[ Western Balkans and EU ]

Last week, the Commission published progress reports on the EU integration process of Kosovo and the potential candidate countries Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia. All of these reports listed the "usual" shortcomings: corruption, weak judiciary, slow political reforms, weak civil society ... (cf. BIRN and an EU Commission press release).

Serbia has finalised the negotiations for a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), which were resumed in June 2007 after a break of more than a year. But as "Serbia has not yet achieved full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)", an SAA cannot be signed yet, says the EU progress report on Serbia (pdf).

Nevertheless, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn "initialled" a SAA with Serbia on 7 November (cf. Euractiv). Initialling is less than signing (it is not binding in international law), but still means a strong positive sign for Serbia, which - according to the Commission - has made progress in co-operating with the ICTY. Human Rights Watch warns against speaking about "progress in co-operating with the ICTY", as long as Ratko Mladic is still hiding in Serbia (with the help of the Serbian governement, says HRW).

And if co-operation with the ICTY also entails dealing with war crimes at home, the record of the Serbian government is not that good, either: The EU Commission's progress report reads:

"Overall, progress has been made on civil and political rights. The new constitution contains provisions in this area, however implementation and enforcement needs to be developed in order to improve the overall climate in which civil and political rights can be exercised. (...) There have been cases of public denigration and attacks against NGO activists dealing with sensitive issues, in particular war crimes and the fight against organised crime. The perpetrators have not been brought to justice."

Gerald Knaus (European Stability Initiative) elaborates on the situation of journalists, civil society and human rights activists in Serbia in a very critical and thoughtful posting on his new blog.

Moreover, if Serbia, then why not Bosnia-Herzegovina? SAA negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina began in 2005 and were completed in December 2006. The conclusion of the SAA depends on Bosnia and Herzegovina meeting four conditions: achievement of police reform, full co-operation with the ICTY, public broadcasting reform, and public administration reform.

In a recent position paper, the European Stability Initiative criticises the EU's refusal to sign a SAA with Bosnia-Herzegovina after the failure of the police reform, although, according to ESI, Bosnia-Herzegovina "has made significantly more progress than many of its neighbours, including Serbia" in the field of policing. As a result Bosnia-Herzegovina is "left behind" the candidate countries Croatia, Turkey, Macedonia, but also behind Albania (SAA signed on 12 June 2006), Montenegro (SAA signed on 15 October 2007) and Serbia (SAA initialled on 7 November 2007)... which might be dangerous, argues ESI (cf. also the BIRN article "Bosnia Faces Turmoil").