcome that will be popular with Serbia – its official candidate status will remain out of reach for some time if the warnings of Chancellor Merkel and her contemporaries are anything to go by. Serbia’s road to accession has been anything but smooth thus far, and, if it continues not to recognise Kosovo, I suspect that it has a long and difficult journey ahead.