Читать книгу A Citizen’s Guide to the Rule of Law - Kalypso Nicolaidis - Страница 12

Yugoslavia’s violent disintegration began in the early 1990s, when a number of wars among the former republics of the socialist confederation broke out. They would last for more than a decade and be fought with a brutality few had thought possible on the European continent after the experiences of the Second World War. The EU and its institutional predecessor, the EC, proved unable to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, and the self-proclaimed “hour of Europe” as an international actor turned out to be an empty phrase.1

When the Yugoslav wars eventually subsided, the EU offered a “membership perspective” to the successor states of the former Yugoslavia as well as Albania, which had not been part of Yugoslavia, as it had done with Central and Eastern Europe states (CEE) after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Today, Croatia and Slovenia are full-fledged EU member states, while the remaining countries—Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania—are still engaged in the so-called accession process. These countries are usually referred to as the “Western Balkans” or the “Western Balkans six”. It’s somewhat of a cumbersome, political term that desperately avoids any kind of connection with the Yugoslav past, but it has become the norm, so we shall use it as well. Why complicate matters more than necessary, right? But we shall also throw Turkey in the mix occasionally, for what we are saying matters there as well.

To become full members, these six states (and Turkey) have to fulfil a set of conditions—known as “membership criteria” or the “Copenhagen criteria”. They have to align their legal, political, and economic systems to the bulk of EU legislation that already exists, the so-called acquis communautaire. Basically, the EU’s rulebook. If a country wants to join, none of its laws and rules may contradict what’s in the rulebook, the acquis. Accession is thus basically an exercise in reforming existing rules and laws to fit the EU’s standards. This is actually quite a one-sided process, as the EU sets the rules and the candidate countries have to follow. Some would say that’s unfair, and it indeed is; but we shall come to that in a moment.2

As part of the accession process, EU negotiators have also sought to establish what they have called the “rule of law” in the accession countries. Yet, it has not really worked, despite their best efforts. Rule of law “reforms”—if one may so call the at times rather small legal changes to which the domestic political elites agree—are moving slowly, and at times hardly at all. Young people are leaving the region by the tens of thousands; economic prosperity is nowhere to be seen, while the political and legal systems seem inadequate to cater to what citizens deem important. That’s not just a feeling propagated by opposition politicians and civil society actors critical of Western Balkans governments. It’s a fact.3 Many of the former or current accession countries still struggle with serious rule of law challenges. The judiciaries are not independent and don’t deliver swift and fair justice. The policemen are corrupt, not to speak of the politicians who exploit state resources for their own benefit.4 In general, more than two decades after the EU’s rule of law engagement in the region began, these countries are quite far away from the ideal the EU has been promoting in the guise of “liberal democratic regimes”, the ultimate goal of accession.

In other words: the EU’s rule of law promotion has a serious problem. It lacks efficacy and sustainability, due in part to flawed understandings among at least some of those who are expected to promote it.

Yet, without sounding too grand, it is fair to say that the rule of law is especially crucial in this region whose stability depends on it. But why?