Bosnia and the EU: Twenty Years On

04 Apr 2012

James Kilcourse

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Bosnian war, which left one hundred thousand people dead and over two million displaced by the time it was brought to an end in 1995. In February 2012, the new Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vjekoslav Bevanda, announced his government’s objective of applying for membership of the EU this year. This marks a significant shift away from the deadlock that dominated Bosnian politics for over a year after an inconclusive election in October 2010. However, twenty years after the country erupted into war, international opinion is divided on whether or not Bosnia has really returned to the path of European integration.

Lord Paddy Ashdown, the international High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006, is the most vocal critic of recent developments in Bosnia and the EU’s engagement with the country. In a speech to the Oireachtas Committees on EU Affairs and Foreign Affairs and Trade in January 2012, he warned that the dynamic of peace in Bosnia is being severely undermined, putting the stability of the entire region at risk. According to Lord Ashdown, international policy has done little to prevent the reversal of early achievements in Bosnia. The EU, in particular, has not been effective in applying conditionality, isolating nationalists and taking advantage of the linkages in the Balkan region. He reiterated this warning in the Financial Times on 23 March 2012: ‘“The policy of the international community in the past few years has been utterly disastrous,” he says. “Europe absentmindedly finds itself being the instrument for the realisation of the plans of Karadzic. And if you let the Serbs get away with returning to the past, the Bosniaks will start to do the same, and so will the Croats”.’

Representing a more optimistic view of Bosnia’s prospects, Peter Sørensen, who was appointed EU Special Representative and Head of EU Delegation in Bosnia in September 2011, presented his opinion on recent developments in the country to the IIEA on 27 March 2012. He argued that Bosnia’s political leadership has made significant progress in the country’s EU integration efforts since they succeeded in overcoming their differences and forming a government in December 2011. More importantly, he said, the agreement reached between the country’s political parties in December was due entirely to the efforts of Bosnian politicians. He maintains that the pull of the EU served as an incentive to Bosnia’s leaders to cooperate, negotiate and reach a compromise. This pull factor was reinforced by the recent progress in the accession processes of Bosnia’s neighbours in the Balkans: ‘when the region moves, Bosnia moves’. He noted that Bosnia’s political leaders often seem strongly nationalistic and uncompromising to outside observers. This, however, is merely rhetoric, which conceals the fact that real political debate is taking place in the country. This layer of rhetoric will take some time to disappear, as memories of the war remain fresh, but Ambassador Sørensen argues that, behind the overt ethno-nationalism, progress is being made towards EU and NATO membership.

While political agreement has been achieved in recent months and significant effort has been made to introduce necessary reforms, the scale of problems facing Bosnia is substantial. The country has an official unemployment rate of 43% and its economy remains heavily dependent on remittances and foreign aid. Foreign investment last year reached its lowest since 2000. This was due to the political stalemate that prevented the formation of a government, the global financial crisis and the high level of corruption that continues to hinder Bosnia’s economic development. Moreover, the partition of the country into two political entities has resulted in two jurisdictions with separate markets, an issue that Bosnia will have to deal with if EU membership is to be a realistic prospect. The new coalition government does not seem to be lacking in ambition, but the contradictory views of Lord Ashdown and Ambassador Sørensen suggest that, on the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Bosnian war, it is still too early to predict with certainty the future trajectory of the country.

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