In the previous blog post, Donovan established EU’s perception of the situation in the Western Balkans. In three aspects, I will be contrasting that with the perceptions of WB state actors towards their region.
Attitudes & Obstacles to EU Accession
The EU highlighted Western Balkan government’s lack of political will in aligning with their requirements as the primary obstacle hindering Bosnia’s EU accession. It perceives themselves as assisting Bosnia in meeting said requirements, and criticizes Bosnians for not reciprocating on their side. Dr Markovic (Belgrade, Political Science professor) agrees, citing Serbia’s corruption, media censoring and sub-par judiciary system as primary obstacles.
In contrast, the Finance Minister (Sarajevo canton) regards EU entry criteria as overly demanding, and expects the EU to offer entry concessions to Bosnia to deal with the rising Russian influence. He advocates entry into the EU first, then leveraging the EU’s economic resources to achieve the EU’s baseline socioeconomic standards for member countries.
I however agree with Dr Damir (Sarajevo, Political Science professor), who advocates a middle ground, where Bosnia must be willing to enact political and legislative reforms, while the EU makes certain concessions.This mismatch of expectations regarding Bosnia’s method of EU accession delays said accession.
Bosnia’s complex political system
The EU has identified major issues with Bosnia’s political system - corruption, no long-term strategic planning, lack of government unity. Bosnian State actors have similar sentiments, with Dr Damir and the Finance minister observing two phenomena contributing to the above observations. Firstly, power is decentralized from the state level to the canton level, causing lack of policy standardization between cantons. Secondly, political leaders prioritize interests of their voter bases over country interests, resulting in time wasted on political bickering over setting economic policies beneficial for Bosnia. While both the EU and Bosnian state actors agree on the negative implications of such a system, the Dayton agreement disincentives Bosnian state actors in relinquishing their power, further exacerbating this situation. Mismatched motivations of overhauling fixing political issues hence serves as primary obstacles to EU accession.
Attitudes towards Russia and China
The EU deemed China’s investments as Bosnia and Serbia’s way of circumventing tight EU regulations, and Russia as seeking to further increase its political influence in the Western Balkans. The EU hence seeks to curb Chinese and Russian influences to expand its own.
Bosnia aims to accommodate all influences to advance economically, and maintain its territory. Bosnia’s finance minister regards Chinese investments as vital to the Bosnian economy, especially projects having a positive internal rate-of-return. He predicts that Republika Srpska will leverage Russia as a political ally to secede from Bosnia and wishes to prevent this scenario. Serbia has mixed opinions regarding EU accession, with Dr Markovic perceiving Serbian governments as exploiting publicly imagined Russian-Serbian ties to discourage accession into the EU.
The mismatch of aims causes differing stances between all three parties to Russian and Chinese influence, further hindering common consensus and stances between balancing these influences with accession into the EU.
Written by Jay Sng