In the wake of Kosovo independence and the launch of the EU mission, Serbia’s relations with the EU have entered a very difficult period. The EU needs to consider carefully how to proceed. This Note contains a few suggestions to assist reflection.

The International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses events in the Middle East and the Balkans. The member of the European Parliament (LDS/ALDE/ADLE), member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the EP, and rapporteur of the EP for Serbia, Jelko Kacin, presents his view on the new challenges, which Serbia faces after the independence of Kosovo. His contribution, entitled »New Challenges for Serbia and for the EU in Serbia«, is here published in its entirety.

On 11th May next 6.7 million Serbs are being called to vote for the third time in sixteen months. On 21st January 2007, the Serbs elected parliament and on 3rd February this year they appointed the President of the Republic, outgoing Head of State Boris Tadic (Democratic Party, DS). Fourteen days after the election on 17th February Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence thereby creating a political crisis in Serbia, a country that is already suffering economic and social disruption.

During the week in which Kosovo declared independence, two important elections took place elsewhere, in Cyprus and Armenia. They attracted far less attention than did events in Kosovo, but they are also likely to influence Europe and its neighboring areas. Furthermore, there is some overlap between the issues raised in these election campaigns and Kosovo’s declaration of independence. While those supporting diplomatic recognition of Kosovar independence insist that it implies no precedent for international recognition of secessionism in other states, in practice concerns are being voiced in other regions about similar problems. Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Armenians, and Azeris are among those looking closely at events in Kosovo and their possible implications.

In the Balkans, the EU is deploying its largest ever European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mission, EULEX Kosovo complemented with the International Civilian Office (ICO), both EU-led. This is a test case for the EU in striving for a comprehensive approach to Security Sector Reform (SSR) and both the challenges and expectations for success are high. The EU is no longer a ‘new’ player in the region and has, through recent ESDP mission deployments and European Commission external actions, built up its capacity and experience in dealing with post-conflict scenarios. This article looks at the pivotal role the EU will play in Kosovo, and outlines the challenges facing the EU-led presence undertaking SSR implementation.

A month has passed since Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008. Much has gone well, but there is a real risk, as made most evident with the violence on 17 March around the courthouse in north Mitrovica, that partition will harden at the Ibar River in the north, and Kosovo will become another frozen conflict. To seek to prevent this, more countries must recognise and embrace the new state, the international missions (European Union and NATO) must be more proactive and coordinate their operations and, most importantly, it must be demonstrated to Serbia, supported by Russia, that it will not be permitted to break up the new state.

Kosovo’s independence declaration on 17 February 2008 sent shock waves through Serbia’s politics and society, polarising the former in a manner not seen since the Milosevic era. Rioting led to attacks on nine Western embassies, destruction of foreign property and massive looting. The government fell on 10 March, split over whether to pursue a nationalist or pro-Western path. Belgrade’s efforts to create a de facto partitioning of the north of Kosovo threaten the new state’s territorial integrity and challenge deployment of European Union (EU) missions there, and Serbian parliamentary and local elections on 11 May are unlikely to change the basic policy towards the new state, even in the unlikely event a pro-Western government comes to power. They may, however, well give Serbia’s nationalist parties new leverage.

Whilst the attitude of most Serbs and Serb politicians towards Kosovo’s independence may be relatively homogenous (according to the latest polls, 94% of Serbs are against Kosovo’s independence), we can identify four main trends within their reactions to Kosovo’s recent secession. The popular response to Kosovo’s declaration of independence has been characterised by a mixture of two dominant discourses; these may be broadly categorised as the emotional and the pragmatic. The former is vividly articulated by Vojislav Kostunica, and the latter by Boris Tadic. Although these are essentially contrasting discourses they occasionally overlap.. These two dominant discourses are supplemented by the minority rational discourse of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the more moderate, slightly more pragmatically-oriented discourse of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) – although this still contains a substantial emotional component.

To paraphrase Talleyrand, the invention and recognition of a “state” called Kosovo by the United States and Brussels in February was worse than gross ignorance, it was a mistake. Every Western political delusion since the end of the Cold War was at the root of the disaster, and, to make matters worse, those delusions have been shared by otherwise unlikely partners: the Clinton administration and George Bush, the usually anti-American Europeans, the “human rights” establishment and “progressive” media here and in Europe. A brief analysis makes it clear that there is and should not be a state named “Kosovo.”

La declaración unilateral de independencia de Kosovo es evidentemente contraria a la Constitución y a las leyes de Serbia, uno de los países miembros de las Naciones Unidas. Los Estados extranjeros que reconozcan dicha independencia no sólo habrán endosado una manifestación contraria a la ley doméstica y a la voluntad de un Estado miembro de las Naciones Unidas sino que, en consecuencia, habrán puesto gravemente en duda el respeto debido a ciertas normas básicas del Derecho Internacional.

Como ya sucedió durante el periodo del gobierno de Slovodan Milosevic y sus medidas represoras contra los habitantes de etnia albanesa en Kosovo, durante el conflicto de 1998-1999, finalizado por los bombardeos de la OTAN, y también durante las posteriores represalias albano-kosovares sobre los habitantes serbios de la provincia, las noticias relativas a la independencia de Kosovo han alentado la aparición de artículos en diversos medios de comunicación que "alertan" acerca del peligro que representa la supuesta infiltración de elementos radicales musulmanes en la sociedad albano-kosovar y la llegada de muyahidines que supuestamente ayudarían a sus hermanos musulmanes a luchar contra el enemigo "infiel" serbio en caso de un nuevo conflicto. Algunas paginas web han llegado incluso a definir al nuevo autodeclarado estado como el "primer bastión islamista en Europa" o a aseverar que "la mafia vinculada a Al Qaeda ha tomado el poder en Kosovo". El objetivo de este documento es presentar una imagen tan precisa como sea posible de la comunidad islámica en Kosovo, analizando la verisimilitud de las tesis anteriormente mencionadas, evaluando la penetración de ideas de inspiración salafí provenientes de Oriente Medio y la posibilidad de que el nuevo autodeclarado Kosovo pueda convertirse en una amenaza para la seguridad y estabilidad de la región y del conjunto de Europa debido a la infiltración de elementos ligados a las redes del terrorismo internacional.

Is there an ‘Albanian question’? If so, what is it? Is it a traditional ‘national question’, centred on redrawing territorial borders to form a new ethnic nation-state: a ‘Greater Albania’ that would gather in all the Albanian communities in the Balkans? Many outside observers, in particular among the Albanians’ neighbours in the Balkans, see it that way and fear its destabilising consequences. They would argue that the Albanians already have a nation-state ‘of their own’ in present-day Albania, and see the prospect of a second – if Kosovo eventually achieves independence – as only the first step towards the political unification of all Albanians, setting off a domino effect of secessions by the Albanians of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, followed by the Albanians of Montenegro and southern Serbia – thus provoking an unstoppable avalanche of similar demands by others, for example the Bosnian Serbs in Republika Srpska, the Hungarians in Serbian Vojvodina and Romania’s Transylvania and southern Slovakia, the Catalans and Basques, the Scots and Welsh…

Convened in an extraordinary meeting on February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, Answering the call of the people to build a society that honours human dignity and affirms the pride and purpose of its citizens, Committed to confront the painful legacy of the recent past in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness, Dedicated to protecting, promoting and honoring the diversity of our people,

Bad news never travels alone. Following the stalling of talks on the future of Kosovo, a political crisis has now gripped Bosnia. The country's central government has not met for more than five weeks and one of its main constituent parties threatens to leave it altogether. This would incapacitate the government and could touch off Bosnia's disintegration. The consequences would be dire, not only for the Balkans but also for Europe. Since the end of the 1992-1995 war, the European Union has provided billions of euros of aid, thousands of peacekeepers and the "office of the high representative" to restore unity to Bosnia and to set it on the path to EU membership. If the country fragments now, nobody will take EU foreign policy seriously.

The EU's inability to halt the Bosnian civil war of 1992-95 marked the nadir of its attempts to build an effective foreign policy. Eventually the Americans helped the Europeans stitch Bosnia back together, at the Dayton peace conference. Since then, billions of euros of aid, thousands of peacekeepers, and the UN/EU-backed 'office of the high representative' have brought peace and order to Bosnia. Recently, the high representative has tried to take a back seat, encouraging Bosnians to take their own decisions. But following the stalling of talks on the future of Kosovo, a new crisis has gripped Bosnia. If the country fragments, nobody will take EU foreign policy seriously.

Kosovo’s transition to the status of conditional, or supervised, independence has been greatly complicated by Russia’s firm support of Serbia’s refusal to accept that it has lost its one-time province. Recognition of conditional independence has broad international, and certainly European Union (EU) and American, support. Under threat of Moscow’s veto, the Security Council will not revoke its Resolution 1244 of 1999 that acknowledged Serbian sovereignty while setting up the UN Mission (UNMIK) to prepare Kosovo for self-government pending a political settlement on its future status. Nor will the Council be allowed to approve the plan for a conditionally independent Kosovo devised by the Secretary-General’s special representative, Martti Ahtisaari, earlier this year and authorise the EU-led missions meant to implement that plan.

The Kosovo issue has reached a state of impasse in the UN Security Council, with Russia having made it clear that it would veto any resolution recognising Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, unless Serbia would agree to this, which it will not -and indeed this is now made much more difficult by its newly revised constitution. And as long as Russia takes the lead with this blocking position, China is with them too. Neither is interested in Kosovo per se, but rather in their own domestic, regional and geopolitical interests.

Southern Serbia’s Albanian-majority Presevo Valley is one of the rare conflict resolution success stories in the former Yugoslavia. Outwardly, it is increasingly normal, with no major incidents in over three years. Yet, tensions linger: massive unemployment is still the single largest problem but the shadow of Kosovo’s future status darkens the political landscape. How Kosovo’s final status is determined in the next months will have a profound impact. If formal partition or large-scale violence accompanies independence, the peace could unravel; in a worst case scenario, ethnic cleansing in southern Serbia would be accompanied by significant, cross-boundary, two-way refugee flows. All parties – local Albanian politicians, the Serbian government and the international community – need to work with greater urgency on developing the region’s economy and ensuring that developments in Kosovo do not disrupt its peaceful progress.

Serbia, like its neighbours, went through tremendous t u rmoil and suffering during the bloody conflicts of the 1990s that accompanied and followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since the overthrow of its war- time president, the late Slobodan Milosevic, in 2000, Serbia has seen much pro g ress towards political stability and economic prosperity. A new, pro -European prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, seemed determined to root out the country’s powerful criminal establishment and more generally m o d e rnise his country. He was assassinated in M a rch 2003. Subsequent governments have shown much less enthusiasm for taking reforms forward. In the 2003 election, the ultra-nationalist Radical part y gained the single largest share of the vote but was kept out of power by an unstable minority government made up of four parties, most notably the centre-right Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

Albania, Macedonia and Croatia are entering a phase of defense restructuring that most Eastern European countries have already suspassed. A sufficient degree of stability has been established in the Western Balkans following the wars and domestic unrest of the 1990s, in which reform processes and potential disarmament was brought to a halt.

After Kosovo’s seven years as a U.N.-administered protectorate, the time has come to free its people from the deadweight of international trusteeship and determine its final status. U.N. Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari recently proposed to the U.N. Security Council that Kosovo become independent of Serbia. This proposal, which includes firm guarantees for the protection of Kosovo’s Serb minority, deserves the support of the Bush Administration, the European Union, and the NATO alliance. It promises to pave the way for the establishment of a fully democratic, and ultimately stable and prosperous, nation-state.

Serbia's current political weakness, coupled by France's more pro-U.S. stance resulting from Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential and legislative wins, offers Kosovo's nationalists a chance to obtain independence. On June 12, however, Belgrade declared that Serbia would annul every unilateral decision on Kosovo and called for the strict respect of international law. This means that Serbia will only accept a U.N. Security Council decision -- thus implicitly suggesting that Russia will have its say on the issue.

One would have thought that Serbia would have gotten the message by now — nobody wants to cohabit with Belgrade. One by one, all the former Yugoslav “sister” republics left Serbia to start a life on their own. The first to walk out on the Serbs were Slovenia and Croatia. They left as fast as they could from the clutches of the troubled Yugoslav federation on June 25, 1991. These two republics were quickly followed by Macedonia, which declared its independence and peeled away in September of the same year. It was followed by the secession of Bosnia-Herzegovina in March 1992. Next in line was Montenegro, the smallest republic of the Yugoslav federation — and now only Kosovo is left waiting in the wings, standing by to join the entire region to attain what Charles Kupchan calls a “degree of finality.”

International policy in Bosnia is in disarray, and a new engagement strategy is required. The present High Representative, whose performance in 2006 has been much criticised, announced on 23 January 2007 that he would leave by mid-year. The Peace Implementation Council (PIC), to whom he reports and which is responsible for guiding implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords, meets on 27 February to decide the way forward. The most immediate issues to be resolved are whether the Office of the High Representative (OHR), and the robust ‘Bonn powers’ available to it, should continue in their present form.

The European Union Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) represents a watershed development for the EU and its emerging European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Never before has the EU organised and managed this type of stabilisation programme. In some ways, the launching of EUPM defined a new stage in the evolution of the EU itself, and certainly of the ESDP. An examination of the implementation of the EUPM in 2003-06 and the current planning for an EU mission in Kosovo suggests that a process of institutional change and learning has occurred among EU and national officials. At the same time, it is apparent that significant improvements are still necessary in the coordination between and within EU pillars as they relate to ESDP operations. To that end, this study focuses on five important challenges revealed by EU field operations in BiH: mission mandates; personnel expertise, recruitment and training; program design, implementation and assessment; reporting and decisionmaking procedures and structures; and the functions of EU representatives in the field (EU Special Representatives, Commission Head of Missions and Member States). Lastly, it also suggests the means to materially improve EU crisis response, paying special attention to lessons learned during the first EUPM and from EU efforts to address organised crime in BiH.

The process of transition from authoritarian regime (communism in our part of the world) to democracy was a terrain we entered unprepared, and it could not be otherwise. We cannot understand completely present situation, which we are living in. Only a historic detachment can bring fuller understanding of the current epoch and events, which we witness. The most important breaking points of transition are often not recognized by their contemporaries (they are not present in common awareness). The showy emphasizing of discontinuity is often only a camouflage of continuity. Jadwiga Staniszkis does not entitled her key work „Post communism – the emerging enigma“ (1999) without a good reason.

There is growing concern that the short postponement UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari announced in November 2006 for presentation of his Kosovo final status proposals to take account of Serbia’s 21 January elections may not be the last delay in a process that now could extend into the second half of 2007. Nervous Kosovo Albanian leaders worry they may not be able to contain public pressures beyond March. With Russia’s position hardening and Serbia as obstinate as ever, EU unity is vital – but far from assured – to keep the status process on track, first in the small Contact Group that has managed Kosovo affairs since 1999, then in the Security Council where ultimate decisions should be made.

Significant progress has been made across the Balkans – both east and west – since the early 1990s. The improvements are remarkable yet there remains a substantial distance to cover. This is mainly due to the role of networks, the pervasive nature of informality, the kind of borders that cut across the countries and societies of Southeast Europe, and the still limited scope of regional co-operation.

It is crucial for the authorities in post-conflict societies to reform their military (and paramilitary), police, intelligence and border control forces, customs and judiciary to bring about lasting change. Without substantial reforms in these areas, it is almost impossible to achieve sustainable peace, democracy and development.

Seven years after Kosovo was placed under United Nations control, it appears increasingly likely that the province will be allowed to formally break away from Serbia and become an independent nation.

The people of Montenegro (pop. 620,000) on Sunday chose to break up their union with Serbia -all that was left of Yugoslavia- and give birth to the Continent's 24th and 25th new nation-states since the end of the Cold War. As long as these decisions are freely, peacefully and constitutionally made, we say the more the merrier.

As European Union and U.S. diplomats this week shepherded talks on a permanent status for Kosovo, the Serbian province where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went to war in 1999, there was little doubt about the final outcome: independence.

Democratically elected governments are installed in every one of the western Balkan countries—Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Albania. Some, notably Bosnia and Herzegovina, have managed to return significant numbers of refugees to their homes. All aspire to join the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).