The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement: The Complex Accession of the Western Balkans [1st ed.] 9783030422943, 9783030422950

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxiv
Europe from East to West, from South to North: Harmonization in Turbulent Times (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 1-21
Dimensions and Contradictions of the European Integration: Deepening Versus Widening (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 23-48
New Axes of Integration and the Constitution of the European Polity and Society (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 49-69
European Integration on the Field: Framing the Western Balkans (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 71-88
Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European Commission Reports on the Western Balkan Countries in a Longitudinal Perspective 2008–2019 (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 89-173
Narrating the Process of Enlargement and Accession: European Union Versus Western Balkans (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 175-222
Conclusions: The Paradox of the European Integration (Tatjana Sekulić)....Pages 223-231
Back Matter ....Pages 233-240

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement The Complex Accession of the Western Balkans

Tatjana Sekulić

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

Series Editors Carlo Ruzza School of International Studies University of Trento Trento, Italy Hans-Jörg Trenz Department of Media, Cognition & Communication University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also about changing power relations as they affect people’s lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national, European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties and solidarity within and across the European space. We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and democratization. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14630

Tatjana Sekulić

The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement The Complex Accession of the Western Balkans

Tatjana Sekulić Department of Sociology and Social Research University of Milan Bicocca Milan, Italy

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ISBN 978-3-030-42294-3    ISBN 978-3-030-42295-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Bokica / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

In the first days of January 2019, we leave Sarajevo, gliding on the ice and the snow that had fallen in the previous days. Temperatures are extremely low, minus ten degrees. Before that, there was the struggle of conducting the last round of interviews and collecting research documents during the holiday breaks. The thirty kilometres of highway towards Zenica illuminate the horizon of progress, foreshadowing the idea that Bosnia and Herzegovina could become a state where mobility is possible in safety and speed. The highway ends in front of the blast furnaces of the Zenica steel mill, amid the reddish air that covers the landscape of an otherwise uniquely beautiful valley. From Zenica, the road narrows into only two lanes, which makes overtaking a car or truck a life-threatening manoeuvre. The road leads to Nemila, a small town along the river Bosna the name of which literally means ‘undear’, where for some years now there have been stalls and delays due to damage on the road caused by floods, landslides or who knows what else. The crossing of the first administrative but also political border in Bosnia and Herzegovina is marked by only one sign welcoming passengers to the Republic of Srpska in the Cyrillic alphabet (the expression is identical in all three national languages—Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) and in English. For part of our journey we are accompanied by sights of mined houses in roadside

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villages, only a small number of which were restored within the twentyfour years of the Dayton Agreement marking the end of the open war conflicts. After Doboj now, a new section of the highway much more comfortably leads to the border with Croatia and, since July 2013, with the European Union. Yet we continue in the usual direction towards the border between the two ships—Bosanski Brod and Slavonski Brod (brod means ship), across Sava River. Its waters originate in Slovenia, flow through Croatia and Bosnia and finally through Serbia to meet the Danube in Belgrade. Along the way, we stop for an Illy coffee at the Nada (hope) gas station, where we are already friends with the staff. Entry into the European Union this time is not so difficult—twenty minutes waiting in Nemila and another forty at the border with Croatia. It then takes us four full hours to cross the seven kilometres that separate us from the Schengen border between Croatia and Slovenia. Hundreds of motorists are honking simultaneously as they approach the toll booth four hundred metres ahead of the border, the primary purpose of which is to control the influx of cars avoiding thus heavy congestion in front of the ‘fortress’ gate. Croatia is once again the bulwark of civilization, while people— probably mostly from the ‘diaspora’—flock back to their Western European homes after the holidays. Slovenia also has double border checks, with restrictive policies of the European institutions related to the ‘migrant crisis’, especially since the opening of the Balkan Route in 2015, pressuring both countries. At last, Europe: at the border with Italy, they just check the vignette that Slovenia required us to pay in order to drive on the highway. This brief ethnographic reportage illustrates how the contingent redefinition of boundaries of different character directly and indirectly determines the everyday life of citizens, whether they are nationals of EU member states or residents of the accession countries. Free movement, as one of the founding principles upon which the community of European states is founded, is called into question under the pressure of European and national securitization policies, for which the pretext of a ‘migrant crisis’ and its direct association with Islamic-inspired terrorism provides a very convenient framework. In addition to this, the old bilateral disputes between countries—in this particular case between Slovenia and Croatia—are being reactivated in informal and non-transparent ways.

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The ethnographic experience of crossing the border between Italy and the countries of former Yugoslavia from 1990 to present day is a research topic in itself, uniquely relevant precisely to the analysis of the accession process of these countries into the European Union. As far back as the 1980s, this border divided democratic and communist Europe, the world of capitalism and the world of socialism; it was the vestibule of the Iron Curtain, but also a source of inspiration for generations of West European leftists dreaming about socialism ‘with a human face’, as the self-­governing Yugoslav model was often defined. As the red YU passport lost its relevance in the early 1990s and at times became subject to hiding when crossing borders, and eventually ceased to apply, so did the collective identity of the citizens of the Yugoslav federal units under the pressure of rampant political and military violence. In the 1990s, some of these borders became insurmountable for ‘wrong’ passports, as military and paramilitary violence drew new barriers on the ground within the internationally recognized frontiers of the newly created states, and those escaped and expelled, as well as those who could not or did not want to leave their homes, sought ways to survive. Entire parts of the territory remained inaccessible due to military operations for many years. The policies implemented by ethno-national elites were intended to disrupt communication channels between states, groups and citizens/individuals, through the destruction of infrastructures—telephone lines, roads, railways, air transport, shared industrial facilities, schools and universities, as well as through redefining both the status of individuals as determined by the new citizenship, and new relationships of closeness and (mis)trust among people and peoples. The key word of today’s policies of association with the European Union is precisely connectivity, which has inspired the efforts of a group of European countries to support the development of the so-called Western Balkan (WB) region within the Berlin Process since 2014. The new statuses and documents of the citizens of these states from 2000 onwards began to take on new meanings, increasingly in relation to the position of individual countries in the European integration process, after the ‘European perspective’ of the eastern and south-eastern parts of the continent became defined with relative clarity. ‘Novelty’ here is a basic concept that is to be taken into account in almost every respect when it

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comes to the complementary processes of deepening and widening the EU. Novelty is about the profound transformation of the countries and societies of East and Southeast Europe, but above all of the European Union itself, which only in the 1990s actually emerged as something that should grow into a supra- and transnational unit—a structure/institution whose character is to this day still insufficiently defined. Here we are talking about a tension between two processes: on the one side, the enlargement of the European Union; on the other, the deepening of integration structures and their institutionalization. Both processes include what could be called mindset, or mentality, which cannot be nationally standardized given the implicit differentiation of worldviews related primarily to class, gender, age, religion, ethnicity and other elements of belonging and identity. We are also talking here about the temporal component, that is, the changes that occur in and over time, which require as much time as necessary, and whose dynamics cannot be linear but are instead exposed to an almost unfathomable and immeasurable series of events and acts/ actions within the growing complexity of a globalized society. The principle of conditionality, as the basis of the enlargement policy whose implementation is entrusted primarily to the European Commission, was conceived precisely as the fundamental leading and controlling institution which should ‘order’ the process of transformation of new states and societies aspiring for an EU membership. Conditionality is based on relatively explicit criteria for standardization and harmonization defined by Acquis Communautaire, which in principle apply to all member states’ societies, with the aim of reducing as much as possible the influence of exogenous factors (geopolitical and others) by establishing equivalent and complementary structures and institutions in various societies. This would deepen the integration linkages of the ‘community of fate’ of the united European continent, which seems to be yet so hard to imagine. For the countries of former Yugoslavia and Albania, the process of accession can be considered to have actually begun with the Zagreb Summit in November 2000. The Thessaloniki Declaration of June 2003 gave the process an institutional framework and set out in principle the instruments and rules under which the process would play out over the coming years: the European Commission presented so-called Road Map of the accession process for the Western Balkans. The subsequent enlargement of the European Union was seriously jeopardized after the 2004

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ix

and 2007 accession, which almost doubled the number of members taking it from fifteen to twenty-seven. It certainly shook the previous equilibria of individual national interests of the core member states and required, above all, a huge institutional and structural effort to reorganize the existing field of action of the Union itself. The effort of this fifth wave of enlargement, colloquially referred to as the Big Bang, required that each subsequent step towards the accession of new members pass a far greater check on each institutional barrier, which the already existing conditionality principle coherently made possible. If we can accept that this was necessary to stabilize and re-assert the new identity of the European Union after such a major and historically important event at the global level, at the same time, the survival of the idea of unification is of invaluable significance for the Union itself. It means inevitably taking responsibility for the already launched accession initiatives both in candidate countries and in those whose candidacy is still in question. The character of the enlargement/accession process is such that it cannot be stopped, or reversed, without very serious repercussions both for aspirant countries or countries seeking to withdraw their membership, and for the European Union itself. Brexit is the first experience for which there is still no adequate term contrary to the term enlargement. In any case, this concerns the guaranteed freedom of each member state to leave the Union, while there is no instrument for the other member states to make such decisions conditional. The procedural rules, but also the sanctioning of such a decision, are just being written in the case of the United Kingdom. The unanimity principle is sought when it comes to the accession of new member states and only after the European Commission has assessed that all the conditions for accession have been fulfilled. Countries starting from a very low level of development, especially related to the economic dimension, but also to the political and social ones, as is the case with the Western Balkans 6 countries must make a far greater effort to reach the minimum standard levels while at the same time disposing of far lower resources. The same could be said for Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, and to some extent Slovenia and Hungary. The political, economic and social resources that these countries can count on in the accession process are almost entirely directed toward fulfilling the conditions imposed by the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), though the real priorities of these societies may be others. The constant

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dissatisfaction of the European Commission evaluators produces many negative effects in the process itself. “There is no clear message”, said one of my interlocutors from the Kosovo Embassy in Brussels. And this is part of the paradox of enlargement—the principled openness of the Union (Community) to encompass ALL countries and citizens of Europe as a continent, in contrast with the empirical reality and practical capabilities of these countries to undertake enormous reforms in too short a time  for a major change to occur in the mindset of the political, economic and other social actors who are expected to bring about these changes. Enlargement as merely a principled perspective without accession, or with accession as its permanently delayed end result, does not make enough sense. It creates the conditions for the emergence of new risky situations, leaving behind those sectors of society that could be characterized as ‘progressive’, ‘enlightened’, convinced Europeists, whose actions are based on belief in the correctness of Copenhagen principles and criteria. It creates a situation which favours further deterioration of political and socio-economic relations between individuals and groups. It also provokes the departure of young people, educated and cheap EU workforce, thus draining societies in the accession process. The paradox manifests itself in the fact that the process does not presuppose an alternative to association as the ultimate goal, while conditioning it not only by insisting on standards and harmonization but especially by political will, which is not the will of European transnational institutions nor the abstract will of EU member states; it is the will of the contingent victorious political structures of nation-states within the European Union. Enlargement is a project of the Union, and before that of the Community, a project related to the idea of unifying the European continent and its societies. The weakening of the incentives to super- and transnationalize certain institutions and their competences, alongside the lack of creation and construction of new common/unique European institutions, deepening the integrative bonds, not only calls into question the widening process but directly disrupts it at its very foundations. The credibility of the institutions of the European Union is based precisely on its ability to specifically and substantially support aspirant countries with poor starting positions to reach a common quality of life threshold, which can be called European, in all fundamental sectors. The principle of

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solidarity—that is building the solid ties of togetherness based on a common interest in peace, prosperity, security, respect and recognition of the rights and freedoms of individuals and groups on every basis—contradicts here the neoliberal principle of competition between falsely equal actors, upon which European institutions’ policies have been predicated for a long time, since the 1980s. This concerns not only the European Commission but also the Parliament as well as the Council, since this principle essentially determines the political organization of the EU member states. This was clearly demonstrated in the wake of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, with the disastrous social consequences of a forced austerity policy, especially in Greece. The principle of competition is defeating for the ‘Western Balkan’ countries, which continue to face the long-lasting consequences of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, such as the forced demographic redistribution of peoples and groups, but also of wealth, within the imposed borders of the new states, the open issues of recognition of the rights and freedoms of groups and individuals, the assumption of political responsibility for the war crimes of the 1990s, and much more. By insisting on competition, the nationalist positions of the dominant groups are strengthened, the borders in the region become stronger rather than weaker, and the fear and dissatisfaction of minority groups within national majorities grow. That is the case in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania. But it becomes ever more the condition of many other Western and Eastern European societies, where the populist and nationalist political forces have been growing in size and strength. Did we learn something from the disaster of the Yugoslav wars? This book is a reflection on a long travel initiated in 1989, passing above, below and through the borders and barriers, physical, geopolitical and institutional, as a witness and participant in a new great transformation of the European polity and societies—with a curious gaze of an ethnographer and a strong belief that a better, alternative Europe is possible. Milan, Italy

Tatjana Sekulić

Acknowledgements

The twelve-year research and the writing of this book would not be possible without the participation and support of my family, friends and colleagues, and many other significant encounters. One of these was with scholars related to the European  Sociological  Association  Research Network 32—Political Sociology, and to the European  Consortium for  Political  Research, Standing group for Political Sociology, where I finally felt at home concerning the way of conceiving Europe sociologically. Carlo Ruzza and Hans-Jörg Trenz gave the book project their support from the beginning, and my gratitude goes firstly to their constant inspiration and reflections on the EU. I found the research by, and dialogue with, Virginie Guiraudon, Niilo Kauppi, David Swartz, Virginie Van Ingelgom, Oscar Mazzoleni, Cristina Marchetti and Alberta Giorgi extremely stimulating, as well as that of many young scholars who took part in the work of the networks over the past few years. Sharla Plant and Poppy Hull followed the production of the manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan and helped to create the final version with constancy and kindness. Many thanks to Fabio de Nardis, editor-in-chief of Participazione e conflitto (PACO), and to Valida Repovac-Nikšić and Sanela Čekić-­ Bašić, editors-in-chief of Sarajevo Social Science Review (SSSR), for allowing the reuse of two articles whose previous versions were published in 2016.1 xiii

xiv Acknowledgements

Analysis of the empirical documentation collected over a twelve-year time span would have been incomplete without constant dialogue with Federico Giulio Sicurella, who introduced me to Critical Discourse Studies. The adventure of exploring the European Union and its borders and boundaries started some time ago together with Marina Calloni and Elena Dell’Agnese within the PRIN projects (Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale) 2009 and 2011. Lavinia Bifulco and Sara Trovato never let me forget the importance of writing this book. I am grateful to Roberto Moscati, Ota de Leonardis, Cinzia Meraviglia, Giovanni Picker, Giovanna Fullin and Ilenya Camozzi for being my friends and sociologists from whom I continue to learn a lot. Marco Vinante helped to construct the statistics, while Arianna Piacentini gave me precious last minute feedback regarding initial chapters of the book. I am grateful also to Hoda Dedić for her support of my field research in Brussels in 2018. I would like to give special thanks to officials of the European Commission with the seats based in Brussels, at DG Enlargement (2010) and DG NEAR (2018), and with the seats in the Western Balkan capitals at Delegations of the EU, for their agreement to organize our conversations. All the diplomatic institutions of the WB countries in Brussels, without exception, welcomed my request for interviews. The same can be said for all governmental and non-governmental institutions that were involved in the research. So, many thanks to all of my interviewees for allowing me to learn much about today’s Europe. The book was written in English, improved after the interventions of Patricia Hampton. The only exception is the Foreword, the first version of which was written in my native Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian and then translated by Federico Giulio Sicurella and refined by Hana Žerić. Amar Hadžihasanović reviewed the ‘Conclusions’ chapter in real time, just before the editor’s deadline for submission. Not many people can count on such family support and expertise, as Hana is my nephew and Amar is my son. This work was constantly sustained by my father, the philosopher Gajo Sekulić, an inexhaustible source of ideas, criticism and bibliographic references, and by other dear members of my family. Enormous energy came with my grandson Vivian, who gave us a new sense of being European.

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Finally, this book, which took up so much of our life and time, is dedicated to my husband, my fellow traveller, Amer Hadžihasanović.

Note 1. Sekulić T. “Constituting the social basis of the EU. Reflections from the European margins”, Partecipazione e conflitto, 9(2) 2016, 691–716; Sekulić T., “Harmonization in Turbulent Times. Western Balkans’ Accession to the European Union”, Sarajevo Social Science Review, Vol. 5, n.1–2/2016, 91–110.

Contents

1 Europe from East to West, from South to North: Harmonization in Turbulent Times  1 2 Dimensions and Contradictions of the European Integration: Deepening Versus Widening 23 3 New Axes of Integration and the Constitution of the European Polity and Society 49 4 European Integration on the Field: Framing the Western Balkans 71 5 Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European Commission Reports on the Western Balkan Countries in a Longitudinal Perspective 2008–2019 89

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6 Narrating the Process of Enlargement and Accession: European Union Versus Western Balkans175 7 Conclusions: The Paradox of the European Integration223 Index233

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Further enlargement of the EU (% of positive answers, Eurobarometer Standard 71.3, 82.3, 91.5) Fig. 2.2 Thirty-five chapters of Acquis Communautaire. EU15 was the number of member countries in the European Union prior to the accession of ten candidate countries on 1 May 2004. The EU15 comprised the following 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms, https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=6805 Fig. 2.3 Trust in the EU institutions (% of ‘tend to trust’ answers— Eurobarometer Standard 71.3, 82.3, 91.5) Fig. 5.1 Index of shortcomings

26

32 34 156

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List of Tables

Table 5.1 Croatia: economic, demographic and social indicators 107 Table 5.2 FYROM/North Macedonia: economic, demographic and social indicators 110 Table 5.3 Montenegro: economic, demographic and social indicators 113 Table 5.4 Serbia: economic, demographic and social indicators 115 Table 5.5 Albania: economic, demographic and social indicators 118 Table 5.6 Bosnia and Herzegovina: economic, demographic and social indicators121 Table 5.7 Kosovo: economic, demographic and social indicators 124 Table 6.1 Outline of topoi identified in ‘European’ and ‘national’ agency in 2009/2010 and in 2018/2019 207 Table 6.2 Outline of the types of enlargement and accession discourses 211

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Introduction

The main aim of this book is to shed light on the contradictions underlying the EU enlargement process, challenging the common assumption that the integration of an extended European space might be possible without mutual transformation of the institutions and agencies involved. The paradox that I will try to identify and explain here lies precisely in the dominant approach, which argues that the EU can enlarge by transforming the new arrivals only, without changing the whole. Conversely, the enlargement process affects the European Union as such (and its member states), which, on each new occasion, has to learn how to welcome new members and adapt its own institutions and narratives to the new situation. EU politics and EU enlargement policies are understood here as constitutive elements of complex integration dialectics, within which Europeanization acquires a plurality of meanings, being regarded at one and the same time as an institutional building process based on the principle of harmonization with common laws and standards, as a project of empowering social actors as carriers of individual rights and liberties and as a way of imagining the emergence of a transnational society (Trenz 2016: xviii). After the accession of the ten new member states in 2004, and of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, the following stage of enlargement fatigue had become a sort of stumbling block for future integration of the continent, with serious consequences for other accession countries with xxiii

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candidate status and potential candidates for the membership (Szołucha 2010; Elbasani 2013). Moreover, the significant effort involved in bringing ten new Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) members into the European Union was followed by the onset of the so-called Eurocrisis in 2008 with its manifold implications, which negatively affected the deepening efforts of European integration to build more stable and effective supra- and transnational institutions. In the literature on the EU accession process in CEE and the Western Balkans (WB), the basic conditionality principle of enlargement is conceived mostly in terms of a transfer of cognitive, structural and institutional patterns and practices from West and North to East and South, from the centre to its multiple peripheries (Dallara 2014; Elbasani 2013). This view is problematic insofar as it construes the EU accession process as a unidirectional process of harmonization with EU principles and norms, thus uncritically reducing the notion of Europeanization to its normative and procedural (and thus coercive) dimension, equating it with the implementation of ‘best practice’ packages by the aspirant countries. Contrary to this view, the translation of the policy as such (and of specific policies regarding all segments of the society) has been shown to be unpredictable and contingent, so that its adaptation requires constant re-­contextualization, taking into account asymmetrical power relations (Shore and Wright 1997). The dialectics of the process itself, that is the communication practices and interpretative subjectivities of the actors involved, are often obfuscated by the formal language used in reports, strategic documents and political briefings. At the same time, there is a lack of knowledge about the substantial democratization of the accession countries’ societies and about Europeanization as the socialization of citizens into the liberal democratic political culture. Exploring the way in which the process of enlargement has been conducted can shed light on those patterns and practices revealed to be insufficient for bringing the EU to the new, supranational and transnational stage, diagnosed in terms of its inner ‘democratic deficit’ (Habermas 2012). Building on these insights, the book seeks to investigate the interrelation between the ongoing crisis of the European integration project and the patterns and effects of its transformative democratizing power towards accession states. The specific case study that frames the field of the research

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focuses on the European space-set of the ‘Western Balkan’ countries in their different positioning within the EU accession process. These countries—Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania—are seen here not only as geopolitical entities or national states but also as deeply troubled post-conflict societies which share peculiar bonds with a common Yugoslav past and the experience of a brutal post-­communist transition to capitalism and liberal democracy. The conflicts affecting WB states and societies revolve around several as yet unresolved issues concerning, among other things, weak statehood and economy, internal and external borders and boundaries both between states and groupings, and dynamics of reconciliation based on acceptance of political (and criminal) responsibility for the violence and atrocities committed during the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s. A comprehensive inquiry into the democratization and integration of this part of Europe into the EU should take into account this double legacy of the past—the communist and the ethno-nationalist—and its effects on the accession process. Although EU institutions are deeply committed to current candidate and potential candidate countries, the prolonged stalemate of the procedures has had serious repercussions on all the actors involved. Many of the problems currently faced by Western Balkan societies may be understood both as similar and connected to the constitution of a supranational and transnational European Union. In fact, ethnic-based nationalism and populism, the tension between nationhood and citizenship in terms of political representation and the difficulty of negotiating the political subject of sovereignty (state/s, nation/s, demos/demoi) were key political factors in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Their consequences still affect and afflict the process of rebuilding institutions in the new independent states, causing a kind of sluggishness in the advancement of the accession procedures. At the same time, the EU is grappling with serious issues stemming from the populist turn in the political discourse of many old and new member states, centrifugal nationalisms, the normalization of neo-fascist political groups and elites and the reluctance of the new member states to follow the common decisions of the EU institutions (as in the case of Višegrad group of states), which has been exacerbated by the ‘migrant’ or ‘refugee’ crisis.

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However, it seems that there is a kind of communicational difficulty and mutual misunderstanding among these different European space-sets to recognize not only divergences but also convergences related to the current crisis. A kind of residual dimension of integration, both within the EU and regarding the WB countries, something ‘lost in Europeanization’, seems to escape the attention of the actors and institutions involved, reducing a ‘credible accession perspective’ as the most powerful device of transformation (Noutcheva and Aydin-Düzgit 2012). Starting from these premises, and considering the current situation of the Western Balkan countries within the framework of the association and integration process, the project addresses the following questions: • How does the institutional process of accession of the Western Balkan countries unfold at the local, national and European levels? • What kind of informal narratives emerge from the actors institutionally involved in the practice-bound networks of the enlargement process and to what extent do they challenge official EU discourses? • What has been the impact of the policy of conditionality in terms of democratic consolidation and the substantial empowerment of the citizens of the WB countries? • In what ways has the EU transformed as a result of its efforts towards the Europeanization of the aspirant states and societies? • How can the mutual relationship between the EU’s transformative power towards the WB countries and its own capacity for reform be re-thought in the light of these new insights? The inquiry sets out to understand the way in which the ‘transformative power of Europe’ acts as a circular instead of a unidirectional force (Dallara 2014; Elbasani 2013; Kochenov 2010; Sadurski 2012). ‘Policy translation’ is seen here not only as the transfer of knowledge to be implemented by imposing prescribed meanings onto the receiving context. On the contrary, analysis of the accession process will take into consideration the interpretative subjectivities of the actors, that is their capacity to give new meaning to any single policy proposal. Moreover, the re-contextualization and re-interpretation negotiated among actors involved in the

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process cannot be explored in isolation, without taking into account the broader political context of the European space. In that sense, the book aims not only to question the capacity and accountability of EU institutions to maintain their commitment towards the accession countries, analysis of the enlargement/accession dynamics may also help to reveal the inner contradictions of the European political order and its legitimation crisis (Guiraudon et  al. 2015) in times of ‘great regression’ (Geiselberger 2017). The research combined theoretical and empirical analysis of the European integration and enlargement process in its normative and in its practical dimension. The formation of the politics of enlargement and its principles and practices were investigated in a historical-contextual approach, considering how the patterns of Western European enlargement and integration changed after the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The perspective of European ‘reunification’ across the Iron Curtain worked as a powerful incentive for defining basic principles of the EU foundation as laid out in the Copenhagen and Madrid criteria and finally for signing the Treaty of Lisbon in late 2007 (Sadurski 2012). At the same time, the dynamics of political, socio-economic and cultural transformation of the post-communist countries triggered by the collapse of the regimes in 1989 was strongly affected by the prospect of accession, which acted as a core factor of the geopolitical re-ordering of Europe. However, the widening of the EU towards the CEE brought huge structural and institutional challenges and the legitimation of its political authority demanded increasing efforts to reinforce it, long before the economic and financial crisis of 2008. Eurosceptic voices contesting its legitimacy became louder with the crisis, changing the ‘silent dissensus’ towards the EU into open disagreement. Yet, it was the widespread indifference towards many aspects of the EU that would dominate the public opinion of the member states, as shown by Van Ingelgom (2014), with the exception of an increasingly negative attitude towards further enlargement (Sekulić 2016). The re-definition of the liminal zones of the Union, and of the new politics of association with the ‘uncomfortable’ aspirant countries such as Turkey, the WB countries and more recently Ukraine, has thus became of crucial importance.

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Research Design The conceptualization of the field created several methodological problems, as what was to be examined, that is the interplay of EU integration and accession processes from an actor-oriented and situated approach, was ‘essentially in motion’ (Smith 2006: 2). Moreover, as these processes unfolded in a multitude of different sites (Burawoy et al. 2000; Hannerz 2003), in which diverse and multiple problems were constantly emerging (Vidali 2013), the reduction of the field’s complexity and the decisions about methods, data-gathering and analysis required significant attention. My extensive practical and scientific experience of crossing physical, institutional and symbolic borders and barriers regarding the specific European space-sets considered in this research made the challenge of developing a viable ethnographic approach to these transformations crucial. How could the various institutions involved in the enlargement process be made ‘ethnographically accessible’ (Smith 2005)? Was it possible to make the communication dialectics involved in ‘practice bound networks’ (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008) among different agencies both at the EU and at the local level more transparent? Would this approach allow for better understanding of ‘how these processes work in different sites—local, national and global’ (Shore and Wright 1997: 11)? With these questions in mind, I developed a research approach based on three main dimensions: • Critical discourse analysis of the European Commission progress reports and other EU strategic documents; • Analysis of the narratives of actors directly or indirectly involved in the enlargement/accession procedures in a longitudinal and multi-site ­perspective, collected by means of semi-structured interviews and analysed by critical discourse studies methodology; • Reconstruction of the gradual development of specific institutions locally involved in the accession process, such as bodies, actors, roles, and civil society agencies in the specific case of the selected countries, paying attention to their activities and relationships.

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The field data collection and analysis covers the twelve-year period from 2008 until 2019, that is from the year before the establishment of the second Barroso Commission (November 2009–October 2014) to the end of the Juncker Commission (November 2014–November 2019). Since the focus of this study is European integration as a process in which time operates as a structural component, a longitudinal approach was adopted. During this time span, Croatia became a member in July 2013 and the five-year moratorium on enlargement was proclaimed in 2014; the new phase of negotiations started in 2014 with the so-called Berlin process, proposing a new pattern of political pressure and accession assistance by the EU for the Western Balkans, the last step of which took place in Poznań in July 2019. The first part of the analysis consisted in mapping the structural and normative aspects of the process of integration of the aspirant countries in its institutional dimension, with a particular focus on the ways in which the enlargement/accession procedures based on the conditionality principle shape and constrain the space for negotiation. The normative barriers to full EU membership were investigated through a critical discourse analysis (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008) of the main procedural instruments of the accession process, that is each country’s (Progress) Reports from October 2008 to May 2019 and the annual EU Enlargement Strategy Papers. Particular attention was given to the monitoring and evaluation of ‘achievements’ and ‘shortcomings’ concerning mostly the political criteria, that is democracy, public administration reform, rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities, regional issues and international obligations. The second part of the inquiry focused on the way in which the actors institutionally involved in this specific ‘nexus of practice’ narrated the process of accession and their own role in it and how they interpreted the specific context and the ‘other side’ agency. The semi-structured interviews, the instrument I found as most appropriate for grasping the informal views and opinions of the institutional actors, were held in two periods: the first from 2009 to 2011, the second from 2018 to 2019. The informants were selected on the basis of their specific institutional role in multiple sites: those with seats in Brussels (Directorate General for the European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations,

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Missions and Embassies of the WB countries to the EU) and in the capitals of the WB countries (state institutions such as parliament and government; Delegations of the EU to each country). Sometimes the informants responded personally to the request for an interview; at other times the interviewee was proposed by the specific office responsible. In any case, the main criterion for the selection was the person’s concrete engagement in the day-to-day communication flow between the space-­ sets of the process. Interviews were also conducted with representatives of the civil society of the WB countries, that is activists from NGOs involved in the public debate on EU integration and selected independent intellectuals, considering these two categories of actors competent informants not directly influenced by the dominant national or European approach. In this light, the study aims to explore the ‘empty space’ between, on the one hand, what is envisaged as a ‘policy of conditionality’ operating by political pressure, epistocracy, hegemony of ‘best practices’ and ‘know-­ how’, and control over the access to and distribution of funds and, on the other hand, the political, social, institutional and economic conditions and actors’ capabilities on the ground. My attempt to raise inconvenient and unexpected questions in order to challenge the dominant official narrative of the institutional actors elicited a variety of reactions. The informers from the EU side were upset, impenetrable, confidential, reserved, distant, friendly, resigned or efficient. The ‘other side’ was regularly more open to dialogue, but at the same time expressed disillusion and resignation, often activating the stereotyped vision of the social and cultural ‘self ’ and diagnosing a dangerous social and political paralysis of their respective societies, further worsened by the stalemate in accession. The final round of interviews was conducted in 2018 and 2019. The choice of taking a longitudinal approach allowed me to grasp the changing perception of the actors participating in this special form of social action and simultaneously always ‘embedded within a multitude of ecological conditions’ in their spatial, material or semiotic dimension (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008: 189). The interviews were analysed using the critical discourse approach, where each unit was related to social and sociological variables and institutional frames and to the wider historical and socio-political dimensions of the specific context (Abbel and Myers in Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008; Galasińska and Krzyżanowski 2009).

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The third component of the research consisted in the ethnographic presence of the researcher in the field, crossing borders, communicating with ‘ordinary people’ and other informers, following the media discourse in the WB countries, along with many other dimensions of experiencing the day-by-day integration process amidst the complexity of an emerging European public space. The final analysis included only part of this ethnographic data, namely the logbook of travels to Brussels and the WB capitals, photos and personal reflections, and results of previous and parallel research projects on the political and social transformations of those deeply wounded societies. The rest is seen here as a subterranean noise forcing the researcher to engage in a responsible selection of the most relevant data regarding the inquiry, and in systematic and constant self-­ reflection, which is an indispensable component of any ethnography.

The Structure of the Book The first three chapters of the book analyse the most important socio-­ political and historical dimensions of transformations in European societies, Eastern and Western, in the last three decades starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Chap. 1 I propose a critical review of the main theoretical interpretations of the dissolution of the communist regimes and of their transition towards and consolidation of democracy. The analysis continues in Chap. 2 with the reflection on trends and contradictions in the European integration process in terms of deepening versus widening, as well as on its constitutionalism beyond borders from the perspective of political sociology. The role assumed by European integration has its main relevance in this part of the study, questioning the harmonization approach based on the transformative power of the EU as such and its effectiveness for the accession countries in turbulent times. Finally, in Chap. 3, I examine several problematics regarding the previous waves of enlargement to the CEE countries in 2004 and 2007, and proceed by framing a case study on the deeply conflictual societies of the Western Balkan countries, exploring the causes that led to what appears today at first glance as the futile endeavour of their EU integration.

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The main analysis and findings of the empirical part of the research are presented in Chaps. 4, 5 and 6 of the book. Firstly, in Chap. 4, the framework of the analysis is designed and argued for, and the methodology explained and discussed. Then, in Chap. 5 the results of the critical discourse analysis of the Reports, Opinions and Enlargement Strategy Papers of the European Commission are presented and discussed, exploring the ways in which the progress of each country along the path of European integration has been discursively constructed and represented in these key documents over the twelve-year period. Chapter 6 analyses multiple voices of the actors and their narratives, positioned both in Brussels and in the capitals of the seven states, which permitted a reconstruction of the main forms of discourse production with regard to the accession of the Western Balkan countries. Finally, in Conclusions (Chap. 7), the reflection on the contradictions and paradoxes that mark the European integration and enlargement/accession process turns to the current crisis of the European Union, understood here as requiring a much deeper questioning of the European model of democracy and of its ‘nesting citizenship’ perspective. In this light, the difficult process of Europeanization of the Western Balkan societies through conditionality revealed not only the lack of capacity of these states to meet the conditions imposed but also the inner fragility of the EU as such, and of its governance structures, unable to address the crisis by democratic means in a better way and to give new impetus to the European integration project. Many important issues remain marginal if not completely absent in my analysis, of which the following are just a few examples: the correlation and tension between global capitalism and democratization in its neo-liberalistic turn in the perspective of European integration or the genesis and effects of the Eurocrisis from 2008 onwards. The political elite component, both local and European, lies at the margins of the present research, notwithstanding its central importance for the creation and fulfilment of accession conditions and achievements. The phenomenological approach to the analysis, using the methods and techniques of an institutional ethnography of the process, combined with the critical discourse studies approach and methodologies, aims however to produce new knowledge and insights into the “evermore complex relationship

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between (nation) states, supranational institutions and (trans)national society” in this specific European framework (Guiraudon et al. 2015: 3).

Bibliography Burawoy, M., Blum, J. A., George, S., Gille, Z., & Thauer, M. (Eds.). (2000). Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dallara, C. (2014). Democracy and Judicial Reforms in South-East Europe. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing. Elbasani, A. (2013). European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans. Europeanization or Business as Usual? London and New  York: Routledge. Galasińska, A., & Krzyżanowski, M. (Eds.). (2009). Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Geiselberger, H. (Ed.). (2017). The Great Regression. Cambridge: Polity Press. Guiraudon, V., Ruzza, C., & Trenz, H.  J. (Eds.). (2015). Europe’s Prolonged Crisis. The Making or the Unmaking of the Political Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Habermas, J. (2012). The Crisis of the European Union. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hannerz, U. (2003). Being There … and There … and There!: Reflections on Multi-site Ethnography. Ethnography, 4(2), 201–216. Kochenov, D. (2010). Citizenship Without Respect: the EU’s Troubled Equality Ideal, NYU School of Law, Jean Monnet Working Paper 08/10. Noutcheva, G., & Aydin-Düzgit, S. (2012). Lost in Europeanization. The Western Balkans and Turkey. West European Politics, 35(1), 59–78. Sadurski, W. (2012). Constitutionalism and the Enlargement of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sekulić, T. (2016). Constituting the Social Basis of the EU. Reflections from the European Margins. Partecipazione e conflitto, 9(2), 691–716. Shore, C., & Wright, S. (1997). Anthropology of Policy. Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London and New York: Routledge. Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. A Sociology for People. Oxford: AltaMira Press. Smith, D. E. (Ed.). (2006). Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.

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Szołucha, A. (2010). The EU and Enlargement Fatigue: Why Has the European Union Not Been Able to Counter Enlargement Fatigue? Journal of Contemporary European Research, 6(1), 1–16. Trenz, H. J. (2016). Narrating European Society. Towards a Sociology of European Integration. London: Lexington Books. Van Ingelgom, V. (2014). Integrating Indifference. A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of the European Integration. Colchester: ECPR Press. Vidali, D. S. (2013). The Ethnography of Process: Excavating and Re-­generating Civic Engagement and Political Subjectivity. Ethnography, 15(1), 12–31. Wodak, R., & Krzyżanowski, M. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

1 Europe from East to West, from South to North: Harmonization in Turbulent Times

1989 as the Last European Revolution? The political transformation that took place in 1989, along with its consequences, has undoubtedly and radically revolutionized the life of the citizens of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Whether the way in which the change occurred can be interpreted as revolutionary is another question. In other words, did what was called a ‘velvet revolution’ deserve to be considered ‘The revolution’? The year 1989 had first been experienced by many citizens of that part of Europe through the mediation of television images, often incredible, that had flowed for days on end. What was happening in a single country had an immediate impact on other states in the region. News and especially images induced people to overcome the barriers of an ‘existential fear’ that had for decades, and more efficiently than secret services, prevented participation in collective political action of dissent. The falsified image of the regimes in question, normally offered to the national and international public, was suddenly stripped of any ideological filter; the stark nakedness of events perhaps reached its peak in the exhibition of the lifeless bodies of the Ceausescu spouses. © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_1

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The critical mass of people, men and women of all generations, who took an active role in the events started to grew steadily. One after another, the communist governments, from East Germany and Poland to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, were forced to surrender their totalizing political power, monopolized for decades. The first more or less democratic elections took place in all countries of the region no later than the spring of 1991. However, the revolutionary nature of these events was revealed in the years to come, this time without any mediation, upsetting the life-­ world of many people. It is still difficult, after three decades, to give an exhaustive interpretation of it. Seventeen years later in 2006, the protagonist of the Romanian film East of Budapest, a local TV journalist in the small, outlying town of Vaslui, asked the direct participants in those historical events ‘whether there had been any revolution in their town’. In this ironic fashion, the director of the film, Corneliu Porumboiu, raised two questions: if these people had been active participants in the revolution or just passive spectators of an inevitable collapse and, more crucial, what Romanian society had become in the post-Ceausescu period. To understand both of them, he suggested, we should return to the source of the historical moment and try to capture, in a Weberian way, the motivations and interpretations that the actors themselves gave to their actions. Why should it be so important to understand the extent of awareness with which the actors of the 1989 revolution faced the complexity of the transformation triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall? The key words in his reflection were: crisis, de-legitimation and collapse of the communist regimes and, above all, social agency. So, who are the actors in the seizing of power as a genuine revolutionary act? Members of civil society in every single country involved? Revolutionary movements like Solidarnošć in Poland or the ethno-nationalists of former Yugoslavia? New political elites thrown up from the communists ranks? In addition, how and how much did these actors contribute to the crisis, de-legitimation and collapse of the communist regimes? Did the action of the masses, in terms of participation in the revolutionary ‘liberation’ of their societies, occur when the regimes had already imploded? Finally, what was the model of citizenship that transition, more or less liberal and democratic, produced

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in these countries, many of them nowadays effective or aspiring members of the European Union? The effort to search for answers to these questions could reveal an important dimension of the transformation: what ideals and value systems constituted the model of the 1989 revolution and to what extent do contemporary societies correspond to those ideals? It seems that it is no longer enough to talk in terms of ‘liberal democracy’, taking almost for granted the meaning and content of these magic words. The majority of the new parties involved in the first democratic elections, and almost all parties currently active in the political life of the CEE states, indicated liberal democracy as the main political foundation for their programmes. Nevertheless, political practices in many cases reveal patterns and behaviours far removed from the ideal proclaimed, both yesterday and today. Moreover, the ideal itself, especially when connected to overwhelming, globalized capitalism, has been called into question by many scholars, with a criticism towards the neoliberal dominance on a global level1 (Altvater et al. 2013; Biebricher 2017; Burchardt and Kirn 2017; Fraser 2013; Harvey 2006; Piketty 2013; Streeck 2013; Žižek 2009). The current political and social crises of the EU member countries, and even more of the aspirants to the EU, and the response in terms of austerity measures have provoked protests that had been emerging from 2010 onwards in a particularly violent way in the Southern EU, Turkey, Ukraine, and to a certain extent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, and other Western Balkan countries. The ‘common denominator’ of the protests could be defined as a sentiment of indignation about a new system of social inequalities produced by neoliberal forms of exclusion from social citizenship, which put them in relation to new global social movements (Della Porta and Mattoni 2014). Still it is not yet clear which latent social rifts are becoming manifest through this organized civic dissent, expressed in claims for new social justice, nor what kind of political challenges these movements have brought out, either for single nation-states or in particular for the EU leadership. Reconsideration of the democratic transition process from 1989 on turns out once again to be of enormous importance.

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 emocratic Transition and Consolidation: D Coining New Concepts, Building New Realities Transition theories have developed within the research on political, social, economic and cultural transformations of the national states’ regimes and systems throughout the twentieth century. Particularly important for this analysis was the inquiry that considered the differences between two transitional models: denazification and the democratization of totalitarian regimes after World War II and changes involving authoritarian regimes in the Southern European and Latin American states. The aim was to create a hermeneutical and methodological frame within which it was possible to build up a common language for the analysis of the phenomenon and to produce conceptual tools capable of dealing with complex historical processes in real time. The scholars were moved by a need to describe, understand and interpret the ongoing transformations of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes into democratic ones, but also by a new awareness of the deficiencies of democratic regimes that had turned out to be unable to avoid the rise of Nazism and Fascism as democratically legitimated systems. Democratic transitions as ‘waves’ were the key concepts of the interpretative models that have undergone transformation processes all around the globe and were finally applied in the case of the Central and Eastern European societies. The transition, in this sense, was explained in terms of the continuity of changes in all social spheres with the aim of increasing liberal democracy and a capitalistic market economy in Europe, and globally. Huntington, for example, interpreted the events of 1989 as the last stage of the ‘third wave of (democratic) transition’, initiated by the transformations in Southern Europe, Latin America and Asia after World War II. Democratic elections in the United States in 1828 were considered the starting point of the first wave, which involved many of the Western democracies. Fascist and Nazi regimes had first blocked and then abolished this process for several decades. Once these regimes were  defeated in World War II, a second wave of transition began in Europe involving Germany, Italy and Austria, extending to some Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. According to Huntington, this cycle

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ended in the mid-1960s, having had a significant influence on the liberation of colonized countries (Huntington 1991). One of the most important approaches to the study of democratic transition and consolidation was developed in the 1980s by O’Donnell, P.C. Schmitter and L.Whitehead in their four volumes of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (1986). The book collected the results of a seven-year project investigating the prospects for democracy in the countries of Latin America and Southern Europe. The project involved a great team of scientists, including Stepan, Whitehead, Cardoso and Przeworski. The authors set a general frame for their research, in terms of an analysis of the transition of authoritarian regimes in the direction of something that remains uncertain: either the establishment of a political democracy or the return to a new authoritarian form. At the first stage of transformation, they stressed, a state of chaos or at least general confusion could appear, and blow up into violent conflicts or even revolutionary movements with more radical tendencies and demands (O’Donnell et al. 1986: 3). In order to understand the direction in which the actions are likely to advance, “a theory of abnormality in which the unexpected and the possible are as important as the usual and the probable” is necessary. The authors recommend starting from three assumptions: firstly, the regulatory one considers the establishment and possible consolidation of political democracy a desirable objective in itself. The second is the assumption of uncertainty in being able to recognize a “high degree of indeterminacy” in a situation in which variables out of control, such as the “unexpected events, insufficient information, hurried and audacious choices (…) and also talents of specific individuals”, determine the flux of the action and where actors often face moral dilemmas or ideological confusion. The third assumption concerns the inadequacy of “normal scientific methodology” for the study of a situation where everything changes very quickly2 (Ibidem: 4–5). The macro approach to research, they argue, was considered inadequate due to the impossibility of defining situations where unpredictable factors were often decisive for the outcome of an event. Macro-factors were certainly relevant, but only as part of a variable that would affect output. Therefore, Schmitter and O’Donnell proposed a micro approach

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in which it was necessary to analyse the political concepts, in the sense of the fundamental strategies of certain groups, bearers of the process of democratization, and to build up an appropriate language that makes the interpretation of the phenomena in question possible. The transition was therefore defined as a “gap between one political regime and another”: a process that ends when a new regime is established and consolidated, whether it is a certain kind of democracy, a possible return to previous authoritarian forms or the revolutionary establishment of a new political form (Ibidem: 6). Many of the key words and concepts used in the political theory of democratic transition were coined during their research. A member of the team, Alfred Stepan, together with Juan Linz, contributed significantly to the comprehension of the 1989 transformations in their research published in 1996.3 The authors explained the transformation of political systems and societies in Central and Eastern Europe as streaming into the historical continuum of a sole process of democratization, which could be interpreted according to certain universally valid theoretical categories, even if the combination of its features are highly contingent. Linz and Stepan pointed out five ideal types of modern regimes: democracy, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, post-totalitarianism and sultanism, differing in four fundamental features: the existence of pluralism, the type of ideology, the model of mobilization and the quality of leadership. The authors also proposed an analytical model by which democratic consolidation could be measured: specific indicators investigate within five major arenas—civil society, political society, the rule of law, state apparatus and economic society. There were also five basic conditions for a democratic transition system to be consolidated: (a) a regulatory system and free civil society; (b) the autonomy of political society and trust based on legal premises; (c) constitutional rules that allow democratic power to be allocated; (d) state bureaucracy serving the democratic government and (e) sufficient autonomy of the economy and economic actors to ensure pluralism in civil society, economics and politics (Linz and Stepan 1996). Theories of totalitarianism came to play a role here, being indispensable for understanding the nature and the roots of real socialism, reconsidering the transformation of the regimes from their first totalitarian stage to the following post-totalitarian one, more closely related to authoritarian

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regimes but still different. The post-totalitarian phase was crucial, according to Linz and Stepan, as it made possible a further stage of liberalization and democratization, opening the first ruptures in the totalizing constructs of the regime. The authors stressed that the transition process in some of the twenty-­ seven post-communist countries analysed during the first five-year period following the 1989 events had led to the creation of non-democratic regimes, as in several post-Soviet countries or in the former Yugoslav states, while in others the democratic model was more firmly consolidated. As they were aware of the high level of conflictuality underlying the transition in post-totalitarian regimes, especially for multinational federations, the universal quality of democratization remained the fundamental category for the authors and basic for a comparative analysis, developing specific critical categories, reference frames and evidence.

Transition as Revolution In 1990, while the events in Central and Eastern Europe followed one another at an unexpected rate—simply ‘raining down’, as the historian Stefano Bianchini commented informally— Habermas described what was happening in terms of Nachholende Revolution, translated in English as a ‘catching-up revolution’ and in Italian as rivoluzione recuperante (Habermas 1990). He was not the only one to identify the character of the ongoing transformation as revolutionary but at the same time distant and divergent from the classic models of the nineteenth-century bourgeois revolutions or of the communist October Revolution in 1917. The difference was identified in the absence of new concepts and ideals for the future, re-born and revolutionized societies. Cohen and Arato, for example, were more optimistic, defining what was happening in terms of ‘self-limiting revolution’, as it was capable of preserving social plurality, with the hope of reflexive continuity in the democratic revolution (Cohen and Arato 1992; Arato 1994). Dahrendorf and Offe considered the transformation in terms of ‘democratic revolution’, emphasizing its complexity and extremely problematic appearance (Dahrendorf 1990; Offe 1994). Ash coined a concept of ‘refolusion’ to describe the specific

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constellation in which revolutionizing acts and processes were intertwined with reformist ones (Ash 1990). For Tilly and Eisenstadt, the events of 1989 became part of the history of the great revolutions of modernity (Tilly 1993; Eisenstadt 2006). Bauman wondered if we could talk about ‘post-modern revolutions’ (Bauman 1992), while for Sztompka 1989 was a real break with historical continuity, pervading all segments of social life and occurring due to an extreme mobilization of the masses and broader social movements (Sztompka 1993, 1996, 1999). Michnik coined the term ‘velvet revolution’, with great media appeal: the revolution that takes place without shedding of blood (Michnik and Arato 1995). As Linz and Stepan stressed before, not all changes during and after 1989 occurred without bloodshed: the ethno-nationalist revolutions that put an end to the Yugoslav Federation released a huge amount of political violence in its purest forms, bordering continuously on its most radical expressions, such as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide (Popov 1996; Sekulić T. 2002, 2006, 2008). What has been happening from 2013 onwards in Ukraine (aggression? a civil war? or war against civilians?) could also be considered as a belated end to the same process. The specific perspective of civil society developed by Cohen and Arato could help here in detecting the elements of continuity between social movements and, more generally, action by civil society, which had made possible and led to the institutionalization of democracy in European post-communist societies and to the recent fermentation of social dissent in some of these societies. Cohen and Arato, referring to Tocqueville, explain the concept of ‘self-limiting revolution’ as action by social movements rooted in civil society. The actors in these movements develop a system of internal regulations that prevents the introduction of authoritarian elements into the new political and social structure, thus safeguarding the ‘liberated’ public sphere. This is possible, according to the authors, due to the capability of the social actors in civil society to learn from the revolutionary tradition that a fundamentalist approach opens the door to the suppression of social plurality. Thus, the primary task of civil society, they argue, is precisely to create a bridge that connects the emancipatory character of the revolution with the demands of universal democratization using the instruments of public debate and legal institutions,

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including civil disobedience, instead of the instruments of violence (Cohen and Arato 1992). Was this the case in the transitional societies of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the great transformation of 1989? What model of civil society emerges from the indignados movements from 2013 onwards? And what kind of response is coming from the political governments of the states involved and from the EU institutions?

 he Fall of the Berlin Wall T and Its Anniversaries The Unexpected Collapse It could be argued, not without reserve, that theories that have attempted to explain the collapse of communist power in all real socialist societies in Europe in terms of revolution are historically located in the early period of transformation. What brings together the authors who share this approach is a kind of caution that makes them hesitate to apply the label ‘revolution’ to these movements. For many scholars it was not just a matter of reducing the problem to the interpretative dilemma of ‘reform or revolution’. The flux and forms of transformation questioned the very concept of revolution and its historical forms, testing and exploring the possibility of radical change as such in contemporary European societies through new and alternative languages and dispositives. However, such a collapse of post-totalitarian regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Central and Eastern (and Balkan) Europe was not foreseen by scholars and intellectuals or by political elites (or intelligence systems?) throughout the globe. Everything took place quickly and unexpectedly. For decades the Iron Curtain separated Western Europe from the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact, Albania, Romania and the even more liberal socialist Yugoslavia. All of these post-­ totalitarian systems shared the legacy of totalitarianism inherent in terms of the dominant Marxist-Leninist ideology that created political, social and cultural structures in which political violence was intrinsic, as a

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constituent part of the system as such. The economic system of post-­ totalitarian societies was radically different concerning the countries in which the democratic transition was interpreted in terms of the second and third waves. In all these cases, the capitalist-based market economy preceded and was already established before democratic liberalization of their totalitarian or authoritarian political and social systems. If the Nazi and fascist totalitarian systems were defeated and radically destroyed after World War II, Soviet-style totalitarianism, on the other hand, was transformed into different forms that were more elastic and liberalized, less transparent—the post-totalitarian ones, as Heller, Feher and Markus had shown in their book Dictatorship over needs (Heller, Feher and Markus 1983). The real socialist economies were conversely based on state or social property with some experimental exceptions, such as the socialist market economy and self-management developed in former Yugoslavia. In most of these countries, in the historical period preceding the authentic or imposed communist revolutions, insufficient democratic political culture had been developed. They were mostly monarchies, with restricted parliamentarianism, and an economy based primarily on agriculture and almost inexistent industrialization, just touched by the first wave of democratic transition and capitalism. In the case of the long history of these regimes, seventy years for most Soviet republics and autonomous regions, forty-five for other European communist states, entire generations have been socialized (and adapted) to non-democratic political, social, economic and cultural models (Hobsbawm 1994). A further element of complexity concerns the ethnic and national structure of many of these countries, which played a decisive role when the communist power structures collapsed and the colonized public arena opened up, unfolding a space for negotiation of the political, social, cultural and economic interests of individuals and groups. The democratic transformation developed simultaneously with the building of a national state in all of these societies, although with many contingent differences, regarding the specific historical background of each, and even more important, considering their (ethno-)national constellation and corresponding power symmetries. The fragile, (re)created public sphere, as the premise for democratic liberalization, was again put in danger of colonization by an aggressive and anti-political discourse

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from new non-democratic elites. In some cases, ethno-national belonging was exasperated and exploited by these elites, in order to guarantee access to the material, symbolic and power resources in the new category of ethno-capitalists (Mujkić 2016). This particular feature of the post-­ communist transition was probably one of the main causes of delayed democratization in those cases in which the violent partition of the socialist states’ territory and resources among constituent nations, supported by the international community and European agency, produced armed conflicts, wars and crimes. The external and internal boundaries never clearly separated national, ethnic and minority groupings in this part of Europe, and the modern nation-state ideal of congruency of territory, people/nation and religion was further complicated by the co-existence of three major monotheistic religions. In addition, the historical and cultural legacy has brought about a proximity and intertwining of communities not only from a territorial point of view but also in the sphere of intimacy, sometimes creating a true culture of diversity, distinguished from presumed cultural ‘contamination’ or ‘hybridization’. The socialist model of secularization is another dimension to be explored, as transcendent religiosity was replaced by ideological religious practices, all this within the frame of a socialist state that declared itself radically alien to religion as such and often encouraged the value of atheism. Nevertheless, the Western models of civil religion do not seem to be basically different to the (real) socialist ones (Sekulić 2017). Be this as it may, the first response to the collapse of the legitimacy of communist systems and the power crisis was experienced and narrated as national liberation, both from the rule of the Soviet Union and as a break with the constitutional pact among the socialist republics and nations constituting federations, such as the USSR, former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The recovery of political freedom was welcomed as an opportunity to claim the right to self-determination in several contexts, together with the claim for a redefinition of internal boundaries, leading the relationship between groups to partial or total breakdown and violent conflicts. The consequences of the violence breaking the continuum of democratic transition continue to hinder the process of integration as Europeanization.

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The Tenth Anniversary One of the most important books to analyse the effects of the first transition and consolidation period, published after the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, was edited by Tismaneanu. The concept of ‘revolution’ appeared again as a key one to explain the transformation, but the content of the book clearly indicated a loss of certainty about previous interpretative models regarding the results and consequences of the transformation. The title of the chapter written by Chirot was ‘What happened in Eastern Europe in 1989?’; Judt wrote about ‘Eighty nine, the end of which European Era?’; Michnik moved from revolution to ‘The Velvet Restoration’ and Zhelev’s final question was ‘Is Communism Returning?’. There emerged a growing awareness of the depth of the change, and of its radical consequences, not only for the states and societies directly involved but also for Europe, and for a new global order, whatever it might be. In 1999, the European Community was still far removed from the enlargement to ten CEE countries, in 2004 and 2007. The process of democratic transformation was hampered by the (ethno-)nationalistic goals of the new governments democratically elected, exasperated in the case of former Yugoslavia. However, even where the ‘ethno-national question’ was not declared to be the first task to solve—a premise for further democratization, as in Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria—a huge deficit of democratic political culture and the establishment of capitalism in weak economies without a consolidated system of regulations produced enormous effects on social structures, deepening social inequalities and aggravating social poverty (Azmanova 2009; Sekulić B. 1999). In 2000, it was evident that in many cases the corruption of the new political and economic elites eroded the positive results of democratization, such as, for example, the consolidation of ‘electoral democracy’—the peaceful exchange of power between political parties and coalitions through free elections. With the fall of the Wall and the Iron Curtain, capitalism in its new globalized forms conquered the field at the global level, hardly questioning the basic Western ideal of ‘democracy and capitalism’ (Altvater et al. 2013). The capitalization of the new democracies has proved to be a contradictory process

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regarding the development of democratic institutions: the Chinese experiment is an excellent example.

The Twentieth Anniversary The tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall passed in a moment of great uncertainty, with the NATO bombing of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo and the eve of other crucial events, such as the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001, yet before any clear opening by the EU to Eastern European countries in terms of membership. The answer to the fierce attack by Al Qaeda, the war in Afghanistan, followed by the attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq strongly unbalanced the fragile institutions and normative structures at the international level, which proved unable to prevent two episodes of genocide which ended the century of violence: Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995. During the next decade, ten post-communist countries entered the EU; other Western Balkan countries developed relationships based on integration as candidate or potential candidate countries, together with Turkey and Iceland. The Southern European area was on the boil and exploded in 2011 with the Arab revolutions: the violent turmoil in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, the war in Libya, and afterwards in Syria. Just before the ‘Arab spring’, in the Albanian capital Tirana, the democratically elected government opened fire on demonstrators who were protesting peacefully against the election results and governmental policies.4 In that same period the European Union painfully managed to produce the constitutive text of the Lisbon Treaty, severely shaken by the last economic crisis that began in 2008, yet unable to establish the ground for a common foreign policy, as claimed and discussed by Habermas and Derrida (2003). These are some macro variables that constitute the frame for reflections about the significance of 1989 and of its consequences. Michnik, Heller, Offe and Snyder, for example, tried to propose a new evaluation of the significance and of the contingent results—if not the global ones—of the transformations, always with extreme caution (Michnik 2009; Heller 2009; Offe and Snyder 2009). Nowadays it seems that violence is making

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a strong comeback in the discourse on democratic transition and that hope of a non-violent revolution, devoid of the phase of terror, is now lost. Auer’s 2009 article was entitled “Violence and the end of the Revolution after 1989”; Random House, which published Dahrendorf ’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe in 1990, brought out Caldwell’s book under the same title in 2009, with a completely different subject in its subtitle: Immigration, Islam, and the West. On the thirtieth anniversary, new fences and walls have been growing around Europe, while nationalism and populism, and right-wing radicalization, emerge as connected with increasing Euroscepticism and open anti-Europeanism, contrary to what Agnes Heller wished for in 2009. Those who have directly known servitude and oppression, and for whom freedom is the greatest value and gift, have not ceased rejoicing to this day. I myself am of that camp. Regime change, as far as I was concerned, was a miracle that one hoped for but did not expect to see, and a miracle it has remained. (…) All I can hope … is that we too shall be able to produce an equally fine tale under the title of “Thirty Years On”. (Heller 2009)

 uropean Borders and Barriers: New Fences E and Walls The ‘migrant question’ has become an ‘internal affair’ of the European Union, in its supra- and transnational dimensions including the wider European space involved in the accession process, where the transformation of borders and boundaries has been ongoing for almost three decades. At the same time, the ‘refugee crisis’ challenges the core founding principles and socio-political values of the old and new liberal democracies composing the Union and offers an invaluable opportunity to re-think, negotiate, improve and harmonize its normative, political and social dispositives, as a transnational global political actor. What we see now seems to be the exact opposite to that (desirable) goal, as the principle of fortressness characterizes the discourses and practices of the EU and its member countries’ political elites, with several negative effects inside and outside the growing walls and fences.

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From early spring 2015 onwards, the Eastern and Southern European borders had been experiencing consistent pressure due to the growing flows of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants, largely (but not only) originating from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, who have been following the so-called Eastern Mediterranean and the more recent Western Balkan routes. The increasing weight and visibility this humanitarian disaster has gained in the political and media debate—the critical human mass of people passing through the wide fields of the Western Balkans, instead of the fragmented and aestheticized images of the Mediterranean fate-­ defying migrants crammed into makeshift boats—has once more called upon the European Union to provide an emergency response. On the other side of the walls and fences, or inside the EU borders, many concrete and immediate difficulties have emerged. Višegrad countries constructed an opposition block to any kind of temporary solution, put forward by the EU, regarding the ‘dispersal policy’ of migrant distribution quotas to be shared by member states (Stewart and Mulvey 2014). Many of the ‘welcoming states’ have real limitations in capacity for reception of the new irregular migrants, such as Germany and Sweden. All over Europe xenophobic episodes and right-wing movements against refugees and asylum seekers have been emerging (Ciabarri 2016). The ‘migrant question’ was one of the main triggers for the increasing Euroscepticism (de Wilde et al. 2013), which reached its peak with the UK referendum on Brexit in 2016. This ‘scepticism’ became ever more an open anti-Europeanism, sustained by widespread populist movements and political parties, all over the EU. This phenomenon is correlated to the right-wing political radicalization in many European states, North and South, as a broad scholarship has demonstrated.5 Indeed, the accountability of the EU member states and of the Union as such regarding its own founding principles, in terms of both responsibility and reliability, is at stake here, as the very project of the continent’s unification has been facing the most profound political crisis in its history. The adoption of the European Agenda of Migration (EAM) by the EU and its members in May 2015 defined European policy towards the ‘migrant crisis’ in terms of security management of the refugees and asylum seekers, by means of Frontex and Europol, and their effective criminalization. In this scenario, the crucial role of ‘guardian of Fortress

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Europe’ has been in the hands of member states such as Greece in the south, which had been struggling with its own internal socio-economic crisis. The northern border was protected by a Eurosceptic, radical, right-­ wing Hungary, which expressed its readiness to implement non-­ democratic and anti-humanitarian instruments to deter and repel flows of migrants and had in fact implemented them through the construction of a wall along the border with Serbia in September 2015. Schengen-zone ‘bodyguard’ on the migrants’ route was Slovenia, bordering the youngest EU member, Croatia, both too weak to deal with the crisis by themselves. The main ‘supporting role’ was provided by the accession candidate countries such as Turkey, which was already hosting 2.5–3 million Syrian and other refugee groups on its territory; North Macedonia, situated together with Turkey in a standby position in the EU accession process; and Serbia as the unavoidable land for migrant flows on their way to Northern Europe. The crises partially involved other candidate states of the Western Balkans, such as Albania, or potential candidates Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Most of these countries, especially the aspirants, are strongly related to Brussels and Strasbourg in an asymmetric association built, basically, on the conditionality principle of EU integration and enlargement. This also means that the EU is deeply committed to these countries, and the range of autonomous action by their governments is often determined by the political diktat of the European Commissioners, which of course does not release the former from the responsibility for their politics and enacted measures, but surely adds liability to the latter. The liminal condition of this ‘people on the road’, in the gap between the legality of their rightful demand for refuge and asylum and the supposed illegality of their presence inside the territory of a single national state according to its current legislation, creates the space in which norms and values ‘we-the citizens’ designed for us are (a)temporarily suspended for those ‘redundant’ and de-subjectivized masses (Bauman and Evans 2016), with severe consequences. The ‘Western Balkan Route’ was officially ‘closed’ at the beginning of March 2016, simultaneously with the ambiguous agreement of the European Commission to transfer funds to Turkey in order to stop the flow. Armour-plating the gates and raising the drawbridges left hundreds of thousands of refugees trapped along the Western Balkan route, in

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inhuman conditions well represented by the images of the Belgrade migrants’ ‘cage’, in winter 2016/2017. The absence of political and structural solutions for the refugee crisis proposed by supra- or transnational European institutions and actors throws the ball to the management of the members’ and aspirants’ national states. Protection of borders, politics of exclusion and the ‘language of walls’ (Wodak 2014, 2015; Sicurella 2017) sound like a logical continuation with the decade-long political orientation of the EU core member states (Guiraudon 2018; Marchetti and Pinelli 2017). However, the current situation of the ‘refugee crisis’ is no longer sustainable in its political, moral and even metaphysical sense, to use the categories proposed some time ago by Jaspers (1946). Certain acts towards the refugees played out by several national governments of states associated with the EU verge on the criminal, if measured by the norms of International Criminal Law based on the common acceptance of the respect for fundamental human rights and liberties and the legal personhood of every human being. As Gündoğdu suggested, we urgently need to understand the perplexing persistence of a lack of rights in the ‘age of rights’ (Gündoğdu 2015: 11). Against this background, too many questions have been arising, none with an easy answer. The refugee and migrant ‘question’ is currently the most visible symptom of the deep and multifold dimensions of the EU crisis. Trying to understand how to develop a critical political theory of European integration, affirmative and alternative-European at the same time (de Wilde et al. 2013), this analysis will continue exploring the ways in which a new European polity and society has been constructed.

Notes 1. “What Max Horkheimer said about fascism and capitalism back in the 1930s (that those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism) should be applied to today’s ­fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk critically about liberal democracy should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism” (Žižek 2014).

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For more accurate reflection about neoliberalism see Altvater et  al. (2013); Biebricher (2017); Burchardt and Kirn (2017); Fraser (2013); Harvey (2006); Piketty (2013); Streeck (2013); Žižek (2009). 2. “We have attempted to shape conceptual tools that may be reasonably adequate for dealing with choices and processes where assumptions about the relative stability and predictability of social, economic, and institutional parameters (…) seem patently inadequate” (O’Donnell et  al. 1986: 4). 3. Linz, J. and Stepan, A. (1996) Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London. 4. The demonstrations in Albania against the government of Berisha, stained with the blood of three protesters killed and many wounded, were happening a few days before the ‘Jasmine revolution’ in Tunisia that brought about the fall of the regime of Ben Ali, before the demonstrations against government policies in Jordan and Egypt. Almost at the same time students were protesting in the Netherlands, after Britain and Italy, against the cuts to public spending on education and research, anticipating the Spanish square, the demonstrations in London in August 2011, or the occupation of Wall Street in October the same year. 5. The development of the populist movements and politics were analysed recently from different perspectives. For major references see: Ruzza (2018); Urbinati (2019); Mouffe (2018); Heinisch et al. (2019).

Bibliography Altvater, E., et al. (Eds.). (2013). Demokratie oder Kapitalismus? Europe in der Krise. Berlin: Blätter Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH; Auflage: 1. Arato, A. (1994). Constitutions and Continuity in the East European Transitions, Part I: Continuity and Its Crisis. Constellations, 1(1), 92–112. Ash, T.  G. (1990). The Magic Lantern. The Revolution of 1989 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague. New York: Random House. Azmanova, A. (2009). 1989 and the European Social Model: Transition Without Emancipation? Philosophy & Social Criticism, 35(9), 1019–1037. Bauman, Z. (1992). Intimations on Post-Modernity. London: Routledge. Bauman, Z., & Evans, B. (2016, May 2). The Refugee Crisis Is Humanity’s Crisis. The New York Times.

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Biebricher, T. (2017). The Political Theory of Neoliberalism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Burchardt, M., & Kirn, G. (Eds.). (2017). Beyond Neoliberalism. Social Analysis After 1989. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ciabarri, L. (Ed.). (2016). I rifugiati dell’Europa. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Cohen, J., & Arato, A. (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Dahrendorf, R. (1990). Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Warsaw. New  York: Random House. Della Porta, D., & Mattoni, A. (Eds.). (2014). Spreading Protest. Social Movements in Times of Crisis. Colchester: ECPR Press. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2006). The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London and New York: Verso. Guiraudon, V. (2018). The 2015 Refugee Crisis Was Not a Turning Point: Explaining Policy Inertia in EU Border Control. The European Political Science, 17(1), 151–160. Gündoğdu, A. (2015). Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habermas, J. (1990). Die Nachholende Revolution. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Habermas, J., & Derrida, J. (2003). February 15, or What Binds the European Together. A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy beginning in the Core of Europe. Constellations, 10(3), 291–297. Harvey, D. (2006). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heinisch, R., Massetti, E., & Mazzoleni, O. (2019). The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe (Extremism and Democracy). London: Routledge. Heller, A. (2009). Twenty Years On. The Hungarian Quarterly (193). Heller, A., Feher, F., & Markus, G. (1983). Dictatorship Over Needs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hobsbawm, E. (1994). Age of Extremes – The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. New York: Random House. Huntington, S. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

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Jaspers, K. (1946). Die Schuldfrage. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider. Linz, J., & Stepan, A. (1996). Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Marchetti, C., & Pinelli, B. (Eds.). (2017). Confini d’Europa. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Michnik, A. (2009, Winter). Annus mirabilis. IP Global, German Council of Foreign Relations, Vol. 10. Michnik, A., & Arato, A. (1995). Interview with Adam Michnik. Constellations, 2(1), 5–11. Mouffe, C. (2018). For a Left Populism. London and New York: Verso. Mujkić, A. (2016). In Search of a Democratic Counterpower in Bosnia– Herzegovina. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14683857.2015.1126094. O’Donnell, G. A., Schmitter, P. C., & Whitehead, L. (Eds.). (1986). Transition from Authoritarian Rule 1–4. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Offe, C. (1994). Designing Institutions for East European Transitions. IHS Reihe Politikwissenschaft, 19, 1–25. Offe, C., & Snyder, T. (2009). Vereintes Europa – geteilte Geschichte. Zwanzig Jahre 1989. Frankfurt/Main: Verl. Neue Kritik. Piketty, T. (2013). Le capital au XXIe siècle. Paris: SEUIL. Popov, N. (Ed.). (1996). Srpska strana rata. Beograd: Bigz. Ruzza, C. (Ed.). (2018). Populism, Migration, and Xenophobia in Europe. Routledge Handbook on Global Populism. London: Routledge. Sekulić, B. (1999). Transition Towards Poverty. Revija slobodne misli, Broj 19–20, januar–mart 1999, 51–65. Sekulić, T. (2002). Violenza etnica: I Balcani tra etnonazionalismo e democrazia. Roma: Carocci. Sekulić, T. (2006). Crimini di guerra, crimini contro umanità e genocidio come strategie di state building etnonazionalista. In Violenza senza legge, a cura di Calloni M., UTET, 2006. ISBN: 88-6008-069-X (pp. 121–133). Sekulić, T. (2008). Le nuove guerre e conflitti identitari. In G. Grossi (a cura di), I conflitti contemporanei. Contrasti, scontri e confronti nelle società del III millennio, Torino, UTET Università. ISBN: 978-88-6008-210-7 (pp. 175–198). Sekulić, T. (2017). Migranti in ostaggio: l’Unione Europea e l’esperimento ungherese. il Mulino, edizione online, Aprile 2017. Retrieved from https://www. rivistailmulino.it/news/newsitem/index/Item/News:NEWS_ITEM:3862.

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Sicurella, G.  F. (2017). The Language of Walls Along the Balkan Route. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948. 2017.1309088. Stewart, E., & Mulvey, G. (2014). Seeking Safety Beyond Refuge: The Impact of Immigration and Citizenship Policy Upon Refugees in the UK. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(7), 1023–1039. Streeck, W. (2013). Tempo guadagnato. La crisi rinviata del capitalismo democratico. Bologna: il Mulino. Sztompka, P. (1993). The Sociology of Social Change. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Sztompka, P. (1996). La fiducia nelle societa post-communiste. Messina: Rubbettino Editore. Sztompka, P. (1999). Trust: A Sociological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, C. (1993). European Revolutions 1492–1992. Oxford: Blackwell. Urbinati, N. (2019). Me the People. How Populism Transforms Democracy. Cambridge et al.: Harvard University Press. de Wilde, P., Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H.-J. (2013). Contesting Europe. Exploring Euroscepticism in Online Media Coverage. Colchester: ECPR Press. Wodak, R. (2014). The Language of Walls. Resemiotizing European Identity and Border Politics. Keynote Speech at CADAAD 2014. Budapest: Hungary. Wodak, R. (2015). The Politics of Fear. What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London, UK: Sage. Žižek, S. (2009). First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London and New York: Verso. Žižek, S. (2014, February 10). Anger in Bosnia, But This Time the People Can Read Their Leaders’ Ethnic Lies. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/anger-bosnia-ethnic-liesprotesters-bosnian-serb-croat.

2 Dimensions and Contradictions of the European Integration: Deepening Versus Widening

 olitical Sociology of the European Integration P and Enlargement The European Union as an imagined community developed through the process of integration and enlargement of the European nation-states and citizens (Delanty 1995). The institutionalization of the European Union in its deepening dimension, as a project of common citizenship, much more than in its widening one as a supranational organization in expansion, has been based on a specific ability of its protagonists and their (our) capability to revolutionize given cognitive patterns using social imagination (Inglehardt 1970; Foradori et al. 2007). These capacities have been indispensable for the creation of new models of social solidarity, and thus of an alternative political and cultural (re)production and redistribution of material and symbolic resources among ‘peers’, still as a goal to be achieved (Fraser 2013). In this sense, participation in the new European citizenship may be seen as a difficult and manifold challenge. The European Union is today composed of twenty-seven national states, the twenty-eighth in exit, while seven others are closely and institutionally related to it as candidate countries with different statuses of © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_2

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negotiation—ranging from the problematic case of Turkey, a credible accession perspective by 2025 for Montenegro and Serbia and a constant delay for North Macedonia and Albania to the potential candidate status of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the special status of Kosovo and the Turkish-Cypriot Community. Other countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are related with the EU by particular Association Agreements. The ‘enlargement fatigue’, after the block integration of ten post-socialist countries in 2004 and 2007, followed by the silent entrance of Croatia in July 2013, ended with a five-year moratorium imposed by the Juncker Commission in late 2014. If the main criteria for membership have not yet been met by so many candidate and potential candidate states, the predominant type of EU governance of the process is to be questioned too. The democratic deficit of the EU clashes with the deeper democratic deficit of these societies, with unpredictable consequences, as I shall try to demonstrate in this work. From the perspective of principles, the EU is structured as transversal and transnational—and thus border-crossing—on the basis of a range of shared universal values, and it is open to negotiation on others that are culturally, historically and scientifically questioned. At the same time, its policies and practices are strongly and structurally nation-biased, which puts the EU institutions and leadership in a contradictory condition of constant mediation among contrasting interests, while dealing with an agenda of vital pressing issues. If the economic and financial crisis could be considered its most serious trouble just a few years ago, the political one regarding several burning problems should not be underestimated. Flashing lights adverting to the growing attitude of Euroscepticism (de Wilde et  al. 2013) and indifference of a huge amount of (Western) European citizens towards EU integration (Van Ingelgom 2014) did not hinder the Brexit—a painful ending process of the British-EU membership. Other  problems could be mentioned here  as the clash of welfare systems and social mobilization and protests against austerity policies (and not only) throughout the member countries (Della Porta and Mattoni 2014); the migrant question (Favell 2014) between the ‘open city’ (Sassen 2014) and ‘fortress’ model of Europe (Zielonka 2006); internal terrorism based on Islamic fundamentalist ideology and radicalization

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of ‘second generations’; violent conflicts in its liminal zones of the aspirant states such as Turkey and Ukraine, and in its North-African and Middle East neighbourhood; political involvement in NATO-supported military actions from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Libya to Syria.1 What kind of answers to all these open questions will shape the emerging model of the Union, regarding the normative dimension, institution building and social and political agency? When the European identity is discussed, this new kind of a common and transnational citizenship in terms of belonging—the intimate cosmopolitanism of Europe (Beck 2012)—refers not only to the nation-­ state citizens of the member countries. For this analysis, the crucial importance lays in researching the patterns and practices in which ‘being European’ is constructed by citizens of member and aspirant countries and migrants with different status of residence in its wide territory. If considered a desirable aim of citizenship in both its collective and individualized meaning—as a member state or as a citizen of the EU—such kind of aspiration seems capable of mobilizing huge social energies, as in the case of the EuroMaidan square in Kiev in 2014. Thus, this reflection begins by asking if and how the EU association process concretely operates and achieves empowerment of the democratic institutions of the aspirant countries through the political, social and economic emancipation of their citizens. And if and how that complex and intersected process affects the ‘transformative power of Europe’ as such, bringing new knowledge and re-constructing the European Union as a whole. The overall aim of the analysis is to understand the making of today’s Europe and the growing complexity of its organizational structures and institutions, which constantly needs new arguments to legitimate the EU’s founding principles. Because ‘Europe’ and the ‘European Union’ are two distinctive phenomena or entities, both characterized by a multilayer system of meanings, the process of integration known as ‘Europeanization’ was taken into consideration (Rumford 2008; Soysal 2002; Trenz 2011). Here, I understand Europe as an aim of a polity of its citizens and the EU as a project for economic, political, cultural and social transformation of its society(ies) and the actors committed to this enterprise. Accordingly, I will address some questions related to the dynamics of the process of integration, democratization and creation of common and national

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institutions from the particular standpoint of accession dynamics and practices, and I will explore its actual but also possible future patterns and consequences, which are sometimes unexpected and controversial.

 idening of the EU Between Enlargement W and Accession ‘Enlargement fatigue’ (Devrim and Schulz 2009; Hay and Smith 2005; Reka 2010; Szołucha 2010; Zängle 2004) in the EU has broken out to an unprecedented extent during the current financial and economic crisis. Once again, the juxtaposition of, and overlap between, the political EUropean elite and the politicians of the (core) member states governing the situation has revealed a limitation of the EU’s political leadership. The difficulty of supporting the economies of the most vulnerable member states and of creating, generally, a greater capacity to control and resist global crisis dynamics—thus better protecting the welfare state— continues to produce negative effects both on the further enlargement process and on citizens’ commitment to European integration. Figure 2.1 demonstrates the diversified trend of the public opinion support to the further enlargement in the ten-year time span, where only the Western Balkan countries overstep the threshold of 50% while the ‘core member states’ of the EU6 and EU9 have maintained the rate of about 30% positive answers.

80 60 40 20 0

EU6

EU9

EU12 2009

EU15 2014

EU27

EU28

Balkans

2019

Fig. 2.1  Further enlargement of the EU (% of positive answers, Eurobarometer Standard 71.3, 82.3, 91.5)

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The idea of enlargement has been one of the basic principles of the EU since its creation. It was imagined, potentially and under certain (severe) conditions, as an ‘all inclusive’ project for the continent,2 notwithstanding the unclear geopolitical connotation of its extreme limits. Since the foundation of the EU6  in 1951—the European Coal and Steel Community—consisting of Belgium, Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the enlargement process has involved Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom (1973), Greece (1981), Spain and Portugal (1985), followed by the unification of the Democratic Republic of Germany (1990), and then by Austria, Finland and Sweden (1995), Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Romania and Bulgaria (2007), and finally by the entrance of Croatia (2013). Historically, the turning point of this process may be symbolically represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which opened both Europes, Eastern and Western, to each other. The understanding of the Cold War frontiers as almost impassable barriers switched to new forms of border definition in this specific context, where the images of a ‘European Empire’ or a ‘Fortress Europe’ were among those most striking (Balibar 2004, 2010; Beck and Grande 2007; Zielonka 2006). In a certain sense, it may be said that, through each of these crucial events, the European Union as a transnational community of European states and citizens has grown younger and younger, so that the current European Union of twenty-seven members plus the UK in exit in 2020 is only a new-born. Because the uniqueness of the EU rests upon its ‘playing sovereignty’ among member states and its claim to be a supranational entity capable of sovereign political (and other) action,3 the new equilibrium has had to be attained before and after every single accession, with new problems and conflicts to solve. Whilst the institutional barriers of the accession procedures have been overcome and the EU’s borders have consequently lost their hardness for the ‘new entry’, this does not yet mean that common resources are immediately available for all in the same way: on the contrary, spatial inequalities have been strengthened. Moreover, the founding principles themselves—for example, the principle of full mobility of people and goods—have come under strong pressure in this process, raising the

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question of how they can be constantly institutionalized, guaranteed, maintained and improved to respond to the new claims of integration, but also of globalization. These demands concern, for example, the increased number of countries and citizens and its effects on democratic deliberative mechanisms and participation, labour market(s) and (un) employment rates, immigration issues and redefinition of internal and external borders. These are only a few of the matters that concern the democratization of the EU as such, together with the political formation and representation of the will of the EU citizens participating in these processes, and not only as the citizens of the single countries through nationally biased mechanisms (see: Archibugi et al. 1998; Bellamy 2006; Bordignon 2009; Crouch 1999; Delanty 1995; Delanty and Rumford 2005; Fabbrini 2004, 2007; Habermas 2001; Offe 1996; Guiraudon et al. 2015). The opening of the European community to the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, together with the increase in immigration rates of recent decades, has had not only economic, political and social effects but also the cultural effect centred on the value of cultural diversity, religious and confessional freedom and the related discussion on the changing urban landscape. The issues here, therefore, concern new frames of belonging, changed mechanisms of group formation and new forms of solidarity able to create a new European citizenship (Benhabib 1996; Benhabib et  al. 2007; Brubaker 2004, 2009; Rumford 2008; Foradori et al. 2007; Soysal 1994, 2001; Wimmer 2004). Thus, enlargement lies at the core of the European Union integration process because it constantly pushes its main actors to make a reflexive, possibly creative, effort of sociological imagination. Because enlargement is not only the process of widening but also, more importantly, of deepening the EU, it constantly calls its structural and institutional devises and mechanisms into question (Wallace 1993). There is no easy way to come to terms with the EU’s democratic deficit. The Europeanization process as the creation of the EU pursues precisely this aim. In the next section I will first analyse the accession procedures in terms of their rules and barriers and explore the main EU and national institutional bodies involved in the day-to-day integration process regarding enlargement. I will then consider the specific context of the ‘Western

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Balkan’ countries, which creates a particular set of difficulties and conflicts for the local and EU actors involved in the process.

 ormative and Procedural Dimensions N of Enlargement Structural Aspects The accession procedure is guided by the ‘executive arm’ of the EU—the European Commission (EC). From the outset, this institution, set up in the 1950s, embodied the idea of the EU as something really new, different and possibly autonomous with respect to the national governments. The seat of the Commission is in Brussels, while some offices are located in Luxembourg. It has Representation Offices in each of the member countries and Delegation Offices in many countries in Europe and the world. As stated in its main documents, the Commission’s basic principle is to “represent and uphold the interests of the EU as a whole”.4 The European Commission is currently structured into fifty-three departments and executive agencies. The department responsible for the enlargement changed from one commissioner to another, as described in the following section. The Juncker Commission (2015–2019) integrated the Enlargement Directorate General (DG), as the main institutional body that manages all the basic procedures of the accession process, with the Neighbourhood Policy department, restructuring the sectors, and the new commissioner von der Leyen kept the same model. The responsible officials of each sector of the Directorate  General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) are supposed to be in constant and direct communication with the Delegations of the EC in each of the candidate and potential candidate countries; with the diplomats of each country’s Mission or Embassy in Brussels; and with political institutions and bodies involved in the process at the national level. The Enlargement/NEAR Directorate General is directly accountable to the European Commission; its work is framed by the EU’s normative documents, while the politics and policies are decided at the European Council and EC level. At the same time, the flow of everyday

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information and communication produced by its sectors may be considered a specific knowledge with the potential of enabling the EU institutions in their integration capabilities. The institutional structure of the EU integration bodies at the national level varies from one candidate/potential candidate country to another, and it is modified by the changing of its actual status demands. National offices are mainly organized at the governmental level, as part of one of the Ministries or as a separate Ministry of EU integration. All parliaments also have a special commission or other institutional body dealing with European integration; in several cases, it is at this level that the critical dialogue with the national public sphere and civil society is institutionalized in the form of the agenda of periodic meetings and discussion. It does not include, of course, all the voices outside the main state institutions because there are numerous sources, such as the NGOs concerned directly or indirectly with the integration process, media agencies, academic institutions or critical independent intellectuals, that constantly produce a public ‘rumour’, more or less articulated in strong and influential opinions. On the other hand, both the politics and policies of the EC regarding enlargement are also stressed by the national interests of the EU member states, by pressure groups and lobbies of (or pro) individual candidate/potential candidate countries, by transnational NGOs with their representatives in Brussels and Strasbourg, and by what is called the ‘emerging European public sphere’.

Rules and Barriers The first normative condition for accession is the formal commitment of the applying country to respect the basic principles of the EU as defined by the Copenhagen criteria (EU Council, Copenhagen, December 1993): democracy, rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, market economy, ability to assume the obligations of membership. The verb ‘apply’ indicates an act of responsibility by the single state, based on the will of its citizens and political elites to join the EU. It also emphasizes the asymmetrical relationship between the parties, because the conditions imposed by The Treaty on European Union are

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non-negotiable. The following caution—“But, applying for EU membership is the start of the long and rigorous process”5—underlines both considerations. The basic rules were clearly defined: “Each country must meet the core criteria of the membership before it starts the entire procedure.” This means that the ‘zero-time’ zone of the process starts well before the formal submission of the application. It is not enough merely to declare commitment to the principles, it must also be approved and confirmed by the official bilateral relationship with the EU. Only when the preliminary evaluation process results in a positive opinion on the country’s effective condition can the procedure begin. The rules became stricter in 1995 after the decisions of the Madrid European Union Council of 1995, where the principle of the ability to assume the obligations of membership was defined more rigorously—again using the verb ‘must’: “The administrative and judicial structures of the country must be ready to implement the EU legislation.” This requirement was identified as a prerequisite for mutual trust between the EU and the member country, as one of the pillars of the integration process. The pre-accession strategy comprises several frameworks and mechanisms. Firstly, different forms of agreements, such as European Agreements, Association Agreements, Stabilization and Association Agreements,6 and partnerships, like the Accession Partnership and European Partnership, are proposed. Agreements and partnerships create the framework for the institutionalized political dialogue and open the space for different forms of pre-accession assistance like the Instruments of Pre-accession strategy (IPA), co-financing from international financing institutions and participation in EU programmes, agencies and committees. The bilateral relationship with the EU presupposes the adoption of the National Programme for the standardization and harmonization of legislation with the Acquis Communautaire, the main normative foundation of the EU (Jørgensen 1999). Once these conditions have been fulfilled, the country submits an official application for membership to the EU Council, and the ‘evaluation procedure’ may start. For every potential candidate country, year by year, European Commission officials and experts produce a Report based on monitoring and analysis of complex political, economic, social and cultural

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conditions. The Report contains the opinion, which may be positive or negative, on the country’s status in fulfilling the main enlargement criteria. Only when the formal opinion of the EC is positive does the European Council take the decision to accept, or not, the candidature. Under the condition that the decision to accept the application must be taken unanimously by all member states, the Council gives the mandate for the negotiating process between the candidate country and the EU governments to begin in the form of an ‘intergovernmental conference’. The negotiation procedure moves through several phases. First is the so-called screening phase, which concerns in-depth analysis of the EU laws—Acquis Communautaire—the obligations related to membership set out in thirty-five chapters (Fig.  2.2). Screening is followed by the European Commission’s proposal of a Draft Common Position to the European Council. When the Council adopts a Common Position, negotiations on each area of legislation on ministerial level can begin. Formally, the new members are admitted only when they have met all requirements, have received the active consent of the EU institutions and, finally, have received the active consent, signed and ratified, of the governments of the EU member states and of the applying country. In practice, these three final conditions represent the blocks of ‘Fortress Europe’s’ walls. Free movement of goods

Freedom of movement for workers

Right of establishment and freedom to provide services

Free movement of capital

Public procurement

Company law

Intellectual property law

Competition policy

Agriculture and rural development

Information society and media

Financial services

Economic and monetary policy

Fisheries

Transport policy

Food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy

Energy

Taxation

Statistics

Social policy and employement

Entreprise and industrial policy

Regional policy and coordination of stuctural instruments

Environment

Judiciary and fundamental rights

Justice, freedom and security

Science and research

Education and culture

Foreign, security and defence policy

Consumer and health protection

Customs union

External relations

Financial control

Financial and budgetary provisinons

TransEuropean networks

Institutions

Other

Fig. 2.2  Thirty-five chapters of Acquis Communautaire. EU15 was the number of member countries in the European Union prior to the accession of ten candidate countries on 1 May 2004. The EU15 comprised the following 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms, https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=6805

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The first one of them is the requirement to meet the Copenhagen criteria through fulfilment of the harmonization with the Acquis. But, the EU norms have been changing constantly, and new chapters of the Acquis have been created over time: the last one in 2011, named ‘Other’. Core member states themselves have huge difficulties in following EU directions, as different waves of the crisis had demonstrated. The new CEE entries, with their legacy of poor economies and a grave deficit of political democratic culture, find it much more difficult to keep pace with the EU15 countries that entered the European Union before the last enlargement in the 2000s. The principles and the standards, however, should not be changed, nor should the evaluation criteria be dropped down. What is worrying is a certain suspicion, stressed by a significant number of interviewees from Western Balkan countries, that the Acquis may be used as a device by an arbitrary political interest. The second precondition—that the new members must have received the active consent of the EU institutions—should be considered more closely from the perspective of its correlation with the third one, concerning the active consent of the governments of the EU member states. Because it is the European Council that takes the final decision on membership of the applying country, any divergences among the official positions of a single EU member country and its representatives in the EU institutions may aid understanding of the European Union’s democratic potential as a transnational institution, and not just in its current ambiguous state as a kind of confederation without strong political authority (Fossum 2009; Rumford 2008; Trenz 2011). Ratification of the accession of a candidate country, by parliamentary vote or referendum in each of the member states, exposes the final decision to the particularistic interests of the nation-state governments, as in the case of the name dispute between Greece and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)/North Macedonia or in that of the border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia. The last part of the third requirement—active consent of the applying country—should not be taken for granted. According to Eurobarometer statistics, and others collected at the national level, the oscillation between affection and disaffection towards EU integration indicates that public opinion in the candidate and potential candidate countries actively perceives and reacts to the political decisions taken in Brussels, as illustrated in Fig. 2.3. Once again, the procedural principle of symmetry and

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EU6

EU9

EU12 2009

EU15 2014

EU27 EU28 2019

Balkans

Fig. 2.3  Trust in the EU institutions (% of ‘tend to trust’ answers—Eurobarometer Standard 71.3, 82.3, 91.5)

reciprocity can be fulfilled in this basically asymmetrical process only if the local actors assume real responsibility for their decisions and are recognized by their EU peers as such.

Who Will Be the Next? The last round of the evaluation, which concluded with the Reports and Enlargement Strategy document on Candidate and Potential Candidate countries (Thessaloniki Agreement 2003), published in May 2019, defined the mid-term agenda of the accession process. According to the documents, Montenegro and Serbia were the only two countries with credible mid-term accession perspective by 2025. Turkey was put apart, North Macedonia and Albania had to wait their turn to start negotiations, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo∗ maintained the potential candidate status. The most critical opinion was on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s efforts to meet the accession criteria, expressed in a number of negative considerations on different political, economic, institutional and social issues, supported by the Analytical Report of the Commission. The problem of meeting the requirements for accession, as mentioned in the previous section, emerges immediately if we consider the list of the countries in the ‘entrance hall’ of the EU and the years in which the

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accession process began for them. In order to have a better idea of the complexity and ambivalence featuring the accession process, three meaningful examples will be considered in the following paragraphs. The first one is the case of Turkey, which became a candidate country in 1999 and started the negotiation process in 2005, but continued for years without meeting the requirements to become a member of the EU. At the beginning, there was a Cyprus case, the issue of respect for human rights and freedoms, and many other unfulfilled requirements mentioned in the Progress Reports since 2005. In 2018 and 2019, the authoritarian turn in the political leadership in Turkey put into question much more seriously the EU future of the country. Nevertheless, political and theoretical discussion in and out of stage within the EU institutions and among European and national actors about the question if Turkey should join the European family did make a damage towards the Europeanist political and civic forces of the country. In this sense, we might speak again about the difficulty of founding common socio-­ cultural grounds for the EU and the unintended consequences it could provoke (Küçük 2010; Rumford 2008). The second example—the name dispute between Greece and former Socialist Republic of Macedonia, from 2018 onwards North Macedonia— is not as deeply problematic as the Turkish case, but it may help us understand the complexity of each single step in the enlargement process in regard to the sovereignty bargaining game  between the supranational level of the EU and the national states of its members, as well as the conflicts that it constantly produces. On a global level, represented by the UN, the first option of the name was a result of a paradoxical compromise between Greece’s strong opposition to the use of the name ‘Macedonia’ for a non-Greek community and the citizens and political elites of that country, after the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation. On the EU level—and for the same reason, the name issue—Macedonia has been waiting its turn to start the negotiations for a long time, because the decision had to be taken unanimously by all EU member states and Greece continued to oppose until Prespa agreement in 2018. The third example is the issue of recognizing the independence of Kosovo, proclaimed in February 2008. The European Union did not take its own position on the matter but left the decision to its member

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countries, once again demonstrating the deficit of its capacity to create a common foreign policy (Habermas and Derrida 2003; Rumford 2008). Nevertheless, Kosovo could not be excluded from the integration process as an independent state or as a part of Serbia. A formal compromise was found by giving Kosovo a special treatment status symbolically expressed in its new official name. Yet the Kosovo case is a rather paradigmatic and challenging one for any other situation in which the right to self-determination clashes with the principle of national sovereignty—as well demonstrated some time ago by Melucci and Diani (1992). This means that there is no easy way to resolve the issue and that the EU integration of the Western Balkans could be, as was emphasized many times in my interviews, the highway to a new constellation of power and new forms of solidarity among citizens in this part of Europe. If the credible accession perspective is proved to be a powerful device of transformation for the accession countries (Noutcheva and Aydin-­Düzgit 2012), a sort of a hazy and hesitant accession perspective could become a powerful device of stalemate and backsliding, or even of reinforcing radical-right anti-EU political forces. If the accession negotiations would turn to an impasse, a ‘cul-de-sac’ situation, we may ask if there were any alternatives to the accession, once the road is taken.

“Berlin Process” 2014–2019 The Berlin Process, as a limited intergovernmental initiative complementary to the action of the European Commission, started in 2014, coinciding with the implementation of the new European policy, which is admittedly restrictive with regard to the future enlargement. Nevertheless, the Process opens a new phase of dialogue between European institutions and agencies on the one hand and the countries in the region on the other. In the summer of 2014, Albania had just acquired candidate status, while the dialogue with Bosnia and Herzegovina resumed in June 2015, after the five-year standstill following the dispute with the European

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Court of Human Rights (Sekulić 2017: 109). After the fourth summit in Trieste, in September 2017, President Juncker announced the probable accession of Serbia and Montenegro in 2025, declaring the two candidate countries to be frontrunners, and did not exclude this possibility for other countries because “a credible perspective of enlargement for the Western Balkans remains necessary for the stability of the continent” on the condition that the rule of law, justice and fundamental rights are fully respected (Juncker 2017). Following the summits in Berlin (2014), Vienna (2015), Paris (2016) and Trieste (2017), the fifth meeting of political actors and civil society participating in the Berlin Process took place in July 2018 in London, the capital of the outgoing country. The last meeting was organized in Poland, in the city of Poznań in July 2019. From the very beginning the dialogue was based on the premise of further Europeanization of the Western Balkan countries in the sense of deeper democratization and rapprochement with the European Union, which presupposed the political and social, as well as economic, empowerment of their citizens. The process of accession as such, in its various regulatory and procedural phases, and in its political and social practices, ideally aspires to a meta-objective: a gradual redefinition and acquisition of European citizenship even before accessing the status of member state: social citizenship acting on individual and group capacities and civic citizenship that makes it possible for the subjects to participate in political life in a European public space under construction (Sekulić 2016: 698). In this sense, the question was about the role the Berlin Process played in the construction of a specific European space-set and about the effective enabling of the citizens in the region to participate in cross- and transnational dialogue about Europe, giving them a voice within the problematic European public space. The Berlin Process, different from the usual policy of enlargement driven by the European Commission and other EU institutions “in format, logic, and functioning” (Marciacq 2017), seems to have had the role of safeguarding the process of accession of the Western Balkans at a time of crisis. After the first phase of expansion towards Central and Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007, the attention that the EU institutions dedicated to the Balkan region had diminished, leading to a “selective, differentiated and rather superficial” Europeanization (Börzel in Elbasani

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2013: 183). A clear strategy for the development of state capacities and citizenship skills in these countries had begun to fail, aggravated by the economic and financial crisis since 2008. The first conference that established the Berlin Process, desired and convened by the German government in summer 2014, took place at a time of particular difficulty for the EU to build a convergent foreign policy of further enlargement towards the East, following the Ukrainian crisis in 2013. In the case of the Western Balkans, where the condition of “limited statehood” and of disputed national sovereignty (Elbasani 2013) remained, a consistent and credible European Union policy, capable of activating social pressure from below and involving and empowering local political elites, was ever more essential. In this sense, we may argue that the constituent conference in Berlin 2014, despite its allegedly apolitical nature (Marjanović Rudan 2017), was animated by the predominantly political objective of offering the governments and citizens of the Balkan countries a boost for membership while at the same time forcing EU institutions and agencies to renew their political commitment in the region. The social and economic conditions in which the majority of people in these countries live cannot be dealt with anymore by palliative strategies and good intentions, and the regional civil society institutions participating in the Berlin Process were saying so clearly. A different approach by the EU institutions is necessary—a dialectical change towards decisive political action, capable of fighting for the accession of these countries, despite the limits of their political elites. Marciacq proposes different strategies in this sense, two of which were highly significant: priority to solidarity rather than competitiveness in a new regional approach with respect to EU enlargement and institutionalization of the role of aspirant countries in European institutions, even before formal membership (Marciacq 2017). The Berlin Process platform could not and should not replace the EC-guided enlargement and accession process, but at the same time it made a possible return to the business-as-usual approach very difficult.

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Integration Without Enlargement? ‘Membership or Nowhere?’ In spring 2018, a few months before the fifth act of the Berlin Process— the London Summit—The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published a report on Western Balkans’ perspective in joining the EU (Western Balkans to 2025). The title of the report proposed an alternative—a brighter future or permanent marginalization—for the countries committed to the process of accession. The complementary scenario of the first one is a membership, while the second leads to nowhere. The EIU is one of the most powerful think tanks in the Western Europe, and the words pronounced here have a particular weight. Yet, we are talking about millions of people who passed during the 1990s through the decade of destruction and devastation of human lives and material resources, of the social and cultural capital, of the institutional and structural heritage of their respective societies, of course, due mostly to their own responsibility or to the responsibility of their elites. Permanent marginalization is not something new for the countries and citizens of this European region. We could argue that the only period in which the so-called Western Balkans (without Albania) gained certain importance on the international scene was during the Yugoslav socialist federative association. Economic parameters of the EIU report confirm it, as none of the former Yugoslav countries has reached and surpassed yet the development level of 1989. The only exception is Albania, whose starting positions were extremely low. On the other hand, the ‘road to the brighter future’ was one of the main common places of the communist rhetoric, the political promise to which generations of citizens of the CEE had to sacrifice so many things. Coming back to the EIU report, the authors have rightly noticed that in the Declaration of the Sofia Summit (May 2018) “the words ‘integration’ and ‘enlargement’ were notably missing from the final document” (p. 4). The tension between ‘integration’ and ‘enlargement’ was further witnessed by the discourse pronounced by the French President Emmanuel Macron who, by arguing that in this historical moment

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energies should be invested in deepening rather than into further widening, expressed the position of the EU during the last decade. There was something deeply wrong in the very basis of the argumentation about the enlargement, which specifically emerges when speaking about the Western Balkans in terms of a “small and relatively poor region” suffering from a “ variety of ills” and composing a high geopolitical risk (EIU Report). If we look at the time frame, and take into account 2003 (Thessaloniki summit) as a starting point, regarding the current situation in 2019, there have been only sixteen  years to re-build the devastated region: the only one without large-scale war destruction was Slovenia, while the other former Yugoslav republics were overwhelmed, if not demolished as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Yet in sixteen years, Slovenia and Croatia became member states, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania are candidate countries, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo have been integrating more and more. Regarding the dynamics of the first waves of integration of the Western Europe, the results seem to be amazing. Unification of the Western Europe took forty-four years—half of them to grow from EC6 to EC9, to gather consensus and build the basic institutions, and the other twenty-­two years to become EU15. It took fifty-six years to sign the first constitutional act— yet not constitution—the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, and another two to make it enter into force (December 2009). Such a complex process needs time and huge social and political energies and cannot be taken for granted in any of its steps and stages. The European integration has been proceeding through gradual and non-linear transformation of its structures and institutions, of its cognitive frames and its practices. The basic principles of the unification need to be constantly and reflectively re-legitimize by the force of persuasion and argumentation, but also by the strength of its specific praxis of Europeanization supposed to produce effectively better human condition for current and future citizens of the Union. If we turn back to the institution-building process of the European Commission regarding the enlargement issue, it is quite interesting to observe the dynamics of the portfolio and directorate construction in different stages. Enlargement as such appeared already in the third Jean Rey’s Commission (1967–1970), which established the portfolio for Foreign Trade, Enlargement and Assistance to Developed Countries. The

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commissioner was Jean-Francois Deniau, who would follow the issue to the end of 1973: in the fourth Franco Malfatti’s Commission (1970–1972) where there was no specific portfolio for Enlargement, but it was managed within the External Relations and Development Aid and in the fifth Sicco Mansholt’s Commission (1972–1973) where the portfolio was re-­ established as Development Aid and Enlargement. Deniau will leave the Commission at the beginning of the sixth Francoise-Xavier Ortoli’s Commission (1973–1977), where Enlargement was again subsumed to the Development Cooperation and Budgets, but at the same time, the first widening came into effect, with the UK, Ireland and Denmark as new members and Norway called out. During Roy Jenkins’ Commission (1977–1981), the portfolio for Enlargement appeared again together with Environment and Nuclear Safety, with Commissioner Lorenzo Natali, an Italian politician, entering the scene to remain up to the end of his life in 1989. He would follow the enlargement during the eighth Gaston Thorn’s Commission (1981–1985), Mediterranean Policy, Enlargement and Information, when Greece joined the EU, and the first Jacque Delors’ Commission (1985–1988), Cooperation, Development Affair and Enlargement, when Spain and Portugal became member states. He died in August 1989, and the second Delors’ Commission (1989–1992) proceeded without a specific Enlargement department, while East Germany was absorbed by the Federal Republic (October 1990). During the third Delors’ Commission (1993–1994), Enlargement was incorporated with External Relations. Delors was accompanied by the Commissioner Hans van den Broek, who prepared the entrance of Sweden, Austria and Finland in 1995, realized during the twelfth Jacques Santer’s Commission (1995–1999). van den Broek continued to work side by side with Santer within the Relations with Central and Eastern Europe, CFSP and External Service Directorate, setting up for the first time the terrain for the new widening perspective towards the Other Europe. The ‘big bang’ happened at the end of the Günter Verheugen’s Commission (1999–2004), where Enlargement was given its own directorate.7 The breaking of the Berlin Wall as well as the implosion of the communist regimes was not predicted: it produced an unexpected chain of events from 1989 onwards, as discussed in Chap. 1. It was a crucial moment in the European history, and the European community

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institutions were not prepared to deal with the situation. The tension between these two essential dimensions for the construction of the EU structures and institutions—the super-complexity of deepening integration processes and normative ties building among the member states and the widening of the community while transforming itself and the others—had no precedent in its history. Consultations regarding the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s happened in conjunction with the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis and its violent turn in 1991. It was still uncertain what path the Soviet Union dissolution would take. At the same time, the European community was entertained by itself, and not so pleasantly. It could be said that the EU elites had neither sufficient knowledge nor enough human capacities and normative instruments to face the concrete problem of the Yugoslav wars once the opportunity to prevent it blurred out, nor did they have sufficient political wisdom to understand and forecast the lasting repercussions of the Yugoslav wars for the unification project of the continent. They needed more time, political knowledge, resources and personal energies. But, we have to remember that it was a new-born EU of only twelve member states, with other three still negotiating. Moreover, the core founding states were in a particularly delicate transition, just to mention Germany facing its own internal problems regarding the unconditioned accession of the German Democratic Republic and Italy stroked by the political crisis named Tangentopoli, which was going to radically change its political structure (Hobsbawm 1994). The conference for former Yugoslavia was held under the umbrella of a phantasmagorical ‘international community’ under the responsibility of the UN, where the European Community/European Union assumed a crucial role from the very beginning (Caplan 2005). In the case of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU politics did not give expected results, and the pacification came after the entrance of the US (Clinton’s administration) in the negotiation process, with two main peace agreements, in Washington (1994) and in Dayton and Paris (1995). The military base in Dayton, Ohio, worked out as a kind of ‘conclave’ to build the conditions for ending the war but not well enough to construe a just peace. The current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be understood as a direct consequence of the way an unsuccessful EU, and then the US, managed

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the crises (Sekulić 2014). The same may be argued for the Kosovo war and NATO intervention in 1999, where the EU as such was put aside, leaving room for a controversial decision to use military force of the Atlantic Alliance without the UN Security Council’s approval. The ‘roadmap’ of the accession was given to all former Yugoslav countries and Albania in 2000 (Zagreb) and in 2003 (Thessaloniki), with Slovenia becoming a member state in 2004. The first Jose Manuel Barroso’s Commission (November 2004–January 2010) confirmed the Directorate General for Enlargement as separate from External Relations and Neighbourhood Policy because of its importance, with Olli Rehn as the commissioner. Other two “Europe’s eastern fringes” (EIU Report 2018: 15)—Bulgaria and Romania—entered the EU in 2007, and the financial crisis exploded in 2008. The widening of Europe entered into a profound fatigue and crisis period and culminated with the Juncker Commission succeeding the second Barroso Commission (2010–2014) at the beginning of 2015: the Directorate General of Enlargement was once again integrated with the Neighbourhood Policy. The consequences of the Yugoslav wars are persistent. The EIU report speaks in 2018 about several ‘ills’ the Western Balkans have been suffering, naming some of them: security risk including bilateral disputes; lasting enmities; threat of Islamic fundamentalism; ethnic fragmentation; low public trust in government; history of conflict; high unemployment; access to small arms; risk of terrorism; human rights abuses; the existence of group grievances; and finally large numbers of refugees and displaced persons (p. 2). At the same time, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, stressed at the Sofia Summit in May 2018 that he saw “no future for the Western Balkans other than the European. There is no alternative.” Brexit has produced a new spectre of European disintegration. The way the EU deals with this challenge will determine the range of possible alternatives for the accession countries and for the EU as such.

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Notes 1. The Covid-19 emergency spread throughout the globe after the final words of the book were written. The way the EU will tackle this crisis and rethink its agency may determine the future of the continent. 2. Treaty on European Union, Article 49: “Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union.” https://eur-lex.europa.eu/ eli/treaty/teu_2012/oj. 3. The self-definition of the EU is expressed mostly through the distinction from what it is not: “The European Union (EU) is not a federation like the United States. Nor is it simply an organisation for co-operation between governments, like the United Nations. It is, in fact, unique. The countries that make up the EU (its ‘member states’) remain independent sovereign nations but they pool their sovereignty in order to gain a strength and world influence none of them could have on their own” (http://europa.eu). 4. See the website of the European Commission: http://ec.europa.eu/ atwork/index_en.htm. 5. The main conditions of the enlargement process are briefly set out on the EC’s website. This caution no longer appears in the text: it was substituted with a more neutral expression during the next update of the Enlargement Directorate General website (http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/policy/ conditions-membership/index_en.htm). 6. Stabilization and Association Partnership (SAP), launched in June 1999 and strengthened at the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003, was proposed as a special policy tool for the ‘progressive partnership’ with the Western Balkan countries. 7. The dynamics of the portfolios and Enlargement Directorate construction in different stages was constructed with reference to Cremona (2003), Cruz (2009) and Pasquinucci (2013).

Bibliography Archibugi, D., Held, D., & Kohler, M. (Eds.). (1998). Re-imagining Political Community. Cambridge: Polity Press. Balibar, E. (2004). Noi, cittadini d’Europa? Le frontiere, lo stato, il popolo. Roma: Manifestolibri.

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Balibar, E. (2010). At the Borders of Citizenship: A Democracy in Translation? European Journal of Social Theory, 13, 315–322. Beck, U. (2012). La crisi dell’Europa. Bologna: il Mulino. Beck, U., & Grande, E. (2007). L’Europa cosmopolita. Società e politica nella seconda modernità. Roma: Carocci. Bellamy, R. (2006). The Challenge of European Union. In J.  S. Dryzek, B.  Honig, & A.  Phillips (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 245–261). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benhabib, S. (Ed.). (1996). Democracy and Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Benhabib, S., Shapiro, I., & Petranovic, D. (Eds.). (2007). Identities, Affiliations and Allegiances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bordignon, F. (2009). L’Europa unita … dall’antipolitica. Napoli: Liguori Editore. Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Brubaker, R. (2009). Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 21–42. Caplan, R. (2005). Europe and Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cremona, M. (Ed.). (2003). The Enlargement of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crouch, C. (1999). Social Change in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cruz, J. (2009). The Evolution of the Commission. In The Next Commission: Doing More and Better, Challenge Europe, Issue 19, June 2009, pp. 86–105. Delanty, G. (1995). Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality. New  York: St Martin’s Press. Delanty, G., & Rumford, C. (2005). Rethinking Europe. London: Routledge. Della Porta, D., & Mattoni, A. (Eds.). (2014). Spreading Protest. Social Movements in Times of Crisis. Colchester: ECPR Press. Devrim, D., & Schulz, E. (2009). Enlargement Fatigue in the European Union: From Enlargement to Many Unions. Real Insituto Elcano Working Paper. Elbasani, A. (2013). European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans. Europeanization or Business as Usual? London and New  York: Routledge. Fabbrini, S. (2004). L’Unione Europea come democrazia composita? Rivista italiana di scienza politica, XXXIV(1), 13–42.

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Fabbrini, S. (2007). Compound Democracies: Why the United States and Europe Are Becoming Similar? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Favell, A. (2014). The Fourth Freedom: Theories of Migration and Mobilities in ‘Neo-Liberal’ Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 17(3), 275–289. Foradori, P., Piattoni, S., & Scartezzini, R. (2007). European Citizenship: Theories, Arenas, Levels. Bloomington, IN; Baden-Baden: Indiana University; Nomos. Fossum, J.  E. (2009). Citizenship, Democracy and the Public Sphere. In C.  Rumford (Ed.), The Sage Handbook of European Studies. London: Sage Publications. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London and New York: Verso. Guiraudon, V., Ruzza, C., & Trenz, H.  J. (Eds.). (2015). Europe’s Prolonged Crisis. The Making or the Unmaking of the Political Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J., & Derrida, J. (2003). February 15, or What Binds the European Together. A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy Beginning in the Core of Europe. Constellations, 10(3), 291–297. Hay, C., & Smith, N. (2005). Horses for Courses? The Political Discourse of Globalisation and European Integration in the UK and Ireland. West European Politics, 28(1), 124–158. Hobsbawm, E. (1994). Age of Extremes – The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. New York: Random House. Inglehardt, R. (1970). Cognitive Mobilization and European Identity. Comparative Politics, 3(1), 45–70. Jørgensen, K. E. (1999). The Social Construction of the Acquis Communautaire: A Cornerstone of the European Edifice. European Integration online Papers (EIoP), 3(5). Retrieved from http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1999-005a.htm. Juncker, J.C. (2017). President Jean-Claud Juncker’s State of the Union Address 2017, Brussels, 13 September 2017. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_17_3165 Küçük, B. (2010). Diversity and the European Public Sphere. The Case of Turkey. Eurosphere Country Reports. Retrieved from http://www.eurosphere. uib.no/knowledgebase/workingpapers.htm. Marciacq, F. (2017). The EU and the Western Balkans After the Berlin Process. Sarajevo: Soe Dialog Südostereuropa.

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Marjanović, R. A. (Ed.). (2017). Reconciliation Through the Berlin Process: The Role of RECOM. Policy Brief. Publikum. Melucci, A., & Diani, M. (1992). Nazioni senza stato. Milano: Feltrinelli. Noutcheva, G., & Aydin-Düzgit, S. (2012). Lost in Europeanization. The Western Balkans and Turkey. West European Politics, 35(1), 59–78. Offe, C. (1996). Modernity and the State. East, West. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pasquinucci, D. (2013). I confini e l’identità. Il Parlamento Europeo e gli allargamenti della CEE 1961–1986. Pavia: Jean Monnet Center of Pavia. Reka, B. (2010). The Geopolitics and Techniques of EU Enlargement. Brussels: Aspect. Rumford, C. (2008). Cosmopolitan Spaces. Europe, Globalization, Theory. London and New York: Routledge. Sassen, S. (2014, May 8). Abbiamo chiuso un sogno in un bunker. la Repubblica. Sekulić, T. (2014). Od razorenog ka otvorenom društvu (From Broken to Open Society). Sarajevo: Rabic. Sekulić, T. (2016). Constituting the Social Basis of the EU. Reflections from the European Margins. Partecipazione e conflitto, ix(2), 691–716. Sekulić, T. (2017). Bosnia Erzegovina, l’Unione Europea e l’arte di vivere insieme. Sul ventennio degli Accordi di Dayton. In G. Motta (Ed.), A venti anni dagli Accordi di Dayton (pp. 93–118). Canterano and Roma: Aracne. Soysal, Y. (1994). Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Soysal, Y. (2001). Changing Boundaries of Participation in European Public Spheres: Reflections on Citizenship and Civil Society. In K. Eder & B. Giesen (Eds.), European Citizenship Between National Legacies and Postnational Projects (pp. 159–179). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soysal, Y. (2002). Locating Europe. European Societies, 4(3), 265–284. Szołucha, A. (2010). The EU and Enlargement Fatigue: Why Has the European Union Not Been Able to Counter Enlargement Fatigue? Journal of Contemporary European Research, 6(1), 1–16. Retrieved from http://www. jcer.net/ojs/index.php/jcer/article/view/…/…. The Economist Intelligence Unit Report. (2018). Western Balkans to 2025. A Brighter Future or Permanent Marginalisation? Trenz, H.-J. (2011). Social Theory and European Integration. In A. Favell & V.  Guiraudon (Eds.), Sociology of the European Union (pp.  193–214). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Van Ingelgom, V. (2014). Integrating Indifference. A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of the European Integration. Colchester: ECPR Press. Wallace, H. (1993). Deepening or Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC.  In S.  Garcia (Ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy. London: Pinter. de Wilde, P., Michailidou, A., & Trenz, H.-J. (2013). Contesting Europe. Exploring Euroscepticism in Online Media Coverage. Colchester: ECPR Press. Wimmer, A. (Ed.). (2004). Facing Ethnic Conflicts. Toward a New Realism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Zängle, M. (2004). The European Union Benchmark Experience. From Euphoria to Fatigue? European Integration On-line Papers, 8 (5). Zielonka, J. (2006). Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

3 New Axes of Integration and the Constitution of the European Polity and Society

Is There Any Such Thing as a European Society? More than anything else, the year 1989 opened up a horizon of hope for the citizens of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).1 Thirty years later, the democratic and liberal transformation of these societies—aspired to as a project for a better immediate future, constructed day by day, and no longer a utopian fallacy to which everyday life must be sacrificed—is proving much more arduous than was imaginable at the beginning. The two Europes, West and East, are now strongly united in the crisis of a European democratic model and its ability to produce and distribute wealth for its citizens whilst, at the same time, safeguarding the ideal of social justice (Delanty 2014). The deep-lying reasons for this crisis are too easily dismissed by governments (right-wing and left-wing) or by the EU elites, and the new (neoliberal) policy choices seek legitimacy as the indispensable and inevitable means of meeting the challenges of globalization, thereby gradually reducing many important achievements by Western democracy in the twentieth century. The main outcome with damaging long-term consequences concerns the human rights and fundamental © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_3

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freedoms of people embraced by national state/EU citizenship—with differentiated participation from full to zero citizenship—and the institution of the welfare state in Europe’s labour-based societies. The new democracies have proved even more vulnerable as the socialist welfare state has been dismantled and scrapped as a remnant of the communist regime, leaving its citizens without a minimum of social security (Offe 1997) and exposed to the impact of a kind of Marxian primitive accumulation of capital without real control by the weak democratic institutions of the new states: a kind of ‘rebuilding a ship on a sea’ (Elster et al. 1998). Consequently, the ‘future’ as a real and realistic project of social action, of ‘acting in concert’ (Arendt 1958), seems to have become increasingly opaque and illegible. Western European political, journalistic and even sociological discourse on the ‘future’ involves another social category that has become opaque: young people without a future or deprived of a future. More than a real concern for the younger generation, this discourse reveals the profound inability of political elites and intellectuals in Europe, and more in general of European civil society (or societies), to meet the new social challenges and to transcend outdated patterns of conceiving and governing the common space (the nation-state and its citizens) still based on the presumption of ethnic, national, religious, cultural separation and confinement. Therborn spoke of the European crisis started in 2008 in terms of the devastation, among other things, of a “large portion of the youth cohort (…) outside education, training and employment”, especially in the Southern and Eastern European countries (Therborn 2014: 477).2 As a consequence, the ‘outraged young’ have become a major social force of resistance through the civic protests that have erupted in recent years around the globe, and particularly in the European countries most affected by the crisis, or in North and South America, the Arab Mashrek and the Middle East, in some cases producing violent conflicts and even war (Hessel 2010, 2011; Kaldor and Selchow 2013). However, a profound social discontent flowing as a slow and steady underground process since the late 1980s has brought to light new social rifts in European societies, mixing Western and Eastern patterns of social inequality. The new movements, not yet socially definable, seem to be the major indicators of the ongoing transformation. The main players in these

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spreading protests, characterized by their transnational mobilization (Della Porta and Mattoni 2014; Mayer et al. 2016) consist of newly pauperized, socially indeterminate middle classes, ‘crucially including students’ (Therborn 2014: 10), and in some cases, particularly the post-­communist countries, of a completely disempowered working class  (Arbatli and Rosenberg 2017; Bieber and Brentin 2018). In terms of its democratic deficit and the crisis (economic, financial, political and social) of the European project (Beck 2012; Habermas 2012; Outhwaite 2014), the weakness of a supra- and transnational Europe is apparent in this complex situation, with no clear horizon of either an imminent future or a distant one. Today it is not so clear what the European Union is, as the exit/constraint procedures have to be developed and experimented with Brexit. Until now, the moratorium on further enlargement has not stopped negotiations on different levels with several countries committed to the EU. Nevertheless, whilst these formal procedures of ‘enlargement’ towards ‘accession’ may be observed and investigated using more traditional methods of analysis, because they are fairly transparent and well defined considering the institutions and norms, roles and responsibilities of the actors involved and more linear and predictable with regard to the flow of actions, the complementary processes of ‘integration’ versus ‘Europeanization’ are less visible (if not opaque), resistant to definition, fluid and unpredictable in their interconnectedness. The organizational and institutional structure of the EU, or the way it operates at different levels, may be criticized, even fiercely, because the object of such criticism is a concrete set of problems: the EU’s financial and monetary austerity policies, for example, or its weak foreign policies. This is not the case when integration and Europeanization are considered: in these cases we, as social scientists, must deal with truly profound societal changes correlated to the emergence of a new historical epoch, not only post-modern but beyond modernity, yet rooted in the aftermath of the modern organization of social life. Because Europe is a locus of multiple contradictory transformations, Europeanization may be seen as a reframing, re-­ domaining and recoupling process (Rumford 2014) that requires a complex, dynamic and troubled translation (Balibar 2010). Integration as Europeanization cannot be observed directly and requires serious methodological consideration. Exploring Europeanization

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as just ‘harmonization’ with a set of (Western) values, principles, norms and forms of representation (Foradori et al. 2007) is not only a complex but also disputable aim; above all, it is not enough. All these elements are constantly re-configured within the dynamics between the ‘European sphere’—defined in terms of the EU’s geopolitical and economic interests and influences—and a ‘European space’ which frames a flow of interaction and communication among its different parts. These parts are conflictual but at the same time open to mutual understanding and the creation of meaning, which builds new forms of belonging and solidarity, and which potentially embraces both its actual and future citizens. If ‘harmonization’ is related to the Copenhagen principles, it is not difficult to achieve a discursive consensus on principles among collective and individual social actors throughout the European space. But whether the political and social experience of citizens is really based on and gives life to those principles in day-to-day interactions and practices is another question. The Europeanization process is not unidirectional and linear. Although it is sometimes simplified into a mere transfer of achievements already accomplished in the core EU states, this simply does not correspond to the truth. European societies are at present highly turbulent, and the idea of harmonization as such does not communicate the complexity of different dimensions of Europeanization inside the EU, expressed in terms of ‘deepening’ and then also in its ‘widening’ dimension (Wallace 1993). Hence the question of whether there is any such thing as a European society proves to be a conceptual and methodological one, as the critique of methodological nationalism has partly demonstrated (Beck and Grande 2006; Chernilo 2006; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). The modern theory of society was nationally framed, from the political philosophy of the Enlightenment to the theories of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel and other classics of sociology and of political and social theory, as an essentially modern science, which built its concepts and categories in order to describe, comprehend and interpret the new social reality of the past two centuries. Yet the notion of nation, related to the state, remains the central tool with which to explain European society defined as: (a) the sum of the national state societies of its members, and, conditionally, of the aspirant state societies; (b) a supranational society of

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the EU (from six to twenty-eight); (c) a transnational society of Europe in terms of the cosmopolitan Europe as described in Beck and Grande (2006) and in Rumford (2008). Thus the notion of European integration through enlargement and accession assumes different meanings: becoming an EU member state also means being part of the EU society and a constitutive element of a transnational European society. In its more visible dimension, integration may be seen as a process of gradually redefining the borders and boundaries among states and nations through formal and informal procedural and normative redefinition of the barriers to full citizenship. Although it does not exhaust all the dimensions of the process, the gradual redefinition and acquisition of social and civic citizenship through the process of negotiation that precedes full political membership is a core element of the integration. Time is its fundamental structural component, because multiple constituent elements and dimensions of citizenship must be discussed during the accession process: status and rights, but also belonging and identity. Others must be constructed, acquired and even learned, because the political, social and civic empowerment supported by access to the EU’s resources passes through the acquisition and building of new patterns of democratic participation, and it needs to be embodied in new social, cultural and political practices. The complementary spatial dimension of this constant questioning and discussion regards the public space not only of the aspirant countries but also of the actual members (Bauböck 2010; Bee and Scartezzini 2009; Fossum 2009; Foradori et  al. 2007; Soysal 2001). The social and civic rights, duties and liberties of the candidate (and potential candidate) countries’ citizens, as limited forms of EU citizenship without the right to vote, still enable them to participate in the political dimension of opinion forming (Urbinati 2014). The aspiration to become part of the EU may act as a powerful incentive with regard to capabilities (Appadurai 2011; De Leonardis in Appadurai 2011; Sen 1999).

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Ethnography of the Process from the Accession Perspective The elections of the European leadership in 2014 were held in the context of a deep EU economic and financial crisis, with negative political and social repercussions at various levels. The tension among its member states and its supranational institutions continued to undermine the democratic structure of its governance, dominated by the neoliberal and neo-functionalist approaches. Populism and other forms of anti-politics have entered the political arena throughout Europe, generating negative effects at the EU level. The new elections in 2019 were held in an even more tense situation, regarding the new power constellation in many member states. Beyond growing populism and nationalism, another threat to democracy—knowledge-based government by technocrats as an ‘epistemic’ response to the crisis (Urbinati 2014)—continued to be proposed as a solution. Increasing economic and social inequalities, major social polarization and decreased efficiency of social justice mechanisms that have characterized post-communist transitional societies for the last thirty years are now shared with many European countries, in particular with the Mediterranean ones, without a strong alternative (socialist-­ liberal?) political option in opposition to the neoliberal one. Furthermore, a specific model of identity conflicts, based on claims to the right to self-­ determination, has been radicalized in recent years as another indicator of the current tension between state and nation, even in core European states like the UK or Spain, intensified after Brexit. However, in 2014 the leadership of the European Commission imposed a formal five-year moratorium on the enlargement process for the first time in the history of the European Union, although a number of applicant countries, with the status of either candidates or potential candidates for membership, had been undergoing the procedure at different levels. This analysis deals with the countries denominated by the European Commission as the Western Balkans (WB), which firstly included Croatia, becoming a member country in 2013, the candidate countries of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania, and the

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potential candidate countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo∗, the last one with a special status. The entire region of the Western Balkans remains highly conflictual with its specific ‘troubles and issues’ that reached its peak throughout the 1990s. Since it is still intrinsically European, it should be considered not just as a group of states involved in a procedure of accession but also as a specific European space-set in its specific supranational and transnational dimension. The constructiveness of the social reality here finds its evidence, and the process of European accession and integration is fundamental for the creation of a range of possible futures for the citizens and societies of this part of Europe (Petrović 2012). The European Union is constantly challenged here by its own goal of democratization and Europeanization of the WB’s transitional societies—post-communist, post-Yugoslav and post-conflict—as a kind of a specular reflection of its own deficit of ‘deepening’. Sedelmeier spoke about this difficulty in terms of the stress of an unprecedented EU engagement in the ‘adjustment efforts’ of the Central and Eastern European states, because ‘a key novelty in eastern enlargements’ was that the new candidate countries were in the process of post-communist transition and not yet ready to enforce the Acquis Communautaire (Sedelmeier 2011: 5). Notwithstanding the great efforts made by the EU accession institutions and programmes, and although many goals have been achieved in a number of CEE countries, a large part of what remains of the Balkans still does not fulfil all membership criteria. It is thus legitimate to ask why in these cases, including Turkey, the EU device of conditionality as a basic means of the accession process has not been effective. After several years of ‘enlargement fatigue’, a five-year moratorium may be interpreted as a kind of admission of failure with regard to the applicant states. Public opinion in the EU members seems to be indifferent to many other European issues (Van Ingelgom 2014) but is still quite negatively involved in the widening perspective. As Hobolt shows in her study, a positive attitude towards further enlargement has been decreasing significantly since 2010 in all member states, but it is radically low in creditor states of the Eurozone, where citizens, especially those with high levels of social and cultural capital, much prefer the deepening dimension of the

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European integration to the widening one (Hobolt 2014).3 Many questions could be raised here: what did this ‘five-year break from enlargement’ mean for the European integration process? What might be its impact on the ‘three strategic benefits of enlargement’: making Europe a safer place, improving the quality of people’s lives and making Europeans more prosperous? (European Commision Strategy Paper 2014). The problem concerns the risk of ‘removing’ the commitment to the applicant countries as if the moratorium could (or should) freeze the present political, economic and social conditions of those societies. Botta and Schwellnus have demonstrated that the effectiveness of EU conditionality decreases during the accession end-game, that is when the date of accession is fixed, in terms of a relaxation effect (Botta and Schwellnus 2014: 5). Other empirical evidence shows that the widening of the EU has had a ‘catalyst effect on deepening’ in terms of the paradox of unattended consequences (Heidbreder 2014). What happens to this effect if the process is put on hold? Some of the main issues relating to the WB societies—ethnic-based nationalism and populism; the problem of a democratic representation model able to resolve the tension between nationhood and citizenship (Hayden-Uvalic 1995); the difficulty of defining the political subject of sovereignty (state or nation/people), which was fatal for former Yugoslavia (Bianchini et al. 2004), if associated with the principle of the right to self-determination, the inclusion of minority groups as equal citizens and the respect of their fundamental human rights—can all be considered as similar to the problems regarding the construction of a supranational and transnational Europe (Sekulić 2014). It is as if the communication problem of translation among these different European space-sets constantly produces a kind of residual dimension of Europeanization, both in EU and WB countries, something that escapes the attention of the actors and institutions involved. In this sense, ethnography proves to be a tool of sociological research better able to grasp ‘what is hiding beyond the text’.

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Why Western Balkans? I have chosen to investigate enlargement to the Western Balkans, and accession of the WB countries, for several reasons. First, the label attached to these seven countries seems to have been arbitrarily selected, because there is no occasion in modern history in which five of the six former Yugoslav republics and Albania have formed any kind of a regional or political community4; neither is this the case today. This again generates the balkanization discourse related to Said’s orientalism, which, since the end of the 1800s, has been constructing Europe and its ‘Other’ as a part of the foundation and consolidation of the (West)European nation-­states, with the risk of again producing ‘distorted knowledge’ (Anderson 1983; Bjelić and Savić 2002; Herzfeld 1987; Outhwaite 2009; Petrović 2009, 2012; Said 1978; Todorova 1997; Wolff 1994). The choice of the label may imply that the WB is what remains of the Balkans, as Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and in some interpretations Hungary and Slovenia, or Croatia, already form part of the European Union: the last piece of a puzzle to be Westernized. Moreover, and more importantly, these countries have similar backgrounds because all of them are post-communist states in which the democratic transition and consolidation process was characterized by the explosion of violent conflicts in the 1990s, albeit in different forms. Six of the seven countries (except Albania) were part of former Yugoslavia, from 1918 to 1941 as a Kingdom and from 1943 to 1991 as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. These conflicts, not yet resolved, have raised numerous important questions on a global level that cannot be analysed here. Examining the role of the EU in the Yugoslav and Albanian crisis seems to me much more relevant to this inquiry. The Yugoslav crisis took its most violent form after the first free and democratic elections held in the republics as single federal units in 1990 and 1991, with the Slovenian war (June 1991); the wars in Croatia (1991–1995), in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and in Kosovo (1998–1999); and in the strong tensions among ethno-national communities in Macedonia (2000–2001). Many different interpretations of the conflict’s causes and character have been proposed by scholars in the past

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two decades.5 I see it as a consequence of the ethno-nationalist movements’ demands for the re-negotiation of different levels of sovereignty regarding the symbolic and material redistribution of power, territory and public goods among the main former Yugoslav groupings. The rhetoric of the new political parties in regard to EU integration was used in their programme proposals from the very beginning, on the eve of the first elections, as one of the reasons—especially for the northern republics—for separation from the Yugoslav federation but also as a way to escape from the Balkans’ burden and ‘destiny’ (Lindstrom 2003; Močnik 2002; Velikonja 2005). On the other hand, the European Community—from 1992 onwards, the European Union—almost immediately took part in the conflict as the main actor in the problem-solving process, yet before the spiral of violence had been triggered. It was considered an internal European matter, as affirmed by Jacques Delors on the eve of the first peace mission to former Yugoslavia in June 1991, but only within the European domain of interest and influence (Pirjevec 2002: 49; Caplan 2005). Nevertheless, it was not until the US assumed leadership, under the Clinton administration, that some kind of solution was found, with the Washington (1994) and Dayton (1995) agreements and NATO’s intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 and in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo in 1999. The weakness of the EU’s foreign policies became apparent in the 1990s, one of the most significant decades in modern history, as argued by Hobsbawm (1994). It seems that Western European ethnocentrism obstructed the ability of the EU’s elites at that time to see the Yugoslav crisis as ‘their own concern’, from the perspective of its fundamental principles and the enlargement project. The violent conflict on the ‘dark side of Europe’ emerged parallel to the internal negotiation among the Community members, still only twelve of them, on the Maastricht Treaty, one of the crucial steps in the constitution of the EU as a polity. It is likely that this kind of complete split between the two agendas—the priority given to the internal EU questions over engagement in the resolution of the Yugoslav conflict—was due to the Union’s insufficient institutional and political capacity in the 1990s to deal with such a violent crisis. However, the deficit of appropriate strategies and devices for the

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resolution of this type of conflict still persists on both a European and a global level. Another question is whether the revolutions of the 1990s in Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe really created democratic political and social foundations and what kind of societies they have produced, as I discussed in Chap. 1 of this work. In the case of former Yugoslavia, owing to their ethno-nationalist character, these revolutions created limited democracies, not only because they pursued the aim of nation-state building and not democratization (nationhood versus citizenship) but also because the new elites used both the (ethno-)national aim and violent means for limited particularistic purposes—as exemplified by the appropriation of the national wealth through the manipulation of state and social property privatization processes. Although their claims were cloaked in the recognition discourse, they failed to produce more social justice based on another kind of redistribution of economic, political and symbolic resources. This is confirmed by analysis of the European Commission’s Progress Reports, which in many cases speak of corruption and links between politicians and organized crime; the problems of justice relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide; rights of minorities; general deficit of democratic political culture and so on. As Azmanova put it in her article on post-communist transformation, it was a transition without emancipation (Azmanova 2009). Time has passed, and quite serious situations of conflict, like Kosovo’s relationship with Serbia, are still addressed using more pacific tools. The democratic systems of Western Balkan countries have consolidated, at least in their electoral form, as different political parties and coalitions have received mandates from one election to the next. The attitude of the parties and public opinion towards integration into the European Union is similar to the EU27 average and oscillations in all these countries, except in Croatia, where it was lower until its entrance into the EU. Hence, the question here is, why do they not meet the requirements more efficiently? Do the EU institutions and actors also bear some responsibility? And if so for what reasons? With regard to the former Yugoslav republics and Albania, mention may be made of several possible factors that have slowed down the process of democratization and the building of institutional capabilities. The

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first is the economic, political and social condition of these societies in the late 1980s, before the great transformation. For example, in the 1980s only Croatia had a GDP above the Yugoslav average, which was already far from Western European standards, while the rates of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro were two-thirds; Kosovo’s GDP was four times lower, and the situation in Albania was even worse. The transition period—even in Slovenia, where the war was limited to one month of fighting between the new Slovenian Army and the retreating Yugoslav Army in June 1991—did not significantly improve the quality of life and living standards with respect to the late 1980s. In Croatia, and especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia, the devastation of public and private goods and properties was enormous. The legacy of the war also affected the way in which the peace agreements were settled. The Dayton Peace Agreement, for example, created a political structure and administrative division in Bosnia and Herzegovina that constantly obstructs pacification of the country’s political life and efficient governance. In all these countries, the voices that emphasize the issue of ethno-national belonging are quite strong, and re-building trust among the national communities proceeds with difficulty. The territorial and sovereignty conflict between Serbia and Kosovo is still unresolved, and the tensions concerning the Albanian community in Macedonia often explode into violent incidents. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, the presence of the High Representative Office of the international community and of the Special Representative of the European Union has set constraints on national sovereignty that in the long term risk chronically de-responsibilizing the local political leadership. Thus, the causes of the current situation in this part of Europe also reside in the choice of the European and UN strategy of conflict resolution in the 1990s, which constantly privileged partition between groupings instead of the creation of alternative forms of democratic political relations among the Yugoslav constituent nations and minorities over the entire territory. Basically, both local political forces and the European elite gave priority to ethno-national identities, instead of seeking an alternative solution based on common citizenship of the republics, which might have created a kind of political community in which recognition of the specific rights of groupings did not clash with the political and

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social rights of the citizens—exactly the kind of polity that the European Union aspires to become. Despite all these, the process of integration into the European Union has released great social and political energies in all of the Western Balkans states. Even with negative variables on both sides—the bad initial positions of these countries and their slow institutional capabilities building, combined with a democratic deficit of the EU’s institutions and its vulnerability to the nation-state interests of its members—it could be said that the basic commitment had never faltered. It is difficult to determine whether the alternative strategy, invoked by one part of the interlocutors, of the ‘WB package’ accession would produce more effective results on the societal and political transformation of these countries. That model had already two precedents: in 2004 with the block-accession of eight EEC countries (with Malta and Cyprus) and in 2007 with Bulgaria and Romania. Serious criticism concerning the fulfilment of the accession criteria was raised in the following period, especially with regard to Bulgaria and Romania. However, such a political decision—of admitting accession even if all criteria were not fulfilled—would give the integration of the former Yugoslav countries and Albania the character of an exceptional event, with all the possible and imaginable consequences. A large majority of the officials of the national governments and the EC interviewed in the first period (2009–2012) were opposed to this hypothetical option and affirmed that the principle of single nation-state candidature had to be respected. The main arguments of the officials underscored that the integration procedures, despite all their strong barriers, were designed to create substantial partnership among all EU member states based on mutual responsibility. On the other hand, there were many critical voices, mostly among the intellectuals, who insisted that a global solution to the complexity of the Western Balkans context and situation was the best one possible. According to some of them, ‘package’ integration would reduce the opposition and conflict among the main groupings present on the territory, particularly in those cases where they result in being divided by the actual geopolitical boundaries. Softening of the borders would thus produce positive effects reinforcing regional economic, political and social cooperation and networks. According to these opinions, the ‘country by country’ integration pattern could exacerbate the demands of

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particular situations, as in the case of the Albanians (divided among Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia) or the Serbs (as a constituent nation in both Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Croats (as a constituent nation in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), for ethno-national unification, with the risk of provoking new violent conflicts (Brubaker 1996). The enlargement of the EU to the Western Balkans is one of the main challenges to the European integration as a project. If ‘Europeanness’ is related to this space of day-by-day construction situated between the two questions ‘Who belongs?’ and ‘Why should we make part of the EU?’, then Europeanization itself cannot be understood as a unilateral practice of ‘good patterns’ transmission from centre to periphery. The ‘making of today’s Europe’ depends, of course, on the capacity of persuasion of its universalistic principles, but also, and much more, on the ability of its actors to hear each other’s voices and jointly build new institutional devices for conflict resolution at different levels. As one of my Macedonian interviewees stressed on a rainy October day in 2010: For me the journey is what matters, whether you formally start the negotiations or you come to them later, or whether will take many years until we finally reach certain solutions that will allow us to call ourselves a European Union member. For me that is less important, as if the EU and NATO membership were a goal in itself … Because again, with all EU values and everything implemented and still without formal membership, we’ll have a better life. (Informant 11, NFO—MK, Skopje 2010, M)

 uropean Integration and Enlargement E as a Methodological Question An ethnography of the European integration process certainly cannot be described as ‘getting out on the street and looking around’, as it has to deal with diverse and multiple problems (Vidali 2013), regarding a multitude of different sites (Burawoy et  al. 2000; Hannerz 2003). While using the reflexive ethnography approach, it also has to be a methodology “able to reveal the effective practices of the social actors in their social,

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professional and day-by-day contexts” (Dal Lago and De Biasi 2002: VIII), making institutions ethnographically accessible (Smith 2005). Finally, the critique of methodological nationalism is considered fundamental for research of this kind (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). The operationalization of the research concerns the period a year before the establishment of  the second Barroso Commission (October 2008– October 2014) to the end of Juncker Commission (November 2014– November 2019). European integration as a process is the focus of the study, and the structural component of time is considered as crucial. The first step consisted in structural and normative mapping of the process of integration of the aspiring members in its institutional dimension, regarding the limited negotiation space framed by enlargement/accession procedures effectively based on the conditionality principle. The critical reading of the normative barriers to full EU membership was based on a critical discourse analysis approach. The second step of inquiry focused on relations, communicative practices and flows among the actors more or less formally involved in the process of accession, constructing and re-­ constructing its frame day by day. The semi-structured interviews were held in two periods: the first one from 2009 to 2012, the second from 2018 to 2019. The informants were chosen from different categories of actors: those with seats in Brussels (Directorate General for the Enlargement of the EC and the Missions and Embassies of the WB countries) and in the capitals of the WB countries (state institutions such as parliament and government; Delegations of the EU; NGOs, selected groups of intellectuals). The main initial purpose was to investigate their “social positions and trajectories (…) and their symbolic conflicts about meaning, legitimacy and social power” (Favell and Guiraudon 2011). The starting question was if and how the day-to-day interaction of actors involved in the process of integration had been building the institutional and social texture of an inclusive European space. The investigation problematized the ‘transformative power of Europe’ and its ability to deal with the troubles and issues related to the highly conflictual societies of the Western Balkans, intent on effectively empowering the local actors. Finally, as transformation and Europeanization are understood here as a specific dialectical and reflexive practice engaging all the actors involved, although in asymmetric power positions, the analysis aimed to outline if

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and how the ongoing changes in this complex process, concerning specifically the accession of the WB countries, affected the democratic transnationalization of the European Union. Citizenship was considered to be more social than civil and political (Isin 2008; Isin and Saward 2013), because the diverse steps of each single country’s ‘harmonization’ with the EU standards were supposed to affect, concretely and progressively, the rights, duties and liberties of citizens. The network of people directly and indirectly involved in the accession procedures has been constantly growing in extent, especially since the stage in which negotiations have been open. Nonetheless, the effective group of people connected in the network remained circumscribed even in the period of greatest intensity. The situation was of course more indicative for the officials of the EC Directorate General accountable for the enlargement and the staff of the EU Delegation to every single country. The dynamics of communication within these networks were all quite similar and, in a certain sense, with a low impact on the public opinion of each single country and an almost non-existent impact on the public opinion of the EU, except through the production of (negative) news from time to time. The involvement of civil society through the NGO sector, and in some cases other civic actors like trade unions or representatives of religious communities in periodic consultations with governmental and parliamentary institutions in these countries, still seemed insufficient for involving the majority of citizens in a public debate on European integration. In many cases, the strained scientific capacities of the academic and research communities in these countries, struck by a severe structural deficit of resources for a long period of transition and therefore non-competitive at an international level, produced limited knowledge about the respective society. The basic European funds offered to these countries for a long period regarded mostly the frame of Tempus projects based on the transfer of knowledge from West to East, instead of common research projects with equal opportunities for participation (Sekulić 2011). The statistical instrument of the Eurobarometer progressively included incoming candidate countries, yet no standardized comparative information about these countries was available for many years. The Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance funds often remained unexploited, as the requirements for project proposals established by the

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European Commission were perceived as too complex and indecipherable by the local actors. The list of difficulties, both within the context(s) and regarding the researcher challenges, is long and remains open for the new voices. In the next chapter I will try to define in detail my research choices and design the ethnography and a critical discourse approach analysis employed in the enterprise.

Notes 1. As Adam Michnik wrote in an article for the twentieth anniversary of the ‘velvet revolution’, it was an ‘Annus mirabilis’ (Michnik 2009). 2. Therborn also referred to Ireland as one of the “Southern victims of the Anglo-Saxon financial crisis” (Therborn 2014). 3. Hobolt speaks about three main fears related to the negative attitude towards the widening dimension compared with the deepening one “concerning the moderating effect of the national context”: fears of an economic crisis as stronger for the citizens of the Eurozone countries; fears of paying more to the EU budget as stronger in net contributor countries; fears of small states losing power in the EU (Hobolt 2014: 669). 4. Neither was the entire territory of former Yugoslavia and of Albania part of the same political entity during the centuries of the Ottoman Empire’s presence (Glenny 1999). 5. See Bianchini (1993, 2009); Bougarel (1996); Doubt (2000); Hayden (1996); Richter and Bacchi (2003).

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Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Vintage Books. Sedelmeier, U. (2011). Europeanisation in New Member and Candidate States. Living Reviews in European Governance, 6(1), 1–52. Sekulić, T. (2011). L’università e le integrazioni europee: le nuove sfide dell’agire accademico. In E.  Rebeggiani (Ed.), La Minerva ferita. Crisi e prospettive dell’università in Italia (pp. 123–134). Napoli: Liguori editore. Sekulić, T. (2014). Od razorenog ka otvorenom društvu. Sarajevo: Rabic. (From Broken to Open Society). Sen, A. (1999). Commodities and Capabilities. New Delhi: OUP India. Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. A Sociology for People. Oxford: AltaMira Press. Soysal, Y. (2001). Changing Boundaries of Participation in European Public Spheres: Reflections on Citizenship and Civil Society. In K. Eder & B. Giesen (Eds.), European Citizenship Between National Legacies and Postnational Projects (pp. 159–179). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Therborn, G. (2014). The Fractured Social Space of Europe. European Societies, 16(4), 477–479. Todorova, M. (1997). Imagining the Balkans. Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press. Urbinati, N. (2014). Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van Ingelgom, V. (2014). Integrating Indifference. A Comparative, Qualitative and Quantitative Approach to the Legitimacy of the European Integration. Colchester: ECPR Press. Velikonja, M. (2005). Eurosis. A Critic of the New Eurocentrism. Ljubljana: Peace Institute. Vidali, D. S. (2013). The Ethnography of Process: Excavating and Re-generating Civic Engagement and Political Subjectivity. Ethnography, 15(1), 12–31. Wallace, H. (1993). Deepening Or Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC.  In S.  Garcia (Ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy. London: Pinter. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. Wolff, L. (1994). Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

4 European Integration on the Field: Framing the Western Balkans

 nalysing Patterns and Practices A of Enlargement to the Western Balkans as a Methodological Question: Is There Room for an Ethnography of the Process? The institutional ethnography proposed and inspired by Dorothy E. Smith allowed me to make sense a posteriori to what I have done in the field during the first years of the research. It was a real learning practice, as both methodology and interpretative tools evolved with the research process and relevant concepts were gradually discovered (Oberhuber and Krzyżanowski 2008: 189). Focusing on everyday work of people institutionally involved within the frame of the enlargement/accession process, operating in different sites and engaged in the creation of a complex ‘practice bound network’ (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008), allowed me to start the inquiry by mapping the communication flows within a broader European space. These flows were crossing the borders of the European Union by definition, as a multitude of actors, changing over time, in the European centre as well as in its peripheries, had been constantly producing a multitude of conversations, © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_4

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of texts and documents, to be selected, analysed and interpreted. It could be said that the interaction among these specific actors—the chains of their actions—was constantly mediated by the asymmetric production of texts founding the specific discourse about the enlargement and accession through the principle of conditionality, with its intrinsic cogent component. As Galasińska and Krzyżanowski sustain, the specific codes and discursive dimensions emerging out of texts production reveal as fundamental to social and political actors who are in charge, as they operate in fact as ‘ideational models’ of constructing the frames of action in different historical and socio-political contexts (2009: 98). I speak here about framing the specific context of the accession of the Western Balkan countries as a complex and uncertain process for further European unification and integration. Despite its complexity and uncertainty, structuring and institutionalizing the process as such requires constant reflexive and concerted efforts by so many actors, which affects the very foundations of European integration, as we speak here of wide-ranging and composite social processes that have generalizing effects (DeVault and McCoy 2006: 20). The communication flows and narratives of the enlargement and accession process can be explored only within the selected partial perspective—particular corner or strands, as their dynamics and variables cannot be embraced in their multifaceted totality. However, the research still aims to “make visible their points of connection with other sites and courses of action” (Ibidem: 18). Oberhuber and Krzyżanowski devised three main strategies for the interpretation of ethnographic data in discourse-oriented research. Firstly, it is important to establish the context of the discourse one wants to study. Secondly, the knowledge gained in fieldwork should be used “to show how more general discursive processes and structures play out in a specific locale”. Finally, they proposed “a more linguistic approach of studying the ways in which language is articulated with and realized in the studied social practices” (2008: 182–202). Following these basic premises, two main sources emerged as significant to be explored in order to shed new light on the accession process and its developments. The first one includes documents produced year by year by the European Commission, such as Strategy Papers, Reports, and

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Opinions, which assess the implementation of the conditionality principles in each state and society of both candidate and potential candidate countries. The second source is in-depth semi-structured interviews with actors holding various roles within the accession process, involved in different ways and from different positions. The institutional construction of the process and its architecture was important for the research focus, as a frame within which things were happening, day by day, and where ‘real people’, from their multi-site positions and their local and EU offices, constantly processed, codified and reframed information and messages in a flux of interactions. The experiences of these officials, politicians and diplomats became extremely important for the inquiry as we speak here about people “whose everyday activities are in some way hooked into, shaped by, and constituent of the institutional relations under exploration” (DeVault and McCoy 2006: 18). The work of these actors shapes practices of institutional mediations of the enlargement/accession dialectics, on different levels and within different roles and action fields. These practices are tied by the specific aims redefined year by year by the Strategy documents of the European Commission, both at the EU and at the national level. Institutions are considered here in the ethnographic perspective as “clusters of text-­ mediated relations organized around specific ruling functions” (Ibidem: 17). Although they share specific lexis, co-produce specific genres and are tied by conventional mechanisms of communication, it is still quite problematic to conceive these groups of actors as ‘discursive communities’ because of their intrinsic complexity and heterogeneity, and even more because of the differences in power among players (Wodak 2008: 15). The specific social practices and forms of agency explored in this research were considered to be framed by two key dimensions, enlargement and accession, identified as highly relevant from an analytical perspective and taken into account as distinctive points of view towards the integration process. Within this framework, a specific discourse on European integration has been produced in different fields of action and through time. The process of data collection, selection and downsizing required additional efforts in order to allow for a longitudinal perspective able to capture the sequence of action(s) and sets of documents over a

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twelve-year period. As Smith reminds us, institutional ethnography aims, among other things, at Discovering … how texts articulate our local doings to the translocally organized forms that coordinate our consciousness with those of the others elsewhere and in other times. (Smith 2006: 66)

Texts and documents are recognized here as being constitutive of action and as sites of negotiation of people’s diverse subjectivities. They seem to be able to transport the particular observations and experience “from one setting to another” covering the distance between different contexts (and subjects) but simultaneously obfuscating the nature of their own production (Ibidem: 70–76), where agents are often delated, as in case of a strategic use of passive voice in which the subject of action is absent (Wodak 2008: 18). These observations are particularly significant in the context of the Western Balkans (and other candidate and potential candidate states), where main documents produced by the European Commission DG Enlargement  and NEAR, such as Strategy Papers, (Progress) Reports and Opinions, operate as ‘regulatory texts’—higher-­ order texts imposing what Smith called ‘intertextual hierarchy’. In our case, the intertextual hierarchy corresponds to the actual power relations between the final text producer (EC/EU) who owns the control power over the decisions, and the text recipient (candidate and potential candidate states’ governments and citizenry). Reconstruction of the multiple sites and actors involved in the drafting of the Progress Reports might shed light on the polyphony of the voices of those who contribute to creating those texts by collecting the concrete socio-politico-economic data requested by the Commission, but also by proposing their linguistic/ cultural translation, re-codification and interpretation, as the analysis of the interviews is going to demonstrate (Chap. 6). This specific kind of text might be seen here as a site of struggle, in which it is possible to “show traces of different discourses and ideologies” contending and struggling for a specific type of dominance (Wodak and Meyer 2016: 12). The text of the Report slowly emerges in its standardized and objectivized form that filtered traces of the concrete authors’ subjectivities. Each year a new situation is created by the Report, as its publication is a sort of breaking event that redefines further steps of the enlargement process in

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each candidate or potential candidate state, posing new conditions. Moreover, the specific audience, or intended readership, of the Report is multifarious and multilevel: the direct recipient is composed of the governments, politicians and experts of the aspirant and candidate countries. At the same time, the Report addresses politicians and experts of the EC and other EU supra- and transnational institutions, as well as of all member countries. The yearly publication of the Report is awaited by the wider public at national, regional and European levels. The imminent release of a new Report creates a general state of expectation, particularly among the regional publics directly concerned by the new evaluation by the EC. The complex composition of these publics partly determines the ways in which the text of the Report is negotiated, co-constructed and standardized, as its various authors are well aware that its publication will inevitably provoke reactions and trigger actions with possible unexpected consequences. At the same time, the new definition of the situation often involves a re-ordering of the institutional structure of the EU bodies themselves, from the DG NEAR offices and their competences up to the highest levels, as shown in Chap. 2. This happens in a particular way in the case of a candidate state’s membership confirmation, where the new status of the country dissolves offices and roles involved in the negotiation process, the state institutions enter the EU in a peer relationship with other member countries and the EU institutions reconstruct the previous order to integrate the new member. There was no illusion here about the possibility of discovering a hidden reality behind the language and ideas, as claimed by social constructivists. The aim of the inquiry was to interrogate and engage with the “real people … that are building Europe, at both the core and the periphery of the capital”, and about the process as such, as those actors “have much to tell us about EU political dynamics” (Favell and Guiraudon 2011: 19). In order to examine the intersections between different ‘semiotic entities’ produced by these actors, a comparison between the official EC documents operating as regulatory texts and the insights and views of relevant actors-informants was carried out following the premises of critical discourse studies (Wodak and Meyer 2016), and particularly regarding discourse-­historical approach (Reisigl and Wodak 2016) and social actors approach (van Leeuwen 2016). What emerged from this comparison, in

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a longitudinal perspective, allowed to identify several defining traits of dominant ideational and organizational models of co-constructing the institutional, political and social reality (and a new order!) of an emerging but still opaque transnational Europe (Krzyżanowski 2009: 100). The actor-based research methodology adopted in this study was inspired by Favell and Guiraudon in their introduction to Sociology of the European Union (2011) as an innovative contribution to political-­ sociological inquiry, which enables the researcher to go beyond the ‘stratospheric’ perspective—a bird’s eye view unable to get beneath the tip of the iceberg. The controversies of the short century seem to be still strongly anchored within specific European mindsets (Brunkhorst 2014), hindering the substantial transnationalization of the EU socio-political dynamics. Power mechanisms and dialectics of nationalism survived as a still dominant creative force, together with the multiform ability of capitalism and its new figures as a dominant global agent. Within this premises, the EU institutions and elites seem to have attracted so much criticism from a variety of standpoints. Following Brexit while writing these pages, and with the former Yugoslav experience behind, imagining the reversal of the European integration process is not impossible anymore. Still, the loud criticism of the EU may be contrasted only by the deep critical approach concerning its institutions and actions. In that sense, this research was inspired by a desire to reveal the complexity of the process of European integration focusing on one of its dimensions—the enlargement/accession dialectic, as it is one of the points through which the transnational character of the EU becomes more visible. In that sense, the multitude of actors, involved by their work in the enlargement negotiation process on national and European levels, as a specific practice-­ bound network, may be seen as a segment of a rising European society, which is a real fragile novelty of our times.

Between Enlargement and Accession Through this lens, the exploration of the ‘empty space’, and of marginal and liminal zones between enlargement—operating from the centre (the EU and its member states) to the peripheries (aspiring countries)—and

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accession—acting from the peripheries towards the centre—could unveil the multidimensionality of the process. The very notion of centre-­ periphery relation is seen here not as positioned in a flat plane with strong asymmetrical power linearity, because centre-based EU institutions themselves seek legitimation from member states and depend on their changing national political constellations. Moreover, the accession perspective allows us to see the enlargement as a nesting process of gradual overcoming of the barriers to a common European citizenship, where peripheral actors—states, demoi and citizens—gain more and more voice in the political sphere, and more opportunities and resources for participation in a broader European space. What is defined as the ‘policy of conditionality’ of the EU operates predominantly through political pressure, epistocracy, hegemony of the ‘best practices’ and ‘know-how’, and control over access to funding and distribution.1 On the other hand, the specific contextual political, social, institutional and economic conditions, along with actors’ capabilities on the ground, determine the ability of the aspiring country to achieve the standards of the membership. As mentioned in Introduction, the main challenge concerning the empirical research was to make the institution and actors engaged in the enlargement and accession process ethnographically accessible (Smith 2005). The inquiry aimed to make more transparent the communication dialectic among different agencies, both at the EU and at the local level, involved in practice-bound networks, with the aim to better understand how these processes work in different sites—local, national and EUropean (Shore and Wright 1997: 11). The methodology of research consisted of: • Critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the EU (Progress) Reports and Opinions, and other EU strategic documents; • Critical discourse analysis of the narratives of the actors directly or indirectly involved in the enlargement/accession process in a longitudinal and multi-site perspective, collected through semi-structured interviews; • Reconstruction, where possible, of the gradual development of specific institutions locally involved in the accession process, such as bodies,

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actors, roles and civil society agencies in selected countries, with a focus on their activities and relationships. The time frame of the research covers approximately the twelve-year period from late 2008 until autumn 2019, which began before the establishment of the second Barroso Commission (November 2009–October 2014) and lasted until the European elections in 2019 and the end of the Juncker Commission (November 2014–November 2019). Three basic fields of action were identified as significant sources of empirical data: the field of politics, the field of institutions and the field of civil society, each field producing texts belonging to specific genres, and configuring specific discourses, within the two main dimensions of enlargement (EU actors) and accession (‘WB’ actors). Concerning the field of politics, the empirical data included several annual speeches of the presidents of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker; the Strategy Papers 2008–2019; other significant documents such as Summit Declarations; in-depth interviews with the WB countries’ ambassadors and political advisors, as well as governmental representatives at the national level. With regard to the field of institutions, the data were drawn from country (Progress) Reports (2008–2019); in-depth interviews with EU institutional actors— officials of the European Commissions and Delegations, as well as with officials of WB countries’ national institutions formally involved in the European integration process. Lastly, the field of civil society was examined through semi-structured in-depth interviews with civic actors from the NGO sector, think tank representatives, intellectuals and experts, and ordinary people. Where possible, alternative ‘shadow’ reports by civil society organizations were taken into account. The (Progress) Reports and Opinions were considered with particular attention, as they provide the ground upon which the Commission builds its opinion, to be proposed to the EU Council, whether a potential candidate or candidate country should gain the status of EU candidate and then member state, respectively. The very name ‘Progress Report’, which was used until 2016, points to the processual character of the required transformation and its evaluation. The asymmetry of the relation between the two sides is manifest and intentional, as one side decides on accession

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norms and procedures based on the conditionality principle while the other side is expected to deliver evidence that the imposed changes, reforms and improvements have been implemented during the one-year time span. Conditionality as a basic approach of the EU towards the accession countries represents here a fundamental instrument of integration as Europeanization, required primarily as an indispensable but also just and legitimized process of harmonization with the laws and standards of the Union and its member states that needs no further justification. The negotiating power of ‘the other side’—the aspirant or applicant country—is far less transparent in the final version of the Report as a product of collective action, notwithstanding the intensive communicational flows and several levels of text managing that precede its publishing. The interviewees’ reconstruction of the production process of the Report was thus extremely important for the inquiry. Concerning the analysis of the Reports as a specific genre, I decided to select and examine more deeply the field of the ‘political criteria’, that is democracy, public administration reform, rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities, regional issues and international obligations, focusing on the ‘achievements’ and ‘shortcomings’ in accomplishing the requirements of the EU by a single aspiring country. The research could not enclose in detail the analysis of every segment of transformation reported, regarding specifically the economic criteria and different issues concerning the European standards, as it would need much more time and space. The Reports were used from the very beginning of the field work as a pretext to start the conversations with the informants. The initial interviews were organized in October 2009, in Sarajevo, Belgrade, Podgorica and Zagreb, immediately after the publishing of the Progress Report 2009. I opened the conversations asking my interlocutors to comment on the ‘scores’ acknowledged by the Report and the recommendations proposed. The same approach was applied in Brussels a few months later, in January 2010. This specific methodological experience guided the choice to extend the inquiry in time, adopting a comparative longitudinal approach, as the immediate findings in regard to the interviews’ analysis were missing so many important aspects of the European integration and enlargement as such. The choice of taking a longitudinal approach

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allowed for grasping the discursive shifts of the actors ‘embedded within a multitude of ecological conditions’ (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2008), and participating in this complex form of social action aimed to bring about deep social and political transformation. The longitudinal approach allowed me, at least in part, to concern these shifts in relation to the effective accomplishment of the specific transformative aims defined step-by-­ step by main strategic documents of the EU institutions, in selected cases of the WB countries. During the transition from the second Barroso Commission to the Juncker Commission, so many institutional and organizational changes happened within the EC, which led to reconsidering the approach towards the widening of Europe. Juncker’s five-year moratorium to further enlargement and the parallel institutionalization of the Berlin Process in 2014 had created a new situation, partially reshaping the context and actors of the accession negotiations. The Directorate for Enlargement was integrated with the Neighbourhood Policy section, becoming the DG NEAR, a decision that may be interpreted as relativizing the importance of the enlargement process for EU policy. For example, the seat was moved from the Berlaymont building to another building in the same street, Rue Arts-Loi, spatially just at fifteen minutes walking distance, but essentially de-centred and peripheralized in regard to the symbolic site of EU power. In the same vein, the websites of the European Commission and of the new DG NEAR were made less transparent and searching for information regarding accession countries became more complicated. While the previous layout facilitated access to both offices and officials, the new website has no direct link to the officials and staff of the DG NEAR. As one of the premises of the ethnographic rules I was trying to apply from the very beginning included formal approach to all of my interlocutors, without searching for interpersonal relationships and recommendations, during the second turn of interviews the communicative barriers to the offices were more difficult to overcome. The final round of interviews was conducted in autumn 2018 and winter 2019, while awaiting the belated release of the Reports and Opinions 2019. The informants in both rounds were selected on the basis of their institutional role across multiple sites, such as Brussels (Directorate General for the European Neighbourhood Policy and

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Enlargement Negotiations, Embassies and Missions of the WB countries to the EU). Only Sarajevo among other WB capitals was included in the second round of interviews, as resources—time and funds—were not sufficient for other travels and conversations. The main criterion for the selection was the person’s concrete engagement in the day-to-day communication flow between the space-sets of the enlargement/accession process. Additional interviews were conducted with representatives of the civil society of the WB countries, that is activists from NGOs involved in the public debate on EU integration and selected independent intellectuals, who were addressed as competent informants, not necessarily aligned with mainstream views at the national or European level.

 arrations About the European Integration N Process and Their Analysis The interviews were analysed using the critical discourse approach, where each unit was related to social and sociological variables and institutional frames, and to the wider historical and socio-political dimensions of the specific context (Abell and Myers 2008; Galasińska and Krzyżanowski 2009). In that sense becomes crucial the notion of context proposed by the Discourse-Historical Approach to critical discourse analysis, whereby the concept of context includes four dimensions, as proposed by Reisigl and Wodak (2016: 30–31): 1 . The immediate, language or text-internal co-text and co-discourse; 2. The intertextual and interdiscursive relationships between utterances, texts, genres and discourses; 3. The social variables and institutional frames of a specific ‘context of situation’; 4. The broader socio-political and historical context, which discursive practices are embedded in and related to. The ethnographic reflexive reconstruction of how the interviews were organized and conducted will introduce and complete the framing of the field. The main difficulty in organizing the field research was regarding

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the accessibility of my interlocutors as shaped by their institutional roles. How to approach people at the DG Enlargement/NEAR and at EU Delegations in the accession countries? How to establish contact with the Missions to the EU in the WB countries and with their Embassies in Brussels? How to arrange meetings with people working in national governmental and parliamentary offices for European integration? My origin and background, the ‘identity label’ inscribed in my name, my choice of language were all at play. Having been born in former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo, and being at the same time an Italian scholar and citizen, I played on my dual socio-political identity of being simultaneously an insider and an outsider with respect to both the regional and the European socio-political context, and thus capable of mediating between the two. Considering the interview a specific form of interaction, basically as an encounter of two strangers who have constrained roles in the interaction (Abell and Myers 2008: 145), the way of introducing myself from the very first contact was crucial for gaining access to the field and, once there, for obtaining the information I was looking for. In that sense, what made the difference in my case is what Briggs called the cultural capital of the researcher, which includes much more than his or her institutional connections (Briggs 1986 in Abell and Myers 2008: 147). The different forms of identification of the interviewer emerged throughout the interviews and during the interactions that occurred ante and post the event of the interview. In this regard, the linguistic component, as suggested in a ‘third strategy’ of a more linguistic approach in this kind of inquiry proposed by Oberhuber and Krzyżanowski (2008), appears to be quite significant. The conventional language of EC-produced documents is English, although they are regularly translated into the languages of all the member states as well as into the language of the specific country involved in the accession process. English operates as a ‘lingua franca’, the specific bridge language of the enlargement/accession process that developed through time such a specific jargon that cannot be easily exported out of the specific context. A number of technicalities and abbreviations used among experts, for example, reduces the possibility of sharing meanings with people outside the specific discursive frame and increases the risk of distorting the sense of the statements and expressions.

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English constitutes almost exclusively the formal language of communication and interaction among actors in multiple sites. The interviews conducted with people engaged in the European Commission in Brussels and in EU Delegations to the WB countries were almost always in English. Even my Italian-speaking interlocutors preferred to speak English, switching to Italian only during informal conversations before and after the recorded interview. There were only a few exceptions to this pattern—one in 2009, with a German-born official of the EU Delegation in Zagreb who spoke the local (Croatian) language in the interview, and one in 2018 at the DG NEAR, with the official speaking in Italian. Very different was the case with diplomats, political advisors and national politicians coming from the countries of former Yugoslavia (including Kosovo) and Albania, because language was a key element of the process of ethno-national identification that fuelled the sovereignty conflicts of the 1990s. As somebody coming from the region, with a name and surname that are likely to elicit stereotypical associations concerning my proximity to, or distance from, the mainstream national politics of different countries, I was well aware that linguistic choices could make a difference. Therefore, during both research periods I approached institutions and informants from Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in my mother tongue (which I call Bosnian-­ Serbian-­Croatian) but adapting it, especially in writing, to the standard variety spoken in each specific country. I approached the institutions in Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania using the English language, although in some cases the answer was in Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian. Contrary to what it may seem, this was not at all an easy decision. It required deep reflection beyond the mere instrumental goal to gain access to the institutions and elicit a positive response from the informants who, based on this, could see me as a friend, or as a foe. On the other hand, the intimacy of one’s own language is grounded and rooted so deeply in our own cognitive structures that even a slight degree of instrumental artificiality in how we speak might have profound emotional effects, such as uneasiness, and even embarrassment, or anger. This is especially true concerning the specific context of former Yugoslavia, where the ‘identity conflicts’ provoked the destruction of lives and the environment.

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As a scholar who experienced and explored for a long time violent destruction of the Yugoslav and Bosnian Herzegovinian society and its consequences, understood here as a specific socio-political and historical context, I was strongly committed to gaining a better understanding of the transformational dynamics as such. In this perspective, the European integration process was conceived as a key driving force for the lasting pacification of the region at least from the Zagreb Summit in November 2000. Engaging in a conversation with the reflexive and re-interpretative subjectivities who inhabit these context(s) and intertwine within it by their specific agencies was thus essential for this research project. The choice to address, where possible, each of my interlocutors in the standard language of the state and institution he/she represented was intended both as an act of recognition of the counterpart and as a way of ensuring my scientific position—to put it in simpler words, of my good and open-­ minded intentions. The institutional actors involved in the research were regarded as agents whose decisions and actions might indirectly affect the lives of a multitude of people. These actions are supposed to have significant mid- and long-term consequences (if not immediate), as they penetrate the political, economic, cultural and above all social realms of the former Yugoslav countries and Albania, and in turn of the EU as such. These actions can be discerned as a complex mediation between different centres of power— both political and economic—located at multiple levels: local, national, regional, supranational and transnational. Due to the specific roles of the interviewees, especially in the case of officials of the EC, the Delegations and diplomats, particular attention was given to the linguistic and lexical choices made by both myself and my interlocutors during the interviews. During the first cycle of interviews in 2009 and 2010, only a few EC officials in Brussels and in EU country Delegations allowed me to tape the conversations, despite my commitment to confidentiality. Notably, none of the diplomats from WB countries agreed to my taping of the interview. Only two EU officials in 2010, with seats in EU country Delegations, requested to review the transcripts of the interviews before authorizing (or not) their use in anonymous form.

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The situation in 2018 was different: all contacted officials of the DG NEAR gave me permission to tape the conversation, while only some WB diplomats did. It is difficult to find a good explanation of this change in attitude, since my approach remained the same—the formal letter of presentation, the way of addressing the Head of the office and then each of the officials individually, the ‘right’ timing and flexibility. It could be argued that the politics and policies of enlargement towards the remaining Western Balkan countries had entered a more stable phase and developed at a slower pace over the twelve-year period. From 2008 onwards, new rules of the game had been established and both sides had accepted them, while institutional actors had learned how to play their roles better, as many of the interviewees have already had mid- or long-term experience in the field. Better knowledge on how does it work and how to make it work better (or just how to make it seem working!) collected by their experience perhaps allowed these institutional actors to maintain a confidential attitude towards the researcher, confirming Smith’s conception of the interviewing as co-investigation (DeVault and McCoy 2006: 24). In fact, in many occasions my questions challenged the perspective of the interlocutors, who often had to take some time to reflect before answering, and at the end expressed a strong interest in the results of my research, revealing their personal dissatisfaction with the fatigue and uncertainty of the final phase of the negotiations about the accession. The collected interviews were treated as a specific genre within the enlargement/accession discourse production, crossing between fields of action, overlapping and referring to each other (Wodak 2008: 17). Their examination and interpretation was based on the methodological assumptions of critical discourse analysis, in particular that “each unit can be related to the rest of the text, to other texts, to the immediate situation in which it was produced, and to the wider historical and socio-political context of this situation” (Abell and Myers 2008: 146). The research design of this work was inspired from the very beginning by Medrano’s book, Framing Europe. The book was published before the fifth wave of enlargement, in 2003, but it tackled several crucial questions similar to my work, concerning especially its genuine sociological

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interest to understand ongoing processes of the European unification as a unique and singular event. I share here with Medrano the research aim to: let people speak to determine how strongly rooted their arguments are in discussion on European integration, relate them to a broader cultural concerns, and finally to provide a plausible interpretation of the interplay between culture, structure and history in explaining international contrasts. (Medrano 2003: 14)

Note 1. See Blokker (2010, 2013); Dallara (2014); Elbasani (2013); Kochenov (2010); Sadurski (2005, 2012); Sadurski et al. (2006); Urbinati (2014); Trenz (2016).

Bibliography Abell, J., & Myers, G. (2008). Analysing Research Interviews. In R. Wodak & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (pp. 145–161). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Blokker, P. (2010). Multiple Democracies in Europe. Political Culture in New Member States, Series: Democratization Studies. London: Routledge. Blokker, P. (2013). New Democracies in Crisis? A Comparative Constitutional Study of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. London and New York: Routledge. Brunkhorst, H. (2014). Das doppelte Gesicht Europas. Zwischen Kapitalismus und Demokratie. Berlin: Suhrkamp, Verlag. (Italian translation: (2016), Il doppio volto dell’Europa tra capitalismo e democrazia, Milano: Mimesis Edizioni, a cura di Privitera W.). Dallara, C. (2014). Democracy and Judicial Reforms in South-East Europe. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing. DeVault, M.  L., & McCoy, L. (2006). Institutional Ethnography: Using Interviews to Investigate Ruling Relations. In D. E. Smith (Ed.), Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham et al.: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Elbasani, A. (2013). European Integration and Transformation in the Western Balkans. Europeanization or Business as Usual? London and New  York: Routledge. Favell, A., & Guiraudon, V. (Eds.). (2011). Sociology of the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Galasińska, A., & Krzyżanowski, M. (Eds.). (2009). Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kochenov, D. (2010). Citizenship Without Respect: The EU’s Troubled Equality Ideal, NYU School of Law, Jean Monnet Working Paper 08/10. Krzyżanowski, M. (2009). On the Europeanisation of Identity Constructions in Polish Political Discourse After 1989. In A. Galasińska & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. van Leeuwen, T. (2016). Discourse as the Recontextualization of Social Practice – A Guide. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Discourse Studies (6th ed.). London: Sage Publications. Medrano, J.  D. (2003). Framing Europe. Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Oberhuber, F., & Krzyżanowski, M. (2008). Analysis and Ethnography. In R. Wodak & M. Krzyzanowski (Eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (pp. 182–200). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2016). The Discourse-Historical Approach  – DHA. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Discourse Studies (6th ed.). London: Sage Publications. Sadurski, W. (2005). Rights Before Courts. A Study of Constitutional Courts in Postcommunist States of Central and Eastern Europe. Dordrecht: Springer. Sadurski, W. (2012). Constitutionalism and the Enlargement of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sadurski, W., Czarnota, A., & Krygier, M. (Eds.). (2006). Spreading Democracy and the Rule of Law? Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing. Shore, C., & Wright, S. (1997). Anthropology of Policy. Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London and New York: Routledge. Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. A Sociology for People. Oxford: AltaMira Press. Smith, D. E. (Ed.). (2006). Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Trenz, H. J. (2016). Narrating European Society. Towards a Sociology of European Integration. London: Lexington Books. Urbinati, N. (2014). Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People. London: Harvard University Press. Wodak, R. (2008). Introduction. In R.  Wodak & M.  Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R., & Krzyżanowski, M. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of Discourse Studies (6th ed.). London: Sage Publications.

5 Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European Commission Reports on the Western Balkan Countries in a Longitudinal Perspective 2008–2019

Introduction The first former Yugoslav country to apply for EU membership was Slovenia, on 10 June 1996. The Commission published the Analytical Report and the Opinion on Slovenia’s Application in July 1997, considering its claim together with nine other associated countries, with the following explanation: Slovenia’s accession is to be seen as part of an historic process, in which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe overcome the division of the continent which has lasted for more than 40 years, and join the area of peace, stability and prosperity created by the Union. (Opinion on Slovenia 1997: 5)

The politics of enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries was justified as a part of a historic process of overcoming the division of the continent: the sentence above clearly addresses the EU members’ public that had to be persuaded of the rightness of such a widening endeavour, exceptional in all respects. The European Union was designated as the area of peace, stability and prosperity, the winning part of the Cold War, being on the right side from the very beginning, in clear © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_5

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contrast with the real socialist and Soviet Europe including the troubled space of the former Yugoslavia. The CEE countries were to join an area in which basic shared principles were ensured for all insiders. The imagined unified European space is here the dominant representation (Supiot 2010), while the goal of the process—accession—is not called into question. Enlargement is represented as a reparation and normalization process, while the Iron Curtain, dividing the progressive democratic Europe from the communist one, is implicitly seen as a historical exception. Slovenian application for the membership in 1996 was considered and evaluated for more than seven years before the final decision was taken. This is a significant amount of time considering that Slovenia was the only former Yugoslav country that was not seriously damaged by the war, with an immensely better socio-economic starting position in comparison to the other federal republics (including Croatia and the Vojvodina region) and Albania at the beginning of the 1990s. Despite the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation and the following crisis, in 1998 Slovenia still had a GDP that amounted to 68% of the EU15 average, a range that no other Western Balkan (WB) country was able to achieve back then. Not even the last accession country, Croatia, which had only 61% of the (much lower) EU27 average at the end of 2011, a year before its membership was confirmed. The 1998 Regular Report on Slovenia contained references to the past relationship of the EEC/EU with socialist Yugoslavia, which had begun in 1967 and had continued until the beginning of the violent conflicts in 1991, in a desperate and hesitating attempt to avoid the spiral of violence: Diplomatic relations between the EU and Slovenia were established on 13 April 1992. On 1 September 1993 a Cooperation Agreement, essentially modelled on the one signed in 1980 with Yugoslavia, accompanied by supplementary arrangements in particular on transport, textile and financial cooperation, entered into force. (Regular Report on Slovenia 1998: 9)

In November 1991, all Agreements between the EEC and the SFRY were cancelled, and it seems that the specific Yugoslav legacy of the relations with the European Community was paradoxically accepted by the

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EU only in the Slovenian (secession) case, although some other accession countries based their aspiration on the same premises.1 After the 2004 ‘Big Bang’ and the following integration of Bulgaria and Romania, the attitude of EU institutions and elites towards a future enlargement changed substantially.2 A kind of uneasiness, even malaise, with the idea of further widening to areas of the continent considered peripheral or liminal indicated not only fatigue but something deeper and more serious, which makes it appropriate to speak of a proper ‘enlargement crisis’. The 2008 financial and economic crisis was not only the cause, but a constitutive element of this new condition, marked in particular by the trouble with deepening the integrative bonds among the European member states and citizens on a supra- and transnational level. It was at this time that the greater responsibility of the core member states was claimed (Habermas 2012) and the proposals of an asymmetric geometry of the EU, or different speed development, were argued for. The critique of the EU’s modus operandi came not only from the Eurosceptics, but even more radically from the Europhils. We may recall a few references: the Janus face metaphor regarding the EU (Brunkhorst 2014), Zielonka’s recent affirmation that the EU is “cosy with big business and lobbyists, while ignoring its citizens, especially the poor ones” (Zielonka 2018, 2019), and Habermas’ and Balibar’s relentless critique of the wider European public space (Habermas 2012, 2015; Balibar 2016). The broader historical context was changing, following the 2008 crisis and the European austerity measures that caused further damage to the already weakened welfare systems of its poorer southern members. The chronic lack of a common foreign policy had deepened the gap between member states’ national interests, leading them to resort to disruptive geopolitical responses in several cases. I will mention here only the most significant ones: the contingent military alliances regarding the Iraq war, and the conflicts related to the Arab springs in 2011; the lack of cooperation among EU member states’ intelligence services against terrorism, and the ineffective and unethical ways in which the ‘migrant question’ was addressed and managed; the UK referendum on Brexit, the rise of anti-European radical right political forces in almost all EU member countries, the Višegrad countries’ ‘disobedience’ to EU policies, not only concerning migrants, as a ‘Brussels diktat’. All of the above may be

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interpreted as the most visible effects of the failure to build more powerful communitarian institutions (Kauppi 2018). Enlargement was now seen not anymore as a part of historic process, but rather as a burden. The new aspirant countries waiting in the ‘entrance hall’ brought a big challenge because of their specific economic and political, social and cultural conditions. Particularly troubling was the case of Turkey, whose sizable dimension could affect the precarious balance between the member states, where nationalist and sovereigntist radicalized political movements were on the rise (Rumford 2008, 2013). The only country that could have been easily integrated, Iceland, renounced definitively its candidate status, and hence EU membership, in 2015. The new approach to the accession process was all about the EU, not about the Western Balkan countries or Turkey. The situation could be metaphorically described as a kind of tie, or stalemate position in a chess—when the player is not in check, but has no legal move—a hopeless position that ends the game. The EU has an urgent need to bring the WBs closer, even if the only reason might be the protection of borders, as it was demonstrated during the Balkan route episode of the ‘migrant crisis’ in 2015 and 2016. At the same time, the previous normalized pathway of accession procedures, with its specific dispositives, was not able to bridge the gap between the EU standards and the real condition and ability of these states and societies to carry out the reforms and produce new quality in the medium term. As it is no longer possible to ‘turn a blind eye’ to the slow or missing fulfilment of the imposed conditions (if it were at all possible before!), in this learning process (Sadurski 2012), the insufficient or limited success of the candidates reveals the insufficient and limited capacities of the (EU) teaching models and instruments. The starting condition of these countries was well known at the end of the 1990s, as almost all problematic and conflictual dimensions remained manifest after the crude violence had ceased. In that sense, the EU’s (credible) perspective for the Western Balkan countries turned out to be a trap based on a promise difficult to fulfil. In his 2017 State of the Union address, President Juncker used the very word credible primarily with reference to EU institutions and member states’ political elites, thus implicitly recognizing the loss of credibility of Europe’s transformative power as such. A business-as-usual approach

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could not work in case of the states and societies re-emerging from the dramatic events of the 1990s, and its dramatic durable consequences. The real story can be read between the lines of the highly bureaucratized text of the (Progress) Reports, notwithstanding a huge linguistic effort to defuse it. Nonetheless, the February 2018 Communication from the Commission to the EU institutions reaffirmed the credible accession perspective as the “key driver of transformation in the region”, but also as substantial for our “collective integration, security, prosperity and social well-being” (Communication from the Commission February 2018: 1). Through the following analysis of the Progress, Analytical and Country reports, I will question not only the EU’s institutional ability to impose models of transformation, along with the criteria of their translation and adaptation, but also its capacity to create policies and dispositives that enable deep and durable structural changes and institutional reforms, substantially empowering local actors and agencies to endorse the transformative democratizing politics in the respective societies. At any rate, the lesson learned by the EU had an important consequence: after the Ukrainian crisis, no other promises were made, discarding the ideal of a unified European space. The spectre of a sinister Cold War logic between the two parts of the continent re-emerged again with other premises, draped over with the politically vague neighbourhood policy discourse devoid of the accession perspective.

Reports The very nature of the (Progress) Report as a specific text produced each year by European Commission to inform the deliberative action of the European Council regarding the accession status of applicant states was spelled out in the 1998 Regular Report on Slovenia: From the end of 1998, the Commission will make regular reports to the Council, together with any necessary recommendations for opening bilateral intergovernmental conferences, reviewing the progress of each Central and East European applicant State towards accession in the light of the Copenhagen criteria, in particular the rate at which it is adopting the

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Union acquis. (…) The Commission’s reports will serve as a basis for taking, in the Council context, the necessary decisions on the conduct of the accession negotiations or their extension to other applicants. (Regular Report on Slovenia 1998, p. 4)

The EU/EC Agenda 2000, emphasizing the ‘dynamic approach’ of the European Commission and other EU institutions, defined the reporting methodology and its focus on assessing the progress made by each applicant. The Report is considered as a key document of the European Commission. It is made available online to all interested readers immediately after its annual publication, visibly positioned in the right corner of the accessing country’s official webpage.3 The format of the Report has been carefully standardized for all countries since 2005,4 the year when the EC started to regularly reporting “to the Council and Parliament on the progress made by the countries of the Western Balkans region” (Progress report on Albania 2008: 4). Each Report’s introduction and the initial parts of its chapters continuously refer to other relevant texts such as EU Treaties and Agreements, specific Council’s decisions, Strategic papers, President’s speeches, the Acquis and so forth, while the specific sources on which the report relies are not cited. The intertextual character of the Report emerges throughout the text with regard to specific agreements and other documents related to the national state context. During the accession process of the ten CEE countries, the document was still named “Regular Report”. The modifier “Progress” was added to the name of the Report in 2005, and appeared in all reports concerning WB countries (including Croatia until 2011) until 2014. After the reporting period 2013/2014 the word ‘Progress’ was cancelled, thus leaving only one word—‘Report’. The name of a document is never neutral: what was initially seen as ‘regular’ became first a measure of ‘progress’, and then assumed its current form which presupposes objectivity and neutrality. During the transition period between Barroso and Juncker Commission EC redefined the Enlargement Strategy; in the aftermath of the European elections in 2014, in mid-summer of the same year, changes in the accession perspective were announced in the first speech by the new Commissioner Juncker. The emergence of a new approach can be traced

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through the analysis of the multiple layers of the reports. In a sense, the decision to slow down the accession process could be interpreted as a recognition of the European Commission’s fatigue further exacerbated by the internal discussion on the prospect of Turkey’s accession, of convincing EU public opinion of the validity of its new approach to the enlargement. The five-year moratorium to the enlargement created significant impasse within the accession process, decreasing the resources and slowing down the speed of negotiations. In 2014 the intergovernmental complementary initiative known as Berlin Process was launched by a few EU member states with the aim to overcome the impasse undergone by the ‘normal’ accession procedure, at least in certain matters regarding basic economic and connectivity developments in the WB region.5 In spite of this efforts, the question of the effectiveness of the new policy—more cautious and severe in applying the conditionality principle towards the accession countries, with regard to the 2015–2019 time span—remains open. One of the aims of the analysis was to determine whether the new course was followed by substantial transformation of the accession assistance model to yield better results, or it remained anchored in the business-as-usual register, simply applied more rigidly and publicly presented in a new dress.6 The analysis of the structural features of the Reports allowed to identify two main textual strategies: the strategy of objectivization and the strategy of relativization. The conventional structure of the Reports, that is, their frame and linguistic register, was examined in order to capture the underlying process of textual construction and retrace in it the evolving approach of the European Union, and of the Commission, to enlargement. The EC reporting on several important achievements of the WB countries, throughout the selected time span, was analysed by considering two specific semantic fields: the first regarding commitment of both parts—a country and the EU, and the second concerning country’s shortcomings. Finally, I sought to unveil traces of the defused dramatic dimension of the social, political and economic transformation of these societies in the text, in order to highlight the complex discrepancies between EC requests and the concrete progressive reforms translated and implemented by the local agencies. The defusing strategy was supported by the strategy of omitting “inconvenient truths” and producing sometimes “convenient

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fictions” (Ashley and Empson 2016; Lendvai-Bainton 2018), as well as by strategies of normalization and routinization, as will be shown below. The objective of this segment of the research was to reveal how the EC creates a specific discourse on accession, in order to control as much as possible the enlargement process and avoid its getting out of hand as already happened in the 2000s. Through the analysis of the Progress Report (PR) as a specific genre, I tried to elaborate a critique of the (neoliberal) ideological dimension of the EU, as translated into political and social praxis, highlighting its controversial effects on the transformation of the vulnerable societies of the so-called Western Balkans with all its foreseen and unforeseen consequences.

General Characteristics of the Report The annual Report for each country contains standardized fixed elements that should emphasize the principle of equality and fair approach of the EC to all countries, without prejudice or particularistic interests of any kind. Every year the contents of the Report are re-contextualized in the Introduction, bringing new evidence of the progress made by the relevant country. The Context paragraph is synthetic and concise, reporting only the most important facts concerning the accession process. The objective/ neutral style of the Report tends to downplay the dramatic impact that some reforms and political decisions have on WB societies. A careful and informed reader would find these elements only in the following chapters of the Report. The Analytical Report regularly replaces the PR in the year following the formal application for membership, while the Comprehensive Monitoring Report is published at the point when the negotiations on all acquis chapters are about to be closed. These two procedural instruments are partially different from the PR, as they describe and account for the factual situation in detail, with a different structure and a more analytical approach to reporting. The strategy of objectivization is applied in these two formats even more strictly than it is in the PRs, in order to render the text as ethically neutral as possible.

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Progressive de-personalization of the text is another dimension of the conventional structure of this genre and a part of the same objectivization strategy. In the case of Slovenia, the PRs contained the names of the authors and co-authors (two plus ten experts in 1998!). In all the PRs for the other WB countries, including Croatia, the name of a single rapporteur was mentioned in footnote from 2005 to 2014, with a remark in case the person had changed during the reporting period. In several cases, the same rapporteur followed a single country for more than one year and was mentioned as the person responsible for collecting and elaborating a variety of sources (vaguely mentioned in the Introduction). From 2015 onwards, in the new version of the PR there has been no mention of the rapporteur. The Reports rarely contain the names of politicians or any other relevant figures—only institutional functions and anthroponyms (professional and other) are used. The only exceptions are the Secretary-General of the UN, sometimes the incumbent President of the EC, and a High Representative of the International Community or a Special Representative of the EU. The sentences tends to use impersonal constructions, often in the passive voice, while the subject tends to be omitted, as in a frequent formula: “Progress was achieved.” There seems to be a broad strategy of depersonalization here, typical of bureaucratic language, directly related to the strategy of objectivization. The Commission team who worked on several phases of the production of the Report, both in Brussels and at the EC Delegation to the accession country, is completely absent from the text. The authors and sources are summarized, along with the country’s governmental, institutional and civil society actors who collected, selected and produced documents to be evaluated, in a standard clause emphasized until 2014 in the first page of the Introduction, and since 2015 moved to the footnote of the first page. The clause has remained essentially the same: The report is based on many sources. As usual, these include contributions from the government of (the country name, n.a.) and from the Member States, European Parliament report and information from various international and non-governmental organisations. (Progress Reports 2008–2014: 4)

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The sources used to draft the Analytical Report in support of the Opinion were listed slightly more accurately, but the pattern remained the same.7 As a result, the European Commission is confirmed in its role of epistemic authority and warrantor of the truth and rightness of the reported facts and arguments, while the responsibility for the achievements, but especially for the shortcomings, is entirely attributed to the individual country as a counterpart. Throughout the period 2005–2019, the contents of Reports are organized in a similar fashion, with five main sections: an Introduction—with a preface and a brief context description, a second chapter on Political criteria, a third one on Economic criteria; the fourth chapter reports on European standards before a country has gained the candidate status, becoming Ability to take on the obligations of membership after the status is confirmed; the fifth chapter presents the Conclusions. The last section of all Reports is a Statistical Annex including essential demographical and economic information, partially complete, not only regarding the reporting year, but also in a time sequence. The layout of the Report follows the same conventions from 2005 to 2013, and looks less sophisticated than the Regular Reports issued for Slovenia and other CEE countries during the period 1998–2003. The Conclusions section was regularly published as a separate file. The period of publication was usually between October and November, and the published Reports only evaluated decisions, legislation and measures that the country’s Government and Parliament (or other relevant institutions) had taken and implemented during the reporting period. The reader is warned that pending matters “had not been taken in account”. The last accession report on Croatia was published in October 2012 as a Comprehensive monitoring report, just eight months before EU membership confirmation, in a period when the doors of the Union were still slightly open, while the need for change was evident but not yet translated into a policy revision. The Ukrainian crises exploded in winter 2013/2014 as the last act of the drama that ushered in the EU’s new enlargement policy. In October 2014, the new annual reports were published in a dress—a colourful front page. The shift in enlargement policy was announced at that same time, but the new Commissioner Juncker would take a

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standpoint only on 1 November. The conclusions and recommendations “put forward by the Commission” and the country’s annual summary were included at the beginning of the annual Reports. In any case, after the first four pages, the document followed the usual format of the PR. In 2015 the Commission took further steps in reconsidering the form of the Report. The front page disappeared together with the Preface, while the context and the summary now appeared in the Introduction. The information previously contained in the Preface (e.g. reporting period, aims of the report, sources) was reduced to a minimum and put into a footnote. The evaluation of the state-of-art in each subsection was evidenced in boxes, the most important one with a grey background. The subsection on Relations between the EU and the country was separated as Annex I at the end of the document, while the basic Statistics remained as Annex II. From the perspective of our analysis, the Political criteria chapter is particularly important. Until 2014, the chapter was structured in three main paragraphs, each of them addressing several items: Democracy and Rule of Law; Human rights and the protection of minorities; Regional issues and obligations. In the 2015 Report, the chapter was restructured into five paragraphs with different topics presented in a new fashion. Democracy (1) was separated from Rule of Law (3), while the section on Public administration reform (2) gained importance and visibility. Human rights and protection of minorities (4) and the Regional issues and obligations (5) chapters were also divided into subsections, with greater emphasis placed on the most important elements singled out by the rapporteurs, with underlined cursive subtitles. Another significant detail is that from 2005 to 2014 one of the subsections of the Democracy (and Rule of Law) chapter was titled Government, while the title was further changed into Governance. Understanding the reasons behind this linguistic choice may be relevant with regard to scholarly debates and public discussions in the EU concerning the differences between these two concepts, especially, as Bifulco suggested, in the relation with the New Public Management and its vision of a ‘managerial modernity’ (Bifulco 2017: 41–45). For Serbia and Kosovo, in the 2015 version of the Report the subsection on Normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo was upgraded to a separate chapter.

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The above-mentioned changes reflected the new approach announced in the 2014 Strategy paper in which the Acquis chapters no. 23 (Judiciary and fundamental rights) and 24 (Justice, freedom and security) were brought to the centre of the accession process, ‘the first to be opened and the last to close’. The Strategy paper emphasized the notion of time “needed for reforms to be properly implemented” (evidenced in a grey box) as an ever-important dimension within a more structured framework of negotiations. The list of arguments follows the brief introduction, where ‘EU substantial guidance’, ‘interim and closing benchmarks’ and ‘transparency and exclusiveness of the process’ surround the assertion on ‘safeguards and corrective measures’, able to enact a specific ‘mechanism to stop negotiations on other chapters if progress on chapters 23 and 24 lags behind’ (Strategy paper 2014: 12–13). The 2016 Report maintained the same form as in 2015, with more care for details and for the way it communicated to the potential public, possibly because of certain inertia regarding the routinized report drafting method. The time was needed to understand how to restructure the toolkit of the accession management in order to fit the new approach. This was probably the reason for the delay in publication of the 2017 Reports, without clear explanation by the EC. Finally, the document appeared in mid-April 2018, covering an 18-month period from October 2016 to March 2018, with a bold warning addressed to the aspirant countries: fundamentals first! The structure of the Report did not change substantially from 2016 to 2018, as the main chapters remained the same, internally reorganized around two fundamental dimensions: the first one on Political criteria and Rule of Law—where the two Acquis chapters no. 23 and 24 were assessed in detail—and the second on Economic development and competitiveness. Besides, the 2018 Report placed new emphasis on Regional issues and obligations by tackling them in a separate chapter, stressing the issue of regional cooperation and good relations. The regional issues were included from the very beginning as a subsection of the Political criteria. The assessment of the progress in fulfilling the obligations based on European standards (for Kosovo) and of the ability to take on the obligations of membership (for all candidate countries) remained one of the crucial elements of the reporting. The Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2018 had an anomaly, as it did not contain the European standards

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chapter, probably because the Analytical report on BiH and the Opinion were going to be published in 2019. Furthermore, the new 2018 format had an increased number of pages, particularly regarding the first fundamental dimension: Political criteria and Rule of Law, which almost doubled the volume delving deeper into the analysis and evaluation of the different aspects under examination. Another change is the much more accurate use of subtitles within sections, in bold and Italic, with the clear aim to stress the seriousness of the message: every country must fulfil all conditions. Otherwise, the EU as such—still a fragile supranational institution and organization with limited sovereignty—would not be able to justify further enlargement, and hence to accept any new member (Kauppi 2013). Immediately after the publication of the Report, on 17 May 2018, a EU-Western Balkans Summit was held in Sofia with the aim to reinforce commitment from both sides—the Western Balkans partners’ commitment to harmonizing their societies with the European values and principles, and the EU’s commitment to “unequivocal support for the European perspective of the Western Balkans” (Sofia declaration 2018: 1). The ensuing Sofia Declaration outlined the Priority agenda for the WB, which reflected certain aspects developed through the parallel action of the Berlin Process. While rule of law and good governance kept the first place among the new priorities, the issue of security and migration advanced to the second position in contents list. In third position now was socio-economic development, with a specific focus on youth, while the ‘magic word’ of the Berlin Process—connectivity—gained the fourth position. Finally, the regional digital agenda came now before reconciliation and good neighbourly relations in the Western Balkans. The European Commission published the last Report included in this analysis immediately after the European elections in May 2019. The publication was expected in April, as it covered the period from March 2018 to March 2019. The waiting was particularly frustrating for Bosnia and Herzegovina, looking forward to find out what the Analytical Report and the Opinion of the Commission said with regard to its official application for membership. It was again because of political reasoning that the reports had to wait for the electoral results to be published, amid a turbulent situation in Europe.

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The format of the Report was standardized on the basis of the 2018 model in terms of structure length and layout. The Analytical Report 2018 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, as compared to the AR for other WB countries, was overall longer and specifically more accurate in reporting the country’s achievements and shortcomings in harmonizing fundamental socio-political and economic aspects with European standards.8 The 2019 Opinion on Bosnia-Herzegovina’s application for membership reported a rather negative assessment in almost all aspects. However, from an analytical perspective it seems more important to understand what message the EC meant to convey rather than how concrete matters were evaluated. The following statement presents what is referred to as a ‘credible European perspective’ for the country: The Commission considers that negotiations for accession to the European Union should be opened with Bosnia and Herzegovina once the country has achieved the necessary degree of compliance with the membership criteria and in particular the Copenhagen political criteria requiring the stability of institutions guaranteeing notably democracy and the rule of law. (Opinion of the EC on Bosnia and Herzegovina 2019: 14)

The first part of the sentence uses the conditional in combination with the passive voice: “the negotiations should be opened”—as if it were something that could happen under certain conditions, the fulfilment of which depended entirely on the country in question. The EC thus reaffirmed itself here as a superior authority entitled to determine whether these conditions were fulfilled or not, without recommending any specific action besides the regular annual reporting of the progression. In this light, it might be considered as an act of de-responsibilization on the part of the EU in the frame of its commitment to the WB accession. The negotiations should open once the country has achieved what the European authority requests. The choice of the word once with its intrinsic indetermination seems to be in contradiction with the agenda conception of the accession process. The case of North Macedonia and Albania may also be observed as significant at this point. The EC recommended in May 2019 Reports on both countries the opening of the accession talks. The recommendation

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was particularly serious with regard to the Macedonian case, as the country’s accession process had been in a stalemate for years essentially because of the ‘name issue’, which was finally overcome at the beginning of 2019.9 The EC initially proposed June 2019 as a possible date for opening the negotiations, but the European Council of 18 June 2019 postponed the decision on whether to open them (or not) later in 2019; the European Council summit in mid-October of the same year failed again to agree on the opening of talks.10 Besides, the EU Western Balkan Strategy of February 2018, recalling Juncker’s speech in September 2017, reaffirmed an “extremely ambitious” mid-term accession perspective only for Montenegro and Serbia as countries that “could potentially be ready for membership” by 2025. Such uncertain waiting times, during which the pro-European political and societal forces of these countries should keep in alert actors and agencies tasked to carry out the reforms, while also be ready to address potential social discontent, could have unintended consequences. These examples shed light on the current condition of the European Union, beset by its internal multilevel conflicts and cleavages and buying time both for its internal reorganization in view of Brexit and for establishing a new political power balance after the 2019 elections. Serious and profound reflection is needed on how to the EU may rebuild its institutional framework and ensure its ability to cope with dramatic political and social transformations. As a supra- and transnational entity with a quite fluid identity, the EU has been faced with increasing Euroscepticism and the pressure of member states’ sovereigntist (nationalist!) claims, as well as by its internal democratic deficit, and a kind of confusion of its fundamental aims. The strong individual opposition of French President Emmanuel Macron to accepting any new member before the EU reforms itself, sustained in different formal occasions, as during his visit to Serbia in mid-July 2019, is a clear sign that both the integration and the enlargement projects are currently in crisis. Nevertheless, the accession process cannot simply wait for a reassessment by the EU, as such delays would further destabilize the EU’s engagement with the aspirant countries, whose still precarious democratic political culture needs strong European political presence and support, together

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with a continuous reinforcement of the basic commitment between the two sides. In this respect, we ought to recall, once again, that all former Yugoslav countries and Albania, apart from their bad starting position and the armed conflicts that took place throughout the 1990s and afterwards, faced deep and substantial economic, political and social transformation over the past twenty years. The EU perspective towards these countries was formalized with the Stabilisation and Association Partnership in 1999, the same year when NATO forces bombed the territory of three of them—Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, at that time called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, for 78 days. Those raids were ‘fully supported’ by the European Union, in the wake of the military repression of the Albanian population in Kosovo by the Milošević regime. This serves as a brief reminder to re-contextualize the initial phase of the process, in which the stabilization component had to be prioritized over association but, at the same time, could not be separated from the accession perspective, let alone from the accession practice. Otherwise, it would have lost its momentum. Anyhow, on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is the right time for summing up those turbulent thirties with regard to the Western Balkans states and societies. In the following section I will outline the main achievements of the WB countries on the ‘European pathway’ as reported by the European Commission, examining the way they are represented, and often relativized, in the text of the Reports.

Measuring the Achievements in Approaching the EU In this brief analysis of the achievements of the former Yugoslav countries and Albania in approaching the EU, I will take the Stability Pact Summit held in Sarajevo on 30 July 1999 as a starting point. The constituent documents of the Stability Pact (SP) were the main agreement adopted in Cologne on 10 June 1999 and the Sarajevo Summit Declaration in July of the same year. The SP declared permanent peace, security, and

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economic and political stability as main objectives of the future development of these countries, which were regionally defined as South Eastern Europe and a year later as Western Balkans. The integration perspective of the region embraced not only the EU but also the geo-political and military Euro-Atlantic dimension, that is, NATO. The measure of the progress was the accomplishment of every further step by each country in the association process with the EU, acknowledged by the EC. The only source I used for this part of the analysis were the Reports of the European Commission—Progress, Analytical, Feasibility and Comprehensive monitoring study, and the Opinions on each country’s application for membership. The aim of the analysis was not only to trace each country’s progression, but also to explore the ways in which the EC rapporteurs represented it in the text. The strategy of relativization is realized linguistically in the systematic use of the adverb however to create contrast between achievements and shortcomings (and stressing the latter over the former). In this framework, the Analytical reports as a sub-genre were particularly interesting, as they built and sustained the argumentation needed to justify the Opinion of the EC to the Council on whether or not the application for the membership of the aspirant country should be accepted. In almost all cases, two main events were constantly represented as a “cornerstone of the EU policy towards the region”: The Feira European Council in June 2000 had acknowledged that Western Balkan countries participating in the Stabilisation and Association Process were ‘potential candidates’ for EU membership. The European perspective of these countries was further confirmed by the Thessaloniki European Council in June 2003, which endorsed the “Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans”. (Analytical Reports 2010, 2011, 2019)

These two cornerstones, and other important agreements and events, were continuously reconfirmed in the Reports and other documents, with manifold intentions. Firstly, recording the crucial steps in the association procedure could be understood as an attempt to reassure and encourage local pro-European elites and civil society actors of the WB states to persist and resist in the endeavour, in spite of the enormous

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fatigue and obstacles. Secondly, the constant need to justify further enlargement within the European public and institutional space manifested itself in reminding the EU and member states’ elites and citizenry about the conditional promise of the accession, and the consequent commitment of the European Union in designing and maintaining a credible perspective for it. Anyhow, the process of association and integration of the countries addressed by the SAP in 1999, analysed over a twenty-year time span, in many cases unfolded surprisingly well considering the starting position— political, economic and social—of the aspirants, but also the deep crisis undergone by the European Union from 2008 onwards (Guiraudon et al. 2016). The case-study analysis will follow the chronology of applying and gaining the candidate status for EU membership. A selection of basic statistical indicators—economy and finance, labour market, demography and social cohesion—for each country over the time period 1999–2018 were used to compiling the Tables 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 on the basis of data included in the Progress and Analytical Reports. In that way, I could observe not only the progression and oscillations of the specific social and economic dynamics in time, but also investigate the specific ways in which the rapporteurs used the statistical data for political purposes, which substantiates the notion that the (Progress) Report serves a specific device for controlling the enlargement process.

Croatia Croatia was the first former Yugoslav country after Slovenia to submit the application for EU membership in 2003, a year before the great enlargement in May 2004. One month after the accession of Slovenia and other CEE countries, the European Council granted Croatia the candidate status. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) was signed in October 2001 and entered into force in February 2005. The Interim Agreement entered into force in March 2002, while the European Partnership officially began on 13 September 2004. The negotiations were opened in October 2005, and more than seven years would pass

Population (thousand) Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100)a SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index]b Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) Life expectancy at birth: female (years) 2.1

5.8

83.6 −1.9 –

4.5

72.4 79.7

−0.9 4.0

54.5 −1.5 4.1

7.7

– –

73.0 79.7

5.3

–

−1.8

97.7

2.2.

−6.9 2.2.

0.0p

3.4

73.5 79.6

4.4

–

−2.0

– –

–

–

–

– –

–

–

–

– –

–

–

–

–

3.1

– –

–

–

–

–

2.0

−2.0 −1.0 0.2

103.6p 101.8p –

1.1.

−1.4p

– –

–

– –

–

–

–

–

–

–

– –

–

–

– –

–

– –

–

–

–

–

– –

–

–

–

–

1.6f

–

– –

–

(continued)

– –

–

–

–

–

−0.6 1.3

–

– –

–

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

– –

4412

2011

4125e 10717 10097 10140p 10181p – 40.0e 64 64 61 61 –

4426

2010 –

4435

–

2009

2008

1999 4527e 4436

Table 5.1  Croatia: economic, demographic and social indicators 5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

107

Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)c,d SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c,d Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c,d Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c,d Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%) Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)e,f GINI coefficientg Poverty gap

Table 5.1 (continued)

70.7

55.2

21.9

121.5 121.3 121.2

– –

47.8

39.2

98.4

– –

– –

25.1

55.4

68.2

– –

32.6

53.0

64.7

58.7

59.0

61.7

62.9

66.2

2010

53.2

67.5

2009

68.3

2008

62.6

1999

– –

118.7

36.1

50.9

63.2

57.0

65.5

2011

63.7 66.1 66.9 65.6 66.4 66.3

–

–

–

–

–

–

30.9 30.9 30.2 30.6 29.8 29.9 – – – – – – – –

–

42.8 49.9 44.9 42.3 31.8 27.2 24.5

50.2 52.8 54.2 55.9 56.6 58.3 60.3

60.6 61.6 64.2 65.4 66.2 68.9 70.2

55.4 57.2 59.2 60.6 61.4 63.6 65.2

–

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

108  T. Sekulić

1999 3.7u

2008 3.9u

2009 3.7u

2010 4.1u

2011 –

4.5

2.8

2.8

2.8

3.1

–

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Sources: (1) CSWD Country Report Croatia 2019; (2) CSWD Assessment of the 2013 Economic Programme for Croatia; (3) CSWD Comprehensive Monitoring Report on Croatia 2012; (4) CSWD Croatia 2008 Progress Report a EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards b Harmonized consumer price index (HCPI) c Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards d For 1999, data refer to the second half of the year e 2000=100 from 2008 to 2012 f For 1999 the persons employed in crafts and trades and as free-lancers, as well as in the police and defence-related activities are excluded g GINI Coefficient is calculated after taxes and transfers – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; f = forecast; p = provisional; u = unreliable or uncertain data

SI∗:Early leavers from education and – training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

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Population (thousand)a Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100)b SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index] Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) Life expectancy at birth: female (years)

2016

2017

5.0

8.3

49.2

1.9

–

9.7

72.4 76.5

4.3 −0.7 43.4

5.2 −0.8 14.8

70.7 75.0

72.3 76.7

11.7

–

2.3

56.4b

−0.8

−0.9

72.9 77.2

7.6

–

2.5

58.2

1.6

2.9

73.1 77.2

7.6

–

1.6

64.9

3.9

2.8

3434 3630 3651p 3900e 4100e 4400e 4700e 4800p 36 36 35 35e 36e 36e 37e 36p

2015

3448 3283 3269 25.5 34 36b

2014

73.0 76.9

9.8

–

1.7

69.4

3.3

73.4 77.5

10.2

–

1.9

64.0

2.7

−0.4p 2.9

73.5 77.5

9.9

–

1.9

70.0

0.0

3.6

73.5 77.4

8.6

–

1.3

69.3

0.1

3.9

73.4 77.5

11.9

–

1.2

74.7

0.2

2.8

74.1 77.9

9.2

–

0.7

73.6p

2.1

0.2p

2062.3 2065.8 2069.2 2071.3 2073.7

2053 2057 2060

2013 2045 2049

2013

2010 2011 2012

1999 2008 2009

Table 5.2  FYROM/North Macedonia: economic, demographic and social indicators

110  T. Sekulić

Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)c SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%) Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)d GINI coefficient –

–

53.7

–

55.3

38.8

–

53.9

38.7

57.5

40.7

59.7

50.3

40.8

61.6

51.3

70.8

37

35

–

55.1

37.5

57.8

48.2

70.4

–

56.4

62.9

37.1

58.4

48.4

70.4

94.6

32.9

30.9

58.4

48.1

69.6

2014

100.3 126.9 158.7b 160.8 157.0 152.3 93.2

50.7

49.4

47.9

70.1

2013

53.1

41.9

40.2

70.4

2010 2011 2012

51.9

63.5

59.7

1999 2008 2009

34

97.1

47.3

42.1

61.5

51.9

70.2

2015

34

32

100.5

46.7

43.7

65.6

54.8

70.3

2017

(continued)

99.3

48.2

42.5

63.7

53.3

69.6

2016

5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

111

– 19.6

– 16.2

1999 2008 2009 – –

– 13.5

– 11.7

2010 2011 2012 – 15.5

2013 39.0 11.4

2014 36.1 12.5

2015 33.1 11.3p

2016 32.9 9.9

37.3 8.5

2017

Sources: (1) CSWD North Macedonia 2019 Report; (2) CSWD Macedonia 2013 Progress Report; (3) CSWD Macedonia 2012 Progress Report; (4) CSWD Macedonia 2011 Progress Report; (5) CSWD Macedonia 2010 Progress Report; (6) CSWD Macedonia 2008 Progress Report a Source: Eurostat for 1999 b EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards c Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards d Break in series caused by the introduction of a new concept of gross income from 2013; 2000=100 from 2008 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

Poverty gap SI∗:Early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

Table 5.2 (continued)

112  T. Sekulić

Population (thousand) Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100a SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index]b Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) Life expectancy at birth: female (years) Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)c SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c 60.3

48.7

58.5 61.2

39.2 50.8

–

72.9 77.6

–

–

2.9b

70.7 71.2 76.1 76.6

4.1

5.6

–

5.7

–

–

3.4

13.4 7.5

7.4

–

47.6

59.3

73.6 78.5

6.7b

–

2.2

–

0.5

–

–

73.4 78.9

4.4

–

2.5

–

3.3

–

–

74.3 78.4

4.4

–

2.5

–

4.0

620

52.6

65.1

74.1 79.0

4.4

–

2.5b

–

1.8b

55.6

67.6

74.1 78.9

4.9

–

2.4

–

−0.5

56.7

68.5

74.4 78.6

2.2

–

1.7

–

1.4

58.2

69.3

73.9 79.2

1.3

–

1.5

–

2.8

(continued)

57.1

69.1

74.1 78.9

3.4

–

1.8

–

0.1

620.9 621.5 622.1 622.2 622.4

3086 4720 5011 5211 5063 5400 5600 5900 6400 6900 42.6 41 42 42 41 41 41 42 45 46 6.9 −5.7 2.5 3.2 −2.5 3.5 1.8 3.4 2.9 4.7

618b 620

– – –

630

628

610

1999 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Table 5.3  Montenegro: economic, demographic and social indicators 5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

113

– – –

– – –

– – –

– – –

– – –

38 39.7 5.8

36 32.8 5.1

49.4

61.4

– – –

43.7

47.5

57.8

91.4

–

–

–

99.9 195.2 219.6 226.1 221.6 214.3 91.2

–

–

–

35.8

–

–

41.0

54.3

41.6

41.6

31.4 43.5 –

56.0

47.3 58.3

36 36.6 5.7

90.6

37.6

51.5

61.9

36 35.6 5.5

94.4

35.9

51.3

63.0

37p 34.0p 5.4

94.2

31.7

51.4

65.2

1999 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Sources: (1) CSWD Montenegro 2019 Report; (2) CSWD Montenegro 2014 Progress Report; (3) CSWD Montenegro 2011 Progress Report; (4) CSWD Montenegro 2010 Analytical Report; (5) CSWD Montenegro 2008 Progress Report a EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards b Harmonized consumer price index (HCPI) from 2013 onwards c Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards d 2000=100 from 1999 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%) Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)d GINI coefficient Poverty gap SI∗:Early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

Table 5.3 (continued)

114  T. Sekulić

SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100b,c SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index]d Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants)a Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years)

Population (thousand)a Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita)

13.5

64.7 −4.6 –

6.7

71.1

43.5

– −3.9 –

11.1

69.7

71.4

7.0

–

−4.6

77.7

8.4

71.4

6.7

–

−4.8

85.0

6.5

1.0

7.8

−1.5

35

71.6

6.3

–

−5.1

72.2

6.2

–

−4.9

76.7e 86.9

11.0

1.6

36

72.6b

6.3

–

−4.8b

70.4

7.7

2.9

40

3836 4351 4112 5100

−3.5

5.5

–

2014

2015

2016

2017

72.8

5.7

–

−4.9

72.4

2.3

−1.6

39

5000

72.8

5.3

–

−5.4

73.5

1.5

1.8

39

5000

73.1

4.7

–

−5.5

65.3

3.3

2.0

39

5600p

(continued)

73.2

5.4

–

−5.1

72.1

1.3

3.3

39

5200

7307 7276 7217 7181.5b 7146.8 7114.4 7076.4 7040.3

2010 2011 2012 2013

35

7366 7335

7553 2371e 4547 3955 b – 35.9 36

2008 2009

1999

Table 5.4  Serbia: economic, demographic and social indicators 5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

115

Life expectancy at birth: female (years) Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)e,f SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)e,f Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)e,f Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)e,f Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%)e Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)g,h GINI coefficient

Table 5.4 (continued)

45.3

35.2

275.7 275.6b 277.4 277.9 280.4 99.2

–

49.8

53.2

115.5

–

–

41.6

46.4

63.0

–

46.2

43.5

59.2

–

50.9

41.7

56.8

49.2

–

51.1

41.1

56.7

48.9

38

49.4b

43.2b

59.6b

51.3b

66.1b

62.3

51.2

64.3

67.1

54.5

64.1

77.9b

53.7

63.7

77.3

58.3

65.2

76.8

62.7

76.6

2010 2011 2012 2013

68.2

76.7

2008 2009 76.3

1999 74.6

2014

38

97.5

47.4b

47.2b

62.5b

54.8b

68.0b

78.0

2015

40

95.2

43.2

48.3

63.7

56.0

68.1

77.9

2016

40

97.6

34.9

51.9

66.3

59.1

70.0

78.3

38

98.5

31.9

54.5

68.5

61.5

71.2

78.1

2017

116  T. Sekulić

– –

– 10.0

– 9.3

2008 2009 – 8.2

– 8.5

– 8.1

36.6 8.9b

2010 2011 2012 2013 39.3 8.5b

2014 37.5 7.5

2015 39.4 7.0

2016 38.8 6.2

2017

Sources: (1) CSWD Serbia 2019 Report; (2) CSWD Serbia 2014 Progress Report; (3) CSWD Serbia 2010 Progress Report; (4) CSWD Serbia 2008 Progress Report a Source: Eurostat for 1999 b Source: Eurostat from 2008 to 2012 c EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards d Harmonized consumer price index (HCPI) e Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards f 2014: change of weighting system g 2000=100 from 1999 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards h 2009–12: wages and salaries paid to employees of legal entities and of unincorporated enterprises – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

Poverty gap SI∗:Early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)f

1999 5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

117

Population (thousand) Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100)a SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index] Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) Life expectancy at birth: female (years) 2785e 2958b 3089 25.9 27 26 –

2.2

37.6

6.3

–

6.0

72.9 77.8

3.5 −1.0 16.1

12.8 −110.8 12.2

71.7 76.4

78.7e

73.7e

10.3

–

4.7e

41.3

2.3

3.4b

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

8.7

–

4.9e

52.5

3.4

2.5

8.8

–

5.0

56.5

1.9

1.6

7.9

–

5.3

66.2

1.9

1.0

3312p 3300 30 29

79.4e 79.8e 79.7e 80.1

74.7e 75.3e 75.5e 76.0

9.6

–

4.8e

46.2

3.6

3.7

3191 30

80.1

76.4

7.9

–

5.2

69.5

1.6

1.8

3500 30

79.7e

76.2e

7.1

–

3.6

74.4

1.9

2.2

3600 30

80.1

77.1

8.7

–

3.6

73.4p

1.3

3.3

3700 30

80.1

77.1

8.0

–

3.0

68.7

2.0

3.8p

4000p 30p

2919e 2907e 2902e 2897.8 2892.4 2885.8 2875.6 2876.6

2010

3209 –

2936e

2009

2008 3170

1999 3373

Table 5.5  Albania: economic, demographic and social indicators

118  T. Sekulić

Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)b SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%) Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)c,d GINI coefficient 61.9

53.8

63.0

45.6

27.2

91.7

–

55.7

69.0

42.3

–

–

–

2008

68.3

1999

2010

2011

2012

2013

–

109.8

–

–

–

–

116.1 123.5 138.2 111.1

27.2be 30.5e 23.6e 27.9e 31.4e

48.9be 49.8e 57.2e 55.4e 49.3e

73.2be 71.5e 72.8e 71.4e 64.8e

60.4be 60.3e 64.9e 63.4e 56.7e

69.6be 69.7e 75.6e 73.2e 67.6e

2009

–

111.2

39.0e

48.5e

65.2e

56.6e

68.6e

2014

–

111.1

39.8e

50.7e

68.1e

59.3e

71.3e

2015

–

–

118.8

31.9e

55.6

72.1

63.9

73.9

2017

(continued)

110.7

36.5e

55.0e

69.4e

62.1e

73.3e

2016 5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

119

1999 – 39.0

2008 – 35.5e

2009

2011

2012

2013

– – – – 31.9e 35.2e 31.6e 30.6e

2010 – 26.0e

2014 – 21.3e

2015 – 19.6e

2016 – 19.6

2017

Sources: (1) CSWD Albania 2019 Report; (2) CSWD Albania 2014 Report; (3) CSWD Albania 2013 Report; (4) CSWD Albania 2010 Analytical Report; (5) CSWD Albania 2008 Report a EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards b Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards c 2000=100 from 2008 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards d Only Public Sector from 2011 onwards – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

Poverty gap – SI∗:Early leavers from education – and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

Table 5.5 (continued)

120  T. Sekulić

Population (thousand) Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100)a SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index] Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) –

–

6.5

–

10.1 6.9

70.5 –

–

5.8

–

−0.8

–

5.4

–

−0.9

–

2.0

72.4e 73.7e 73.e

6.4

–

−0.4

−0.1

0.0

3.7

–

–

–

–

3.7

2.1b

−0.4

7.4

–

−1.2

–

–

–

−1.3p

–

−0.1s

2.3

1.0

0.8

–

–

–

−1.5p

–

0.9

1.1

–

–

–

–

–

−1.0

3.1

4000 29

−2.9

3700 28

5.7

3430 28

–

2015

3600 28

2014

3432 28

2013

3289 3194e 3310 30 31 27

2012

– –

2011 3835.6p 3830.9p 3825.3

2010

3689 3844 3844p 3836p 3840e 3 836p

1999 2008 2009

Table 5.6  Bosnia and Herzegovina: economic, demographic and social indicators

–

–

–

–

–

–

−2.0

–

1.2

–

4700 32

3509.7

2017

(continued)

−1.8p

–

−1.1

3.1

4400 31

3516

2016

5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

121

Life expectancy at birth: female (years) Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)b SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)b Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%)

Table 5.6 (continued)

53.5 53.2

40.7 40.1

52.9 51.2

28.7 29.3

47.5 48.7

–

–

–

–

–

–

75.9 –

1999 2008 2009

2011

2012

57.5

31.2

54.6

42.8

58.4

57.9

31.4

53.7

42.5

58.3

63.1

31.1

54.2

42.5

58.7

76.7e 77.7e 78.8e

2010

59.1

32.2

53.3

42.8

58.7

–

2013

62.7

31.9

54.6

43.2

59.2

–

2014

62.3

32.4

53.9

43.2

59.2

–

2015

54.3

32.0

56.4

44.2

58.8

–

2016

45.8

35.1

58.1

46.6

58.4

–

2017

122  T. Sekulić

–

– – –

–

– – –

– – –

–

1999 2008 2009

– – 31.8

–

2010

– – 29.9

–

2011 101.3e

2013 102.4e

2014 102.1e

2015

2017

– – 5.1

103.1e 101.4

2016

– – – – 31 – – – – – 30.3/7.9 25.9/6.7 25.2/5.8 26.3/5.2 4.9

–

2012

Sources: (1) CSWD B&H 2019 Analytical Report; (2) CSWD B&H 2018 Report; (3) CSWD B&H 2016 Report; (4) CSWD B&H 2015 Report; (5) CSWD B&H 2014 Report; (6) CSWD B&H 2013 Report; (7) CSWD B&H 2012 Report; (8) CSWD B&H 2011 Report; (9) CSWD B&H 2010 Report; (10) CSWD B&H 2008 Report a Source Eurostat: from 2010 to 2013; EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards b Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; Population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards c 2000=100 from 2008 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards d From 2013 onwards Net earnings e Total household consumption expenditure is used for the calculation of Gini coefficient, instead of Income. – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)c,d GINI coefficiente Poverty gap SI∗:Early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

5  Framing the Field Within the Text: Analysis of the European… 

123

Population (thousand) Economy and Finance GDP (euro per capita) SI∗:GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100)a SI∗:Growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) SI∗:Consumer price index (CPI), (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index]b Gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%) Demography Natural growth rate: natural change (births minus deaths) (per 1000 inhabitants) Net migration rate: immigrants minus emigrants (per 1000 inhabitants) Infant mortality rate: deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births Life expectancy at birth: male (years) Life expectancy at birth: female (years) Labour Market Economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%)c 9.4

–

12.7

– 9.7

– – –

–

–

–

– –

– – –

–

– –

9.9

–

–

– –

8.8

–

12.5 –

31.2

1.7

3.4

30.0 30.2

2.5

2.8

–

–

–

–

46.4

68.0e 74.1 74.2 71.9e 79.4 79.4

12.1e 11.4 5.5

–

11.4p 11.3 11.9

29,7

7.3

−2.4 3.5 7.6s

4.4

3.3

3.6

47.7

– –

–

–

2016

2017

33.3

−0.5

4.1

3200 –

42.8

– –

9.7

–

9.7

–

8.2

32.6

1.5

4.2

44.0

49.0

75.9p – 81.6p –

8.5

–

8.4p

33.2

0.3

4.1

3400 3600 – –

1805b 1772 1784

2015

13.2be 9.2p

31.2

0.4

1.2

3100 –

7.2

2799 2900 – –

–

2672 –

2291e 2329 2480 – –

2014

– –

2012 2013

2181 2208p 1799b 1816 1816b 1821

2153

2011

2009 2010

1999 2008 –

Table 5.7  Kosovo: economic, demographic and social indicators

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–

– – 73.0

–

– – –

–

– – –

–

– – –

–

–

–

– – –

–

– – –

–

73.0 –

–

–

–

2009 2010

– – –

–

–

–

–

–

2011

14.9

51.5

33.0

– – –

–

– – 18.4

–

55.3 55.9

–

–

–

2012 2013

– – 16.5

–

61.0

14.5

48.4

31.3

2014

– – 14.5

–

57.7

13.2

44.9

29.1

2015

– – 12.7

–

52.4

14.6

49.9

32.3

2016

– – 12.2

–

52.7

14.6

54.0

34.4

2017

Sources: (1) CSWD Kosovo 2019 Report; (2) CSWD Kosovo 2016 Report. (3) CSWD Kosovo 2015 Report; (4) CSWD Kosovo 2014 Report; (5) CSWD Kosovo 2013 Report; (6) CSWD Kosovo 2008 Report a EU 27 from 2008 to 2010; EU 28 from 2011 onwards b Harmonized consumer price index from 2015 to 2017, consumer price index (CPI) for 2013 and 2014 c Population aged 15–64 from 1999 to 2010; population aged 20–64 from 2011 onwards d 2000=100 from 2008 to 2012; 2010=100 from 2013 onwards – = not available; b = break in series; e = estimated value; p = provisional

SI∗:Employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Share of male population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Share of female population aged 15/20–64 that is in employment (%)c Youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%) Social Cohesion Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index) (2000=100; 2010=100)d GINI coefficient Poverty gap SI∗:Early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%)

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before Croatia would become the 28th member of the European Union, in July 2013. The first Enlargement Strategy paper, published in 2005 by the EC after the accession of ten new members, was drafted within the frame of the United Europe discourse. Enlargement was described as one of the most powerful tools of the EU, able to create deep transformations in a number of European countries. The focus was on Croatia and Turkey, which were considered separately from the Western Balkan countries, as the negotiation process in the former was already ongoing. The WBs were described as a particular challenge for the EU, being a region “where states are weak and societies divided” and where the enlargement policy needed “to demonstrate its power of transformation” (SP 2005: 2). In the same year, 2005, the first Progress Report on Croatia with the status of candidate country was published. As compared with the following editions, this Report was longer (117 pages) and more detailed, while the structural difference regarded only the last section C—a brief Overall Assessment on European Partnership, which was lately integrated into the three sections of the Criteria for membership. The EC confirmed in all the subsequent editions of the Enlargement Strategy Paper until 2013 the undisputed accession perspective for Croatia, notwithstanding the negative or partially negative assessment of several issues in the PR.  In 2008, the SP confirmed that Croatia was expected “to reach the final phase of accession negotiations by the end of 2009 if it has taken the necessary preparatory steps” (SP 2008: 2). The successful story of the country was presented in the SP as significant for: demonstrating to the region as a whole that the perspective of EU membership is a reality, in line with the Union’s commitments provided the necessary conditions are fulfilled. (ibid.: 5)

A few pages below, the SP stated about Croatia that: The country needs to pursue reform efforts, in particular in the judiciary and public administration, the fight against corruption and organised crime, the promotion of minority rights, including refugee return, the pursuit of war crime trials, and access for ICTY to documents. (ibid.: 11)

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Progress Reports for Croatia maintained a similar structure and form from 2006 until 2012 (Comprehensive Report). The Context description contained the same forty-five words (about gaining the candidate status, the opening of negotiations and the SAA) over five years (2006–2010) and was modified only in 2011 when five words on closing the negotiations in June 2011 were added. The extremely concise way in which the country context is described could be interpreted as being part of a strategy of normalization, aimed at routinizing the reporting pattern from the very beginning. The progression of Croatia in fulfilling EU conditions was presented as a matter of time needed to implement the reforms. As far as the section on Relations between the EU and Croatia is concerned, the 2008 PR was rather generous, reporting mostly on the negotiated chapters that had been opened and closed, on political and economic dialogue, as well as on the implementation of the SAA. The section stressed the country’s “overall good progress”, whilst pointing out several important issues in which Croatia must make further of final efforts, comply, continue or suspend what had been done before. Dramatic aspects of the context appear throughout the text with regard to human rights and minorities, particularly the Serb minority, in relation to the question of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and missing persons. Another aspect underlined in the PR concerned the regional and international obligations within the framework of the Dayton and Erdut11 Peace Agreements (November 1995), cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),12 and with other WB countries in the scope of the Sarajevo Declaration Process, which was initiated in 2005 in order to find long-lasting solutions for refugees and displaced persons following the 1991–1995 conflicts on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The issue of refugees and IDPs, alongside war-related criminal and judicial questions, continued to affect the assessment of the Croatia’s performance in the 2009 and 2010 PRs. While “approaching the final phase” of the accession process, the country was invited to strengthen its efforts regarding, among other things, the status and condition of the Serb minority as the most discriminated group over the years. The ‘border issue’ with Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro continued to be prominent. The border dispute with Slovenia had started in 1991

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after both countries had declared independence, while the Arbitrary commission of the conference on Yugoslavia (the so-called Badinter commission) had established in 1992 that that the borders of the former Yugoslav republics were the borders of the “newly-emerged countries in the region”. An Arbitration Agreement between Croatia and Slovenia was signed in Sweden in November 2009, allowing to overcome the Slovenian veto position regarding Croatian membership, although the final decision would be made only in June 2017. The border issue with other two WB countries, however, did not affect significantly Croatia’s accession negotiation as much as it did with Slovenia. In that sense, the 2010 PR conveyed a predominantly positive attitude, insisting on the continuation of the process and without questioning the imminent membership perspective, in spite of delays and missing achievements in the implementation of reforms. Some concerns remained over human rights and minority protection with regard to the ‘Serb minority question’, which was reported using expressions such as “some progress was made” or “fewer ethnically motivated attacks” (PR 2010: 13–14); however, the issue was relativized against the backdrop of a largely positive approach towards the final accession stage. The 2011 Progress Report dispelled all misgivings about Croatia’s future membership. The way in which the following passage of the Report was semantically constructed left no room for doubt: Work on the finalisation of the Treaty of Accession with Croatia is about to be finished and should allow its signature before the end of the year, as provided for by the June 2011 European Council. At the same time as this report is published, the Commission will give its formal favourable Opinion on Croatia’s accession, in line with Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. After the European Parliament has given its consent, Council will take a decision on the admission of Croatia. After signature, the treaty will need to be ratified by the present Member States and Croatia, in line with their constitutional requirements. The target date for Croatia’s accession to the EU, as agreed by Member States and included in the Accession Treaty, is 1 July 2013. (PR 2011: 4)

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Statements such as “the Commission will give its formal favourable Opinion” or “after the European Parliament has given its consent” conveyed the idea that the successful completion of the process was somehow taken for granted. The date for the accession had been established, and all heavy work had already been done. The Comprehensive Monitoring Report on Croatia, issued on 10 October 2012, and related Communication, reported that the accession negotiations were closed in June 2011, that the Accession Treaty was signed in December 2011, and the date on which Croatia would become a member state was confirmed. The position of Croatia was changed to that of acceding country with active observer status during the interim period before accession (Report 2012: 4). Pending issues were enumerated in ten points with regard to which Croatia was supposed to “continue to ensure, strengthen, improve, address, cooperate”. The final Communication of the EC addressed to the Parliament and the Council, from March 2013, presented Croatia’s forthcoming membership in the EU as creating crucial opportunities for the country and beyond: These opportunities now need to be used, so that Croatia’s participation in the EU will be a success—to the benefit of Croatia itself, of the Western Balkans region, and of the EU as a whole. (EC Communication 2012: 15)

Epilogue The aim of the research was not to exploring how accession impacted Croatia as a new member state. In this sense, there was no intention here to analyse if and to what extent the omen of success and benefits had come true for Croatia. If we take a glance at the statistics, indicators related to the labour market before and after the year 2013, as reported in the EC Country Report in 2019, demonstrate a sort of slow recovery from the 2008 crisis, turning back in 2018 to pre-crisis levels. A long leap was made in the period from 1999 to 2008, which corresponded to the initial phases of the accession process. Slow but constant progression in all the assessed fields can be observed on the basis of the data set, and Croatia has been coming to terms with its own troubles and issues from the privileged position of the EU member state.

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FYROM/North Macedonia FYROM applied for EU membership on 22 March 2004. The positive opinion of the European Commission was published in November 2005, and the country gained candidate status immediately after, in December of the same year. Yet, at the beginning of 2020 North Macedonia is still waiting for the opening of the negotiations, while the credibility of a European perspective for the country and its citizens has been heavily questioned over all these years. The Analytic Report on Macedonia was published in 2005 together with the Opinion. In the Preface of the Introduction, one could still detect traces of way in which the previous stage of enlargement was legitimized: The application from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for membership is part of an historic process, in which the Western Balkan countries are overcoming the political crisis in their region and orienting themselves to join the area of peace, stability and prosperity created by the Union. (EC AR on FYRO Macedonia 2005: 4)

The idea of a broader European space unified in a political, democratic and liberal community still held, and the aim of bringing together the European demoi, who would join the others and thus bring new quality to the whole, still pervaded the otherwise bureaucratized register of the Report. The same logic could be detected further in the text, in the sentence in which the subject—the Commission—as the main authority and the author of the Report, stated that the positive general assessment was based not only on the country’s concrete achievements, but also on the “progress which could reasonably be expected in the years ahead”. For my analysis, the argument employed to justify such a decision to consider both achievements and progression trend is even more significant: the Commission, it is stated in the Report, took in account the fact that the Acquis itself would continue to develop, so that the Opinion was based “on a medium-term horizon of approximately five years” (EC AR on FYROM 2005: 5). What emerges from this statement is a clear awareness of the complex and continuous transformation of the EU and its

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increasing number of member states. The time needed for fulfilling multiple conditionality requests could be compensated and even accelerated by granting the aspirant country the candidate status; the horizon of the membership was important and the efforts involved in keeping the pace with the transformation were taken into account. This kind of reasoning would soon disappear from the political discussion and deliberation process of the EU elites and institutions concerning the enlargement. The AR recounted the main steps in the EU–FYROM relations, starting from the referendum for independence in September 1991, and its proclamation in November of the same year. The EU was represented as playing a diplomatic role for conflict resolution, alongside the UN and the United States, with regard to the “hostilities” between the “State security forces and ethnic Albanian armed groups”, which ended with the Ohrid Agreement in August 2001. The other EU engagements mentioned in the Introduction regarded the EU Monitoring Mission (since 2001), a peace-keeping action within the UN guided NATO missions until March 2003, the EU military mission “Concordia” (March– December 2003) and the short-term EU deployed policy mission EUPOL Proxima (December 2003–December 2005). The Report continues with detailed explanation related to the internal conflict in the country. The AR mentioned the year 1996 as the starting point of the approaching the EU, within the EC PHARE programme, and a few agreements on cooperation and trade in 1997 and 1998. The Interim Agreement and the SAA were signed in April 2001, and the latter entered into force on 1 April 2004. The European Partnership was signed in June 2004. FYROM institutions drafted a National Action Plan (2001), a National Strategy for the European Integration (2004), and established a Governmental secretariat with the purpose to facilitate the communication between the country and the EC in July 2005. In the final short chapter on the General Assessment on the European Partnership, the country’s progress in terms of the political and economic criteria, and the ability to assume the obligations of the membership, was described in such a way that the positive statements counterbalanced the relativization of the country’s achievements against open issues and shortcomings. The Report put aside the dispute with Greece over the name issue, addressed internationally at the UN level, mentioning it only once in the

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last sentence of Chapter 1 on Political criteria. The name issue would continue to be a stumbling stone on Macedonia’s path towards accession until an agreement was reached in February 2019. The PRs on Macedonia would mention the name issue just two to three times each year until it was resolved with the Prespa agreement with Greece. The latest report in 2019 did not contain any reference whatsoever to the name issue. The way in which the country’s specific context was described by the rapporteurs in the period 2008–2019 is significant for the analysis. A brief introduction to the context was constantly part of the Introduction chapter as subsection 1.2, followed by the subsection on the Relations between the EU and the country (2008–2014) or the Summary of the report (2015–2019). In the following, the language used to describe and emphasize certain steps and achievements made by Macedonia will be examined and compared across the years, with a focus on constant and variable elements of the text as well as on the discursive strategies employed to justify the delay of the talks opening. The first sentence (Constant 1) appears in all PRs from 2008 to 2018: The European Council granted the status of candidate country to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in December 2005. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the EU entered into force in April 2004.

The second sentence (Constant 2) is present in four Reports (2010–2013): In October 2009, the Commission recommended to the Council to open negotiations with the country, as well as to move to the second phase of SAA Implementation.

The third sentence presents variations from 2010 to 2013: The Council has not yet taken a position on the Commission’s proposals. (EC PR on FYROM 2010)

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These recommendations were reiterated in 2010. The Council has not yet concluded its deliberations on the Commission’s proposals. (EC PR on FYROM 2011) These recommendations were reiterated in 2010 and 2011. The Council has not yet decided on the Commission’s proposals. (EC PR on FYROM 2012) These recommendations were reiterated in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The Council has not yet decided on the Commission’s proposals. (EC PR on FYROM 2013)

It should be noted that no argument is provided to justify the missing decision by the Council. The indetermination of the adverb “yet” is significant here, placed in the negative assertion “has not yet” (concluded or decided). The waiting time has been extended without explanation, and the years started to repeatedly postponing the moment of decision. The format of the report changed in 2014, as described above. Sentences 1 and 2 were moved into the revised Context and Relations subsections without any major changes. The third sentence restated the lack of Council’s decision without mentioning the Commission’s recommendation, and adding a reference to the second stage of the SAA; the phrase “has not yet decided” remained a constant element of the statement. The Council has not yet decided on the Commission’s 2009 proposal on passage to the second stage of the Association, under Article 5 of the SAA. (EC PR on FYROM 2014)

In the Context subsection of the 2015 Report the original phrasing of the first sentence was restored, the second sentence was deleted and the third reformulated as follows: The Commission first recommended to the Council the opening of accession negotiations with the country in 2009. (EC PR on FYROM 2015)

Instead of the usual assertion containing the ‘has not yet’ semantic component, and with no indication of the timing of the proposal and the decision, the brief subsection continues with some comments on the

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serious political crisis in the country, the Agreement between political parties (without naming it—the Pržino Agreement signed on 15 July 2015), and mention of the “Urgent Reforms Priorities” related to the Association Agreement, in force since 2008. This part of the Context description sounds like a justification, completely omitting any reference to the EC proposal and the Council’s failure to provide a decision, that were present in previous cases. In 2016 the Context subsection again contained the first sentence (Constant 1), and faced the question of delay more directly in the third sentence: The Commission recommended for the first time to the Council to open accession negotiations with the country in 2009. In 2015, the Commission stated that it was prepared to extend its recommendation, conditional on the continued implementation of the Pržino Agreement (…) and substantial progress in the implementation of the ‘Urgent Reform Priorities’. (EC PR on FYROM 2016)

While the recommendation of the Commission was not questioned until 2014, and responsibility for the decision regarded the Council, its delay did now concern the Commission, as its recommendation again became conditional on the country’s successful progression. In a certain sense it may be said that the candidate status conferred on Macedonia in 2005 was tacitly revoked as an effect and consequence of this EU policy, revealing its intrinsic structural deficit in resolving (geo)political questions such as the ‘name issue’ with Greece, among other matters. The sentence was followed by the assessment on the situation in the country, mentioning the unresolved political crisis, partial implementation of the Pržino agreement and limited progress in Urgent Reform Priorities, arguments that were supposed to justify further postponement of the decision to open negotiations. In 2018 the report reassumed the first and second sentences and affirmed: Since 2009, the Commission has recommended to the Council to open accession negotiations with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a

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candidate country since 2005. The recommendation was made conditional, in 2015 and 2016, on the continued implementation of the “Pržino Agreement” (…) and on substantial progress in the implementation of the “Urgent Reform Priorities”. (EC PR on FYROM 2018)

The subject of making the recommendation is omitted, with no explanation of reasons, while the country remained solely responsible for the delay in the decision. Finally, following the Prespa Agreement on the ‘name issue’ becoming effective in February 2019, the new North Macedonia country regained its candidate status. The passage to the second stage of the SAA proposed by the Commission in 2009 “took place during the reported period”, while the recommendation of the Commission in 2019 became unconditional: In light of the progress achieved in previous years, in April 2018 the Commission repeated its unconditional recommendation to open accession negotiations. In June 2018, the Council set out the path towards opening accession negotiations in June 2019. (EC PR on FYROM 2019: 3)

The Prespa agreement with Greece was interpreted as “historic”, and as a “major breakthrough”, setting the “example of reconciliation” not only for the region, but also beyond it (ibid.: 3). It could be questioned—why use the word ‘reconciliation’ in this case? What kind of justification was there for the statement, and who was it addressing? Especially because the ‘name issue’ might turn out to be a political problem following the new composition of the Greece Parliament and the dominance of the centre and radical right nationalist parties and their opposition regarding the issue. Be that as it may, the Report 2019 on North Macedonia adopted a positive semantic structure in its introductory sections: the Context subsection and the Summary of the report. For example, different Macedonian institutions nominated within that part of the text ‘have continued’ to maintain a steady pace, to undergo fundamental changes, to deliver tangible results, to play a constructive role. Political and civic institutions ‘have taken steps’ and ‘improved their performance’. Even less positive assessments used milder expressions such as ‘some progress’, ‘moderately

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prepared’ and other. Annex I, related to the Relations of the country with the EU (former subsection 1.3), reassumed only basic information considering the SAP in 1999 and SAA in 2001. The text skipped the turbulent time span of almost two decades, arriving directly at the current situation in 2018 and 2019, and speaking mostly about IPA I and II, and the EU’s economic assistance to the country. All the drama of the events disappeared from these initial and closing parts of the text, in which its reading gives the impression of a certain relief concerning the years-long uneasiness in finding arguments to justify delaying Macedonia’s accession to the European Union.

Montenegro The smallest of the former Yugoslav republics formally entered the process of EU integration as a federal republic in union with Serbia in 2000. The country adopted the euro as official currency unilaterally, just two days after the Eurozone countries, on 3 January 2002, signalling its strong European orientation and high level of sovereignty within the federation. Montenegro declared its independence on 3 June 2006, following the referendum held on 21 May of the same year, and all EU member states recognized it immediately. The same date marked the unintentional independence of Serbia, the only country in the region not to express the will of its citizenry on independence by referendum.13 Montenegro inherited the status of potential candidate assigned to the Union of Serbia and Montenegro and established the European Partnership with the EU in January 2007. The SAA and Interim Agreement on trade and trade-related matters with the EU was signed in October of the same year. The country applied for membership only a short time later, on 15 December 2008, a year before Serbia. In December 2009, Montenegro joined the regime of visa liberalization with the Schengen countries, while the readmission agreement had been running since 2008. The SAA entered into force in May 2010, and the Commission gave a positive Opinion regarding the application for membership, sustained by the Analytical report, in November 2010. The European Council

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conferred the status of the candidate country on Montenegro one month after the publication of the Opinion, in December 2010, without any significant opposition from the member states. This brief introduction sums up the main steps concerning the country’s accession during its first five years after independence, as they had been described within the Progress Reports in 2008, 2009, 2011, and the Analytic Report of 2010. Straight after the publication of the PR in October 2011, the Commission recommended opening negotiations with Montenegro. PR 2012 gave information on this in a routine, informative register, as if it were just part of a necessary and rather tedious administrative procedure: The Commission recommended opening accession negotiations with Montenegro in October 2011. This recommendation was reiterated in May 2012. Following a positive decision by the Council, endorsed by the European Council, accession negotiations with Montenegro were opened in June 2012. (EC PR on Montenegro 2012: 4)

Besides specific topics related to acquis chapters, reports had repeatedly been providing information on the main steps in the implementation of the reforms and other achievements, such as visa liberalization and readmission agreement. The EU’s financial support to the country had been evidenced in the CARDS (1998–2006) and IPA programmes since 2007. All reports highlighted the country’s increasing participation in educational, cultural and economic EU and regional programmes and initiatives, such as Erasmus+, Creative Europe (Culture and Media strands), Employment and Social Innovation, Horizon 2020, Customs 2020, Fiscalis 2020, Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-­ Sized Enterprises Programme (COSME). Moreover, the integration of Montenegro into the Euro-Atlantic alliances/NATO proceeded without serious implications for the internal political situation in the country. The invitation to join NATO arrived in December 2015, and the country became a member in June 2017. This type of routine, normalizing register persisted throughout the next editions of the report. It was quite a different approach compared to the case of Macedonia, where the dramatic and conflictual dimension of

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accession emerged constantly, notwithstanding the efforts made by the rapporteurs to defuse it. If we focus only on the several, uncertain reiterations of the Council’s decision on the opening date for negotiations in the first case (FYROM/NM), and compare it with the insignificant time gap of one month between the first reiteration and opening in the second (MNE), the difference is quite manifest. The following excerpts from the sequence of reports 2013–2019 for Montenegro, Context subsection, illustrate the normalization strategy quite well: 2013 Two negotiation chapters were opened and provisionally closed. 2014 By September 2014, twelve chapters, including chapters 23 and 24 on the rule of law, had been opened, two of which (…) have been provisionally closed. 2015 Eight negotiating chapters were opened during the reporting period. 2016 Four negotiating chapters were opened during the reporting period. 2018 To date 30 negotiating chapters have been opened, of which 3 have been provisionally closed. 2019 To date 32 negotiating chapters have been opened, of which three have been provisionally closed.

The PR 2011 strongly supported positive evaluation by the Commission in 2010. The rapporteurs made affirmative statements about the efforts of the country’s institutions, and their effects, underlining the EU/SAA bodies’ support by constant institutional dialogue on political, economic and administrative levels. The role of the EU institutions was epitomized in terms of guidance, which “encouraged and monitored” the country in proposing and implementing reforms, following the key priorities established by the Opinion, “which, overall, has been implemented consistently and systematically” (EC PR 2011 on Montenegro: 4). The report prepared the terrain for conferring candidate status on the country, notwithstanding the significant effects of the relativization strategy that could be traced further in the text.14 Once the country had opened negotiations with the EU, assessments on single issues became less benevolent, notwithstanding all the reports maintained the routine and affirmative register in their introduction and

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summary parts, as was suggested before. Despite the EC’s singular, well-­ disposed attitude towards the country, which could be traced in the comparison of the reports with other WB6 countries, no ‘bus line’ was ever proposed by the EU.  Together with Serbia, Montenegro entered the enlargement agenda 2025 as a country with credible perspectives for becoming a member state, of course on conditional terms, with special regard to the fundamentals of the political domain (Acquis Chapters 23 and 24). Dissonance between the initial speed of Montenegro’s accession process supported by the extensive and continuous use of defusing discourse strategy traced in the text, and the real progression of the country towards membership, sheds light on the EU’s profound enlargement crisis. The objective, real condition of the country, regarding conditions on the key reform priorities, seems to be continuously re-constructed and re-­ proposed, in order to build up acceptable justificatory arguments aimed at the European public sphere. Montenegro turned out to be quite a significant case for the analysis precisely because of the dissonance that emerged from the research. The country as such, notwithstanding its dimensions, has a number of conflictual splits and had suffered the same transitional disorders as other post-communist CEE countries. It has a complex demographic structure with varying ethnic and religious identities, expressed in the democratic political structure of its party system. Moreover, the specific (ideological?) split between Orthodox origin citizens regarding their being Serbian or Montenegrin has led to several political crises in the country over the last few decades. Montenegro took part in the 1991–1999 Yugoslav wars and was bombed by NATO forces in 1999. One of the main accession conditions regarded cooperation with ICTY and other disputes with the neighbouring countries related to the war legacy. The list of persisting problems is long, but it seems not to be the main reason for the delay in successful accession to the EU.

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Serbia The Analytical Report on Serbia was published in October 2011 together with the Opinion on membership application. The authors situated the starting point of relations between the EU and Serbia in the year 2000, “since the democratic changes” in the country, and “initially with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and from 2003 onwards with the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro” (EC AR Serbia 2011: 4). Serbia was described as a ‘successor state’ of the Union, once Montenegro had become independent in 2006. After the initial consideration, the text attributed several different achievements to Serbia, following the SAP in 1999, even if they had happened before 2006, as in case of the European Partnership, signed in 2004 and ratified in 2006—the year of Serbian independence, and 2008—the year in which Kosovo proclaimed independence. The Interim Agreement and SAA were signed in April 2008 notwithstanding the Kosovo crisis, and entered into force in different moments: the first in February 2010, and the second in September 2013. A curious aspect of the process of association with Serbia regards the fact that the application for membership was delivered to the EC in December 2009. In October 2011 the European Commission pronounced a positive Opinion on Serbia’s application, and the country gained candidate status in March 2012, more than a year before the SAA entered into force. Analytical Report 2011 gave information about the progression of relations after 2004 by quoting institutionalized forms of the political and economic dialogue with the EU, publication of the National programme for the Integration of Serbia 2008–2012 in October 2008 and the Action plan on the fulfilment of the priorities requested by the PR 2010. The rapporteurs underlined visa liberalization in December 2009 as one of the important achievements, along with different forms of participation in regional initiatives and institutions such as Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) (since 2007), and the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP). The section on Relations between the EU and Serbia mentioned information about the EU’s financial assistance through CARDS (2001–2007) and IPA, since 2007. Other forms of participation were cited, such as the 7th Framework Programme

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for research and technological development, PROGRESS, the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme, the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme, the Culture Programme, the Customs Programme and the Fiscalis Programme. The section on content of the AR 2011, and the first chapter of the Introduction (1–7), never contained the word ‘Kosovo’. It appeared on page 8, in footnote n. 2, within the second chapter on the Criteria for Membership, section on Political criteria, in the following form: According to Article 182 of the Constitution ‘Kosovo and Metohija’ is an Autonomous Province (“In the Republic of Serbia, there are the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija”) and is referred to as a constituent part of Serbia’s territory in Article 114 (as part of the presidential oath). Serbia is prevented from exercising administrative authority over the territory of Kosovo since UNSCR 1244/1999 placed Kosovo under interim administration. Kosovo declared its independence on 17 February 2008. The Council noted in its conclusions on 18 February 2008 “that Member States will decide, in accordance with national practice and international law, on their relations with Kosovo”. (EC AR on Serbia 2011: 8)

The situation concerning the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo was mentioned again in the text in subsection 1.3 on Regional issues and international obligations, from pages 34 to 37, as a separate issue to be considered outside the ‘usual’ conditionality assessment of all other segments. The Analytical Report did not try in any way to justify this consideration of the dramatic and conflictual aspects of the Kosovo crisis. The choice of the EC commissioners was clearly political, as the ‘Kosovo question’ was, and still is, too complicated at an internal, regional and European level, and could potentially block the overall process of the whole region’s approach to the EU. What is interesting for this analysis regards the traces of such political decisions, not always transparent, but tacitly understood, within the text. To treat Kosovo as a sui generis case had already been decided at both UN and EU levels, as affirmed in the PR on Kosovo in October 2008:

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Following the troika report to the UNSG, the European Council of December 2007 stressed the need to move forward towards a Kosovo settlement, underlining that resolving the status of Kosovo constituted a sui generis case that did not set a precedent. (EC PR on Kosovo 2008: 6)

The EC opened negotiations with Serbia in January 2014, and, together with Montenegro, the country entered the 2025 enlargement agenda, with much a more clearly credible perspective than other WB accession countries. Since 2014, sixteen of thirty-five chapters of Aquis have been opened, two of which provisionally closed—chapters 25 and 26 (EC PR 2019: 97). The relationship between the EU and Serbia was designed in a simplified and routine form in Annex I, mentioning only the most important agreements and updates. Consideration of the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo remained separate in the text, but also normalized, starting from the title given to the short Chapter 5 of the Report dealing with the specific issue: Normalization of the relations between Serbia and Kosovo (53–55). Other aspects of the assessment were regularly analysed and evaluated, despite enumerating shortcomings, in a way that does not question the final result of the process, but only the time and effort needed to accomplish the conditions.

Albania The Analytical Report of the EC on Albania in 2010 indicates June 1991 as the moment when relations were established between the European Community and the country, after the first ‘multi-party elections’ held in March and April of the same year. The Report mentioned the Trade and Cooperation Agreement as the first to come into force in 1992, while the start of real economic cooperation was attributed to the entrance of Albania as a beneficiary of the Autonomous Trade Preferences from the EU in 1999, and its duty-free access to the EU market in 2000. The European Council adopted the first European Partnership with Albania in 2004, the agreement on new partnership being confirmed in February 2008. The Interim agreement with Albania took effect as from December 2006. Albania signed the Stabilisation and Association

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Agreement with the EU in June 2006 and the SAA entered into force as from December 2006. The Albanian application for membership was delivered to the European Commission on 28 April 2009, and the country was granted visa liberalization for the Schengen Area in December of the same year. The European Council conferred candidate status on Albania in June 2014. The first conditional recommendation for opening negotiations arrived from the Commission in November 2016, while the second, this time unconditional, was delivered in April 2018. Originally proposed for June 2019, the decision of the Council regarding the opening was postponed to autumn 2019, probably until after the constitution of the new European Parliament and Commission. Albania joined the WTO in 2000, and became a member of CEFTA in 2007. The EU financial assistance to the country passed through different phases and instruments, the most important of which were the EU CARDS assistance from 1999 to 2006, and the Instrument of Pre-­ accession Programme (IPA) from 2007 to the present (Reports 2010; 2019). The last 2019 Report signalled Albania’s participation in several EU and regional programmes in the political and economic fields and in the field of social development, culture and education: five cross-border cooperation programmes with neighbouring Western Balkan countries and Member States; transnational cooperation programmes under the European Regional Development Fund; the IPA Adriatic cross-border programme. Then, Erasmus+, Creative Europe, Employment and Social Innovation, Horizon 2020, Customs 2020, Fiscalis 2020, Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Programme (COSME) and Europe for Citizens. The authors of the 2019 Report on Albania, in Introduction chapter— Context subsection, proposed a positive assessment: Albania has continued to implement reforms that are crucial to the EU agenda, in particular delivering concrete results in the conditions identified in the Council Conclusions of June 2018 for the opening of accession negotiations. (EC PR on Albania 2019: 3)

The brief reporting on the achievements along Albania’s ‘European pathway’ did not document the dynamic dimension of the

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process—internal political conflicts, criminality, migration and other— which remains nonetheless different and exceptional in comparison to the other WB countries. Albania was a unified, national state, subjected ideologically during the communist period and politically divided nowadays, but without inner ethnonational or religion-based cultural splits. In a certain sense, its being free of the burden of history in that sense helped the country to skip decades of the modernization process, considering its starting position in the 1990s, and catch up with the severe demands and conditions of Europeanization. Still, its regional position and importance as the biggest state of ‘ethnic’ Albanians, attractive as a ‘mother country’, place the state at the centre of the ‘Albanian question’ relating to Kosovo (and thus Serbia), to North Macedonia and partly to Montenegro. Notwithstanding the speed of its economic, political and social transformation, and boasts of its achievements, the 2025 agenda did not mention this country, which remains in a grey zone of an indeterminate EU perspective together with North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.

Bosnia and Herzegovina The complexity of the accession process with the Western Balkan countries reaches its peak in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Two main crucial events were highlighted by the EC Analytical Report on B&H in 2019, as a first approach: Relations between the EU and Bosnia and Herzegovina have developed since the independence of the country in 1992 and the signature of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) at Dayton/Paris in 1995. (AR B&H 2019: 5)

UN recognition of the independence in April 1992 marked the beginning of the war, preceded and accompanied by the sequence of conferences within the framework of the UN-guided permanent conference on the former Yugoslavia. The role of the new-born European Union concentrated at the time on the resolution of the conflict, with scarce

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effectiveness. Both Peace Agreements—Washington in 1994 and Dayton/ Paris in 1995—were successful primarily due to the impact of US diplomacy (Caplan 2005; Sekulić 2002). In 1997 and 1998 relations were established within the regional mechanisms of association, ratified by the EU proposal of the Stabilisation and Association Process in 1999, within which Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined as potential candidate country in June 2000. The EU Partnership was established in June 2004, the year in which the international military presence of the UNPROFOR (June 1992–December 1995), IFOR (1996) and SFOR (December 1996–December 2004) passed over to EU competency within the EUFOR Althea mission, still present in the country. This engagement of the EU was preceded by the EC/EU Monitoring Mission (ECMM/ EUMM), founded in 1991 and closed down in 2007, and the EU Police Mission (EUPM), which came into force in January 2003 and closed down in mid-2012. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement was signed in June 2008 together with the Interim Agreement on trade and trade-related matters, and the country entered the visa liberalization regime in November 2010. The SAA was ratified in 2011, but it did not come into force until 1 June 2015, blocked for years by the ECtHR judgement on the Sejdić-Finci case.15 The controversy could not easily be resolved without radical changes to the B&H Constitution, so that the EU’s new approach to the country was the only possible exit from the stalemate. The decision came in December 2014, consisting basically in “re-sequencing of the conditionalities” and guided by the awareness that a prolonged stalemate would only bring new troubles. So that: With the entry into force of the SAA, Bosnia and Herzegovina opened a new chapter in its relations with the EU and confirmed its commitment to pursue EU accession. (PR 2015: 4)

What was not acceptable for the EC four years previously became tolerable later. In the meantime, the High Level Dialogue on the Accession Process (HLDAP) and the Interim Agreement continued to offer the framework for continuation but without the political importance of the SAA coming into force, the effects were slow and limited. During the stalemate period, the mandate of the EU Special Representative was

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decoupled from the OHR, and the Head of the EU Delegation assumed the role from September 2011, with the intention of reinforcing the political impact of the EU in the country.16 In any case, without closing down the institution of the OHR, the new competency of the EUSR could be interpreted as further limitation of the country’s sovereignty. The Reform agenda 2015–2018 was adopted immediately after the SAA entered into force, and on 15 February 2016 the country applied for membership. The compilation of answers to the questionnaire took fourteen months, and another eight were needed to collect the response to additional follow-up questions; a total of 3897 answers were delivered to President Juncker in February 2018. On twenty-two questions the Bosnian-Herzegovinian “authorities” (a subject proposed by the authors of AR 2019) could not agree, most of them in the field of educational policies. But taking into account the specific political context of the country, the actual compilation of the questionnaire seems to be a considerable enterprise. The economic and institutional support of the EU was granted after the end of the war in 1996, through the PHARE and OBNOVA programmes (1996–2000), with the aim of rebuilding at least a fundamental infrastructure in all segments of the devastated and deeply divided society. The development assistance continued with the CARDS (2000–2007), IPA I, and IPA II Programmes from 2007 to nowadays. Regarding regional and global integration, the AR 2019 indicates as significant B&H’s access to CEFTA in 2007, and its progressive integration into the WTO, while the issue of Euro-Atlantic integration (NATO) is still an open and complex question. The Analytic Report 2019 speaks positively about the country’s participation in the COSME, Creative Europe, Customs 2020, Europe for Citizens, Erasmus+, Fiscalis 2020, Horizon 2020, the Third Programme for the Union’s action in the field of health and INTERREG.  B&H has been participating from the beginning in the Berlin Process initiative.

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Kosovo∗ (∗Under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99) The Progress Report on Kosovo in 2008 had the specific objective of creating a plausible narrative on the ongoing process of achieving the independence of this former Autonomous Region in federation with Serbia, and before—within the former Yugoslavia. After the crisis and war in 1999, Kosovo was under the protection of the UN, which stabilized the basic conditions of the country’s internal institutional system and its relations with Serbia, under the Security Council Resolution 1244/99. From the beginning the European Union played a crucial role in the resolution of conflict, and the “European future for Kosovo” was confirmed once again in 2005 by the Communication of the Commission, notwithstanding all the controversy over the situation. Independence was proclaimed on 17 February 2008, and the new Constitution entered into force on 15 June of the same year. PR 2008 started with a long description of the Context, reporting on the main events at national, regional and international levels, where the latter two were said to have created “a new reality in Kosovo” (PR on Kosovo 2008: 5). The report described the Constitution as founded on the UN-managed Comprehensive Proposal for the Status of Kosovo, envisaging “a significant role of the European Union in Kosovo” (ibid.: 5). The “supervised independence” of the new State, recommended by Martti Ahtisaari to the Security Council in 2007, continued with the military and civil presence of the KFOR17 and UNMIK, which were, however, encouraged to partially reconfigure and transform their presence. The Kosovo Protection Corps were substituted by the Kosovo Security Forces under NATO supervision. The UNMIK was reinforced by introducing another form of EU support to the institution building process—the EULEX (European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo), with the main task of “mentoring, monitoring and advising”, and with “some executive functions” (ibid.: 6). The report reaffirms the dual presence of the UN and EU special representatives—Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK—from 1999 on), the Head

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of the EU Office in Kosovo/EU Special Representative in Kosovo (CJA 2008/123/CFSP of February 2008), still in charge in 2019. The conflict with Serbia and the internal split with Kosovo Serbs were emphasized several times in the Context description, as the year of reporting was particularly dense in violent episodes above the level of political tension, which did not permit any kind of defusing or omission. Only the final paragraphs of the “Relations between the EU and Kosovo∗” section reported the standard steps of accession procedure, like the SAP Tracking Mechanism, and the perspective of the European Partnership and integration. Nonetheless, the Report gave information on Kosovo’s participation in the IPA and CARDS programmes, and a Donor’s conference held in Brussels in July 2008, before passing onto the details of the Political criteria. The PR 2009 introduced the context in a different register—short and simple reporting on just a few basic issues, regarding in particular the UNMIK reconfiguration to only 10% of its previous competences, EULEX deployment on the territory, and the security related to the presence of NATO-led KFOR forces. The formal opinion of the International Court of Justice about the validity of the State’s independence had not yet been taken, but the report gave information on the recollection of the “written argumentation” in support of Kosovo. The section on Relations continued in the same style, with the first sentence aiming to normalize and defuse the current situation: “Kosovo is participating in the Stabilisation and Association Process” (PR on Kosovo 2009: 5). The following sentences gave information on different meetings within the SAP. The longest part of the subsection was devoted to the economic support issues, with IPA and CARDS funds, and the anti-crisis measures concerning all WB countries after 2008. The issue of dispute and conflict with Serbia was treated in the Political criteria section on Regional Issues, while the condition of Kosovo Serbs was tackled as a question of human rights and minority issues. A long version of the conclusions was published contemporarily with the PR, in the form of the Communication of the EC entitled “Kosovo∗—Fulfilling its European Perspective”, and in the chapters on the European Union’s commitment to Kosovo and the country’s progress towards the EU, generally indicating a “new stage in EU-Kosovo dialogue” with a “clear European perspective” (EC

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Communication 2009: 12). At the time, only sixty-two countries recognized its independence, twenty-two of which were members of the EU. The following statement of the Communication is significant for the way a supra- and transnational EU managed the issue from the very beginning: “The absence of an agreed position on Kosovo’s status does not prevent the EU from substantial engagement with Kosovo.” (ibid.: 2)

Kosovo would progressively be recognized by many other countries on a global level—from an initial 51 in 2008 to 114 of 193 UN member states in 2019, while the situation among the EU member states would not change significantly. Only Croatia would join the mainstream within the EU in 2013 as the twenty-third country to recognize the new state. Nonetheless, in 2019 UN membership of Kosovo remains “far from guaranteed” (Xhambazi 2019), aside from the country’s aspiration to cut across adversities by 2020, while the engagement of the international community and the EU remains based on the assumption of Kosovo as a sui generis case that must not set a precedent. For this reason, the present analysis of the reporting discourse in the longitudinal perspective concerns just as much its relation with Serbia and with Kosovo Serbs. In the 2009 Report this crucial issue continued to be treated in the same way as it had been a year before: important, but still one among many other issues to be tackled and solved. The context description started in 2010 with information on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding the Kosovo Declaration of independence that “did not violate general international law or Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)” (PR on Kosovo 2010: 4). A positive attitude was taken to the new conditions of dialogue guaranteed by the UN joint resolution of September 2010, which were to open “the way for a process of dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade, to promote cooperation, achieve progress on the path to the European Union and improve the lives of the people” (author’s cursive; PR on Kosovo 2010: 5). Within the same subsection the rapporteurs also wrote that the “lack of dialogue” between the two “has prevented progress in improving the lives of the local communities”. The overall impression

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was of an effort to use as few negative statements as possible by means of words like “tense but stable”, or “peaceful atmosphere” when describing the situation. The following section on Relations continued with the same intention of normalizing the process of the approach to the EU by this highly vulnerable country. Subsections on human rights and minorities, and on regional issues, continued to disperse the crucial points of the conflict mentioned before, with the same probable intent. The year 2011 was hard and troubled for the country, and the PR described the situation in the Context subsection, reporting the drama that was going on. The initial remarks regarded the positive (or not bad) evaluation of events in the field of the Rule of Law (constitutionalization of the presidential elections) and the first signs of UN- and EU-moderated cooperation between one part of the Kosovo Serb population and the state institutions. A long Context section reported the violent episodes and a stalemate in any form of a dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade. The semantic form of the text was built up far more on what was needed (the tensions in Northern Kosovo to be defused; the free movement of people and goods to be re-established), and on what could lead to improvement (participation in the dialogue that could bridge the differences between the sides). The missing elements shed light on the real conditions in the field, which did not permit any form of normalizing discourse. The Relations subsection cooled down the tone, reporting the facts regarding different steps programmed in the SAP dialogue, on EULEX activities, on Kosovo’s participation in IPA programmes. Despite the general tendency to depersonalize reporting, the name of the EUSR Mr Feith was mentioned, as he had come to the term of his mandate but would continue “to act as International Civilian Representative”. His successor was not named, just like the other two personalities mentioned in the same paragraph—the Italian Ambassador with the mandate of “facilitator” for the north and the Head of the Greek liaison office in Pristina as “facilitator” for the protection of religious and cultural heritage in Kosovo (evidently at risk) (PR on Kosovo 2011: 5). The change in register signalled the difficulty of reporting reflected throughout the semantic choices in the text. Different and conflicting readerships are addressed by the document, and it seems that great ability is needed to build a provisional equilibrium between the facts (dramatic,

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conflictual, even violent) and the aims (a clear European perspective for Kosovo). The question of Kosovo Serbs continued to be treated within the Human Rights and Minorities section, with information about the “newly founded Serb-majority municipalities” giving hope for the resolution of the conflict (ibid.: 19). In 2012 the European Commission produced the Feasibility Study for SAA with Kosovo, supported by the Communication and having the same structure as the PR. The further procedural steps obliged the EC to reflect on how to solve the paradox of supporting Kosovo’s approach to the EU while its six members had not yet recognized the country. The document thus informed the attempt to resolve the contradiction with the following sentence: In this context, it is important to note that the use of Article 218 TFEU, as the legal basis for an agreement with Kosovo, does not constitute recognition of Kosovo by the Union as an independent state nor does it constitute recognition by individual Member States of Kosovo, provided that an express reservation to that effect is made. Equally, it does not constitute a reversal of recognition by the Member States which have already recognised. (Communication of the EC 2012: 3)

In the following paragraphs the rapporteurs tried to reinforce the legal basis of the argumentation by insisting on the absence of any legal obstacle to concluding an association agreement between the Union and Kosovo as a consolidated practice of creating “special, privileged links with the third countries”. The footnote to the paragraph recalled the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina regarding the Office of High Representative (ibid.: 3). The overall conclusions and recommendations assessed the progress of the country since the late 1990s as “considerable” and reaffirmed EU support for reforms and institution building, indicating key priorities in several fields. The report accompanying the communication was of a more analytical and descriptive nature than the standard PR, while maintaining the same structure. The effort to decide on how to set up the Kosovo accession process was somehow concluded in that period. The PR in 2013 turned back to the normalizing discourse register giving information about the main steps in

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approaching the priorities. The aim of visa liberalization entered as a regular part of the discourse. For the first time the issue of the rapport between Serbia and Kosovo gained visibility as it was moved to the first Chapter, in its fourth section, after the Relations between the EU and Kosovo, under the title “Normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia” (ibid.: 5). In the same year, in April 2013 the ‘First agreement of principles governing the normalisation of relations’ between Pristina and Belgrade was signed. The same trend continued in 2014 with a brief Context section reporting on the recognition of independence, the downscaling of the UNMIK and KFOR presence, in just a few sentences. The following chapter brought the real news: the negotiations on SAA started in October 2013 and were concluded in May 2014, while the Commission had been preparing the Communication to the Council. The report indicated the future agreement as “EU-only”, without obligations to all member states, and reconfirmed the European perspective: The SAA anchors Kosovo into the mainstream of EU relations with Western Balkan countries and confirms Kosovo’s European perspective in the context of the 1993 Copenhagen criteria. (PR on Kosovo 2014: 3)

The register of the reporting, especially within the summary and recommendations of the document, was constructed as positively as the circumstances permitted, still signalling many open problems and splits. It could be supposed that, through the EC, the EU took Kosovo as a real challenge, and as an opportunity to build up the supra- and transnational institutionalization of the Union. Meanwhile, in 2014 Kosovo was still outside the visa liberalization programme for the WB. With the new Juncker Commission, the reporting approach changed in 2015. The first sentence of the Report published on 10 November 2015 brought news of the SAA agreement signed a few days before, on 27 October. The imminence of the signature permitted the rapporteurs to use the same new structure for the document as used for the other accession countries. In the new version of the Kosovo Report the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia was upgraded to a separate chapter, as a sign of the crucial importance of the dialogue, for both

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countries, in order to move forward within the EU integration process. The reporting register gained in normalization and objectivization, further defusing the drama of the situation in the country, but also stressing the country’s effort to build institutions and to move the reforming process forward. The way in which the Report informed, analysed and assessed different issues also indicated that the country was now treated by the EU exactly as any other involved in enlargement/accession dynamics. This also meant being exposed in the same way to the enlargement crisis, particularly concerning the EU as such, and its member states, with lasting consequences for the accession countries. In 2016 the Report published information on the EC recommendation on visa liberalization and the Council’s pending decision. The previously established structure and register remained the same, trying to give the reader a generally positive overall impression. The change came with the new stage of the enlargement crisis embracing all accession countries. As was discussed in the case of other WB countries, the “Fundamentals first!” politics strongly affected this vulnerable state too. Nevertheless, the following Report published in 2018 entered into the details of every aspect subject to monitoring and assessment, confirming the intent of the rapporteurs to defuse and normalize issues even when the dramatic dimensions of ethnic splits and political conflicts, or of a bad socio-economic situation, emerged between the lines. The Report gave information on the steps achieved during the reporting period, mentioning the Reform Agenda for Kosovo adopted in November 2016, financial assistance within the IPA programme and other EU and international instruments; the visa liberalization process, constantly supported by the EC, and academic cooperation were reinforced. The last Report was published in May 2019. The first Context section contains three short paragraphs, each in a different register. The first refers to the constant reference to the SAA and ERA framework, interpreted as the tool for the implementation of EU-related reforms, in a neutral objectivizing manner. The second speaks about the positive variation in the European Parliament’s support for visa liberalization for Kosovo citizens, awaiting approval by the European Council. The third paragraph gives information on the Kosovo government’s restrictive measures towards the neighbouring countries of Serbia, and Bosnia and

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Herzegovina, criticizing them as economically but also politically counter-productive, violating the SAA and other regional agreements such as the one in CEFTA. The register of the text is direct and severe, as if the patience of the rapporteurs has been exhausted: It has undermined successful regional cooperation efforts, notably the creation of a regional economic area (REA), and must be revoked. (Report on Kosovo 2019: 3)

The asymmetrical power dimension, taken for granted in the relationship between the EU and the accession country in the approach process, emerges here and nothing is done to soften the tone of the affirmation: the intention is direct and unequivocal. The Report has increased in volume, and in its endeavour to go deeply into the issues, criticizing different negative dimensions, but also conferring assessments like ‘some progress’, neutral ‘progress’, and even ‘good progress’ more generously in rare cases. The precious resource of time is needed for a profound transformation of all these societies and it is not surprising that they move at different speeds in making their achievements. An analysis of the achievements in Kosovo required more space in comparison with the other countries under examination. In a certain sense, everything started in 1980 in Kosovo, with the demand for Kosovo to become a republic equal sovereign status with to other Yugoslav federal republics, which gave a specific imprint to the Yugoslav crisis and final dissolution. The European pathway was different for all former Yugoslav countries and Albania, but Kosovo, together with Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been a specific challenge to the process. Despite efforts to confine the ‘Kosovo question’ as sui generis and limit its potentially damaging effect on other European issues, the model of the legalization and justification of its independence and its institution building effectively created precedents that might influence the re-nationalization processes Europe has been facing today.

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 hortcomings and Commitments as Specific S Semantic Fields of Reporting The word ‘progress’ appears as one of the most frequent significant terms within the Reports,18 and at the same time one of the most problematic too, with its frequency partially decreasing in the Analytical and Comprehensive Report.19 It seems to be primarily a powerful assessment tool, rather than an analytical one. ‘Progress’ as a key word might be conjugated as null (‘no progress’), weak, limited, sporadic, little, further (‘is needed’), slight, slow, modest, progress (without labels), some, steady, good, meaningful, tangible, significant or substantial. Together with the specific collocation, it is to be considered an indicator of the power relation with the objectivized subject of evaluation, used to measure and justify the annual amount of rewards and sanctions in political and economic terms that every single accession country has warranted in a year, and to determine the next steps in the accession process. At the same time, from the analytical perspective, following the manifold nuances in which it appears within the texts did not lead to significant outcomes, precisely because of its ubiquity and versatility. Moreover, in so many cases, a positive assessment of the progress achieved in a certain field was immediately relativized in the following paragraph beginning with “however”, and continuing with the enumeration missing or negative dimensions for the subject concerned.20 This semantic pattern might be considered as conventional, as it constitutes part of the formal semantic structure of the report as a specific discursive genre. The use of the word ‘progress’ in this case study could be seen as a specific ideological tool of the neoliberal structural approach towards accession through conditionality principles, not necessarily related to the real condition in the field. Again, we turn back to the question of facts: to what extent do these texts report on facts, and to what extent do they produce the facts? What kind of factual, objective truth has been emerging from this specific formal narrative pattern? The answer to these questions is crucial for understanding the deep political (ideological) foundation of any decision taken in the field of the enlargement/accession process, no matter how bad—or good—the real condition of the applicant country might be.

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In this sense, the instrumental nature of this specific genre has unfolded by tracing the strategies of objectivization, relativization, normalization and in particular the defusing (or emphasizing) of dramatic conflictual dimensions, and the omission of undesirable elements throughout the reports. Moreover, the analytic strategy of tracking the negative labels within the text was crucial for understanding the assessment mechanism operated by the EU agency. Sometimes the EC appears here as a severe teacher handing out school reports to her disadvantaged, but still lazy and dumb pupils, who will never really catch up with the children from the better neighbourhoods. Six specific labels created an index that was traced and counted within the text over an twelve-year time span for each accession country: limited, no progress, delay, lack of, further efforts and insufficient. Other labels or expressions could also be taken into consideration, such as ‘little’, or ‘early stage’ (becoming conventional at a certain point), but these six proved the most significant. Fig. 5.1 shows the constancy with which the semantic tool was used in time with the peak for Albania in 2011 and 2012, and for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo in 2019. The absolute numbers instead demonstrate that FYROM/North Macedonia received the highest number of negative assessments in eleven years—1664, while being the next, after Slovenia and Croatia, to enter the accession process as a candidate country in December 2005. The 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Croatia

Macedonia

Montenegro

Albania

B&H

Kosovo

Fig. 5.1  Index of shortcomings

2016 Serbia

2018

2019

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constant postponing of the decision on opening negotiations had to be justified somehow, and the progress report was evidently a perfect tool for this. Now, it seems legitimate to ask the question of why Macedonia was allowed to become a candidate country in 2005. Wasn’t it too early for the country, in view of the conditions imposed by the EU? Or were the ‘name issue’ at the beginning and the profound crisis of the EU and split among the member countries on the enlargement issue the backstage reasons for a delay that needed justification? Did it help the country to resolve its internal problems and transform—Europeanize—its economy, its political and social institutions and structures? Or did the stalemate and even backsliding in the accession process produce more negative social and political consequences, yet not visible enough? In any case, Croatia too received 494 admonitions contained in our index in only five years of reporting; the frequency diminished significantly in the year before becoming a member (57 in the 2012 report). However, this did not stop or postpone the integration process, which resulted in its actually becoming a member state in 2013. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania counted respectively 1609 and 1605 shortcoming labels in eleven years, with a similar trend along the time span. Kosovo received 1525 indexed labels, in a constantly increasing trend from 2012. The best positioned were Montenegro (1245), and Serbia (1135), the only two countries with the credible enlargement perspective of 2025. Despite the delay in the opening of the accession talks in autumn 2019, Albania proves to be in the lead with respect to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, the two countries that have remained behind in the process, and at the same time the two countries that were so deeply damaged by the conflicts in the 1990s. Be this as it may, Fig. 5.1 demonstrates a certain convergence between the general politics of the EU towards enlargement defined in the annual and mid-term Strategy papers and expressed by the speeches of the respective presidents of the EC, and the tendency to use negative assessments in the comprehensive annual progress evaluation of the Western Balkan countries taken into examination. We may speak here of an intensification in the dynamics of discussion between the EC and the WB countries during the second Barroso commission: constancy and a somewhat harmonized approach towards all countries during the transition years from

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Barroso to Juncker’s commission, with a slight but constant increase in negative assertions during the last five-year time span of the longitudinal analysis. The semantic field of shortcomings, with all due research precautions and the possible weakness of the tool, may be defined as an extremely rich field, recalling that the index did not embrace all the negative expressions used in a text, but only a selection. Expressions such as good, or significant progress, or other positive evaluations constituted a poor semantic field, much more restricted than the negative one, in all country cases. The term I have used here—shortcomings—is a formal expression of the report and part of the specific vocabulary of the EC. This consideration leads us to the next question, regarding the other poor semantic field the inquiry uncovered in the reports—that of commitment. The question here might be about the real political commitment of the EU and its member states towards the membership of all former Yugoslav countries and Albania. The positive answer could be strongly supported by listing the amount of human capital, financial resources, and in general the huge social and political energy invested over the years in the endeavour by the EU and member states’ institutions and agencies. And yet—why has the accession process not converged more effectively for the WB6 towards the final aim of membership? The word “commitment” is used in the text of the report with extreme parsimony. It occurs more than ten times less frequently than the index of six negative expressions analysed in the previous paragraph. Its frequency increases only in the case of the Analytical report (more than 20 times), and in the case of Croatia, within the Comprehensive monitoring report (54 of 84 times in 5 years). It was used in the case of Kosovo 152 times in eleven years, 148 times in the case of Macedonia, 116 times in the case of Albania, 107 times in the case of B&H, 104 times in the case of Serbia and 101 times in the case of Montenegro. For the purpose of the research, the analysis focused not only on the frequency of the specific expression, but even more on the co-context of its occurrence within the text of the report relating to the subject designated as responsible for the commitment. Synonyms and words with similar meaning—such as engagement, or obligation—almost never appear.

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In the following examples I will quote and analyse three typical and significant examples of the sentences in which the term was used: the first in the text of the Progress Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2008, the second in the text of the Report on Albania in 2019 and the third in the text of the Analytical Report on Serbia in 2011. First example—Progress Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina 2008 (6/6 occurrences): 1. Overall, Bosnia and Herzegovina has made limited progress on making the State-level government structures more functional and efficient to address their commitments regarding European integration. (PR 2008: 12) 2. Bosnia and Herzegovina is still subject to the monitoring procedure of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE) on verifying the obligations and commitments relating to its membership in the Council of Europe. (PR 2008: 22) 3. In particular, a commitment was made to improve fiscal coordination through the adoption of the law on the National Fiscal Council and the inauguration of the Council in early September. (PR 2008: 25) 4. On the other hand, in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federation) the commitment to pursue structural reforms has remained weak. (PR 2008: 25) 5. Inter-entity consensus on cooperation in certain economic policy areas improved, but the commitment to structural reforms and sound public finances remained uneven across the country. (PR 2008: 26) 6. Fiscal risks are mounting, in particular in the Federation, where large commitments on social spending were made in a context of decelerating budget revenues. (PR 2008: 29) Second example—Report on Albania 2019. (12/12 occurrences): 1. Albania showed a strong commitment to counter the production and trafficking of cannabis. (Report 2019: 5) 2. Institutional support has been crucial to the progress made and confirms the strong commitment of all relevant authorities in Albania to eradicate corruption in the judiciary. (Report 2019: 21)

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3. Albania demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting and protecting minority rights. (Report 2019: 31) 4. Albania has consistently shown a strong commitment to counter the production and trafficking of cannabis. (Report 2019: 33) 5. In this regard, more attention is needed to secure timely adoption of the incurred measures, as well as streamlining regional commitments into national policies. (Report 2019: 53) 6. In the coming year, Albania should in particular … take short- and medium-term measures to implement the action plan on acquisition of land by foreigners, which is a commitment in the SAA that is outstanding since 2016. (Report 2019: 58) 7. Albania is late in delivering on its commitment under the 2006 Stabilisation and Association Agreement. (Report 2019: 58) 8. One of the principal objectives for the national authorities will be to avoid de-commitment of IPARD II programme funding at the end of 2019. (Report 2019: 68) 9. [I]n line with the commitments made to reach 38% renewable energy target in 2020. (Report 2019: 75) 10. In the coming year, the country should in particular … increase investment in research, in line with its own commitments and European research area priorities. (Report 2019: 87) 11. It has ratified the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and notified its list of commitments, which now need to be reviewed in order to speed up implementation. (Report 2019: 95) 12. In addition, it made important commitments at the WB6 summits in Trieste, London and Durres to implement a multiannual action plan for developing a Regional Economic Area (REA) in the Western Balkans. (Report 2019: 96) Third example—Analytical Report on Serbia 2011 (3/27 occurrences): 1. The European Council of December 2006 renewed the EU’s commitment “that the future of the Western Balkans lies in the European Union.” (AR 2011: 4) 2. At the Sarajevo EU-Western Balkans ministerial meeting on 2 June 2010, the EU reiterated its unequivocal commitment to the European

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perspective of the Western Balkans and that the future of these countries lies in the European Union. (AR 2011: 4) 3. Serbia is participating in the Stabilisation and Association Process. The Stabilisation and Association Agreement provides a framework of mutual commitments on a wide range of political, trade and economic issues. (AR 2011: 5) The first two examples show two different patterns in using the word ‘commitment’. The first uses the term to recall several important texts or institutions to which the country committed itself (SAA, IPARD II, WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, Berlin Process, European Council). Sentences recalling a general concept of ‘European integration’ as such may also be included in this pattern (B&H 1, 2, 6; Albania 6, 9, 10). This modality is apparently formulated as value-free, as there was no direct intention to assess or judge the commitment as such. However, almost every sentence in the model includes a part in which a certain aspect of the reform process is evaluated, and only then does the text recall a specific commitment as a point of reference. The second modality uses ‘commitment’ as central for measuring the achievements and shortcomings of the country on the European pathway. This modality is more frequent and expresses positive or negative evaluation of the implementation of a specific commitment. In the first case of B&H 2008, we may detect one moderately positive assertion (“a commitment was made”—sentence 3), and two negative ones (“commitment remained weak””, and “uneven across the country”—sentence 4 and 5). In the second case of Albania 2019, the commitment was evaluated positively in six sentences (1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12) and negatively in only three (5, 7, 8). The common feature of all the cases reported, which are broadly representative of all the reports taken into consideration in this research, regards the responsible subject of the commitment: it is always and only the country taken into examination. The commitment is explicitly unilateral: the country towards instances that are invariably taken for granted and beyond questioning. The counterpart of the commitment—the EU institutions—barely emerges in the text of the Analytical report21 and in a specific, conventional way. The third example, Serbia 2011, demonstrates the pattern: the first two sentences recall the European Council

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decisions in 2006 and 2010, speaking about the EU commitment related to the “European perspective” and the EU future of the Western Balkans, defined as “unequivocal” in 2010. The third sentence refers to the SAA, and is the only one in which mutual commitments are mentioned. The whole paragraph containing the three sentences is positioned at the beginning of the text, pages 4 and 5, and the second sentence repeats the text quoted in the first. The word ‘commitment’ occurs within the text another twenty-four times in the context described in the first and second examples. The exercise of power here is transparent and declared; there is no doubt about the asymmetry of the relationship between parts, as reporting on progress, in all of its forms, is defined as the assessment tool, guiding the decision process of the EU institutions concerning the accession of new members. Still, it seems that the states who do not give proof of constant progress are constantly blamed, as nothing is ever enough, while positive assessments are constantly relativized by words such as ‘however’ and other semantic tools. At the same time, a serious critical approach to the EU and EC institutions and actors regarding the accession process remains invisible to outsiders. We may speak here about the burden of becoming a member of the EU being even heavier in the specific case of former Yugoslav countries and Albania. There was no ‘Marshall plan’ for these states, which had been devastated during the 1990s, including Albania whose starting position of social-economic depression was even worse. On the one hand, the citizens of these countries have experienced a kind of impatience, a feeling of missing the opportunity to enter the right queue, notwithstanding their readiness to wait, and their endeavour. On the other hand, there is a contradiction between the fundamental commitments regarding accession based on common shared principles, the political will of the parts involved and the real state of affairs in the specific context of every single state. The analysis leads to a logical sequence of questions: does the application for the membership of these states come too early with respect to the conditions imposed by the EU? Yet, what kind of an alternative strategy could substitute the conditionality principle in order to create specific solutions for reform and ensure peace and prosperity in this part of Europe? The complexity of the questions will be further tackled in the

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next chapter, while listening to the voices of the interlocutors encountered and interviewed in a time span covering 2009–2019, in Brussels, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade, Podgorica, Skopje and Tirana.

Excursus on the Statistics The development and harmonization of the accession country’s statistical institutions and capacity is one of the important aims of the process, related to the Chapter 18 of the EU acquis: EU rules require that Member States are able to produce statistics based on professional independence, impartiality, reliability, transparency and confidentiality. Common rules are provided for the methodology, production and dissemination of statistical information.

All countries are expected to regularly transmit relevant data to the common Eurostat database, participating if possible in the European Social Survey and other minor transnational European statistical instruments. The progress in this field is regularly observed and reported by the EC year by year, with greater attention after the conferment of candidate status on the applicant. Statistical observation of the reform and transformation processes is highly relevant for the deliberative procedures of the EU institutions. Major importance is given to the so-called ‘structural indicators’ regarding trends and oscillations in different social and economic fields. The main statistics are published in every annual report in the Annex section. The critical discourse analysis of the EC reports presented in the chapter could work without mentioning basic statistics regarding the accession countries, as an enquiry into the real political and socio-economic condition of the Western Balkan states does not represent the main aim of the research. In this sense, the statistics reported in Tables 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 were considered a specific sub-genre of the report, producing complementary elements to the dominant accession discourse. As previously mentioned, every data set for each country was constructed using exclusively the information contained in the reports, and these

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were not compared or checked against other reliable statistical sources. The only exception is the case of Croatia, where I used the Country Report 2019 and other data produced by the National Institute of Statistics to compare trends after the accession in 2013. A certain number of basic and structural indicators were selected within four main domains: economy and finance,22 labour market,23 demography24 and social cohesion.25 The statistical perspective had become more and more complete and complex through the years as the report as such changed and developed in editing and in content, while new important achievements in the accession process were accomplished. But in the same way the reorganization of the main text of the report did not undergo substantial transformation in the approach of the European Commission towards an important aim (as was shown by the analysis), the statistical data and information remained anchored to the initial limitations I would try to demonstrate. Firstly, the statistical information provided regularly by the annual country report does not mention the sources explicitly in every case. Some footnotes contain the information referring to Eurostat, ESA surveys, the national agency for statistics, national surveys, but not in a systematic way. It is possible to deduce from the text of the statistical section (not from the annex!) that the rapporteurs used mostly official data provided by the government and the national statistics agencies, together with the EU statistic agencies, OSCE, UNDP and other. But these sources are not always clearly quoted at the bottom of the tables. Secondly, a lot of data is defined in terms of estimated, provisional or unreliable and uncertain; yet remains in the table without explanation on how the estimation was made, and no source to check from. There are some cases in which the same estimation or provisional statistics have been reported year by year, without any back checks or feedback. Sometimes the information is signalled as ‘break in series’: that should mean that the data were not available. Still it is continuously re-reported from one year to another. A hypothesis might be proposed, to verify by other means, whether the process of statistical data reporting provides return feedback on the previous edition of the report to avoid the risk that provisional data would become official.

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Thirdly, it sometimes seems that the rapporteurs have used different units of measurement, with the risk of partly distorting the comparison between national data along the time span, but also in comparative analysis between different countries. One example may illustrate this consideration: the case of the structural indicator on early leavers from education and training for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The reports 2008–2013 did not contain any information about the indicator in the statistical annex, data reported as missing. PR 2014 reported the indicator for the first time for the years 2010–2013, with the following oscillation: 7.9-8.00-7.9-6.7. PR 2015 reported the indicator evidently using another parameter, without explanation, for the same period 2010–2014, and the oscillations were 31.8-29.9-30.3-25.9-25.2. PR 2016 used the 2015 methodology adding information for 2015: 26.3. The 2018 Report returned to the 2014 methodology, again without explanation, updating the numbers for the time span 2014–2016: 5.8-5.2-4.9. Analytical Report 2019 used the same pattern, adding the information for 2006 (13.9), and for 2017 (5.1). Again without explanation, and referring to it in the footnote with the same indication present in all editions: ∗Europe 2020 indicator. The second example regards Croatia and the numbers relating to population, overestimated in the 2008–2012 reports by more than one hundred thousand persons (4412 instead of 4281 in 2011). But this may be explained by the fact that the reports previous to the accession of Croatia in 2013 used estimated information before the Census 2011 was made. In any case, the negative trend of the natural growth rate in this country has been constantly high, over −3.5, from 2015 on, but it could not be the only cause of the decrease of population. Finally, we may ask—why is there so much missing data in all editions of the reports? One example is significant here, concerning the demographical indicator on net migration rate, an item regularly inserted in the statistical annex until 2009, and then removed from the text. Important data on the forced migration flows relating to the 1990s was constantly reported within the texts of the reports, for all former Yugoslav countries. Other information concerning illegal migration flows of WB citizens towards the EU, and refoulement flows were also constantly reported. But simple statistics on the net migration rate are missing. It

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might be important to have this data available as it is, in a document such as the EC country report on progress achieved by the accession country. Can we speak here about a sort of ‘easy methodological approach’ by the EC statistical agency regarding the WB accession countries? Unfortunately, it was not possible to submit the question to EC officials, as the interviews preceded the specific findings. However, it might be useful to signal it as a future research subject to explore. As there is no room or purpose here for entering into an analysis of the trends related to the reported indicators, a few important considerations only will be mentioned. All countries, Croatia included, manifest a decreasing trend in national growth rate. Serbia (−5.5), Croatia (−4.1)26 and B&H (−2.0) were below zero in 2017; North Macedonia (0.7), Montenegro (1.7), Albania (3.0) and Kosovo (8.2) recorded positive values in the same year, but still decreasing compared to the previous years. Gross foreign debt is not reported for all countries—data for B&H and Montenegro are missing. It is high for North Macedonia, Albania and Serbia, and moderate for Kosovo. The infant mortality rate has been decreasing in all countries, but still remains high in Kosovo (9.7), in North Macedonia (9.2), in Albania (8.0) and in Serbia (4.7) according to the 2019 reports. Life expectancy has been slightly increasing in all countries, for both men and women. The gap between the economic activity rate and the employment rate is high in all cases; it increases when speaking of the female employment rate. The high level of youth unemployment remains one of the main problems for all the societies considered, with Kosovo in first place (52.7%) followed by Macedonia (46.7%) and B&H (45.8%), Serbia (31.9%) and Albania (31.9%), and Montenegro (31.7%). Data is missing in particular in the section on social cohesion, so any comparative consideration related to the reported information would have no sense here. Any serious analysis of the real impact of the accession process on the applicant countries regarding selected and other indicators would require time and instruments that are impossible to employ in this research. The critical approach to the construction of the statistics in order to create arguments and justification for political and policy decisions remains the aim of the reflection. In this sense, the analysis revealed a certain lack of

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attention by the EC agencies accountable for the statistical annex of the reports in considering the rationale of the instrument.

In Conclusion The Europeanization of the WB states and societies has been working, despite the fact that it is proving to be a sort of obstacle race, as becomes manifest in the reporting on the progression of achievements recognized by the European institutions over a twenty-year time span, in all countries taken into account. It is not just a matter of the different speeds at which these countries met the conditionality demands in so many fields. The starting position and the enormity of the problems ensued from the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, escalating into wars for the ethno-­ national redistribution of sovereignty and territory, with differentiation of the initial burden, determined a different pace of transformation for each country. Voting for independence in 1990, Slovenia, as a rich northern YU republic with homogeneous ethno-national structure, was the only one able to rid itself of the weight of the disintegrating federation. Considering all the other former Yugoslav republics during the 1990s, let us briefly recall a few important facts: the war in Croatia did not finish until mid-summer 1995, with the contested military action ‘Oluja’ (Tempest), and the massive exodus of the Serb Croat population. The troops of the Republica Srpska Army committed genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995, and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina concluded with the Dayton Peace Agreement in November of the same year. The conflict in Kosovo exploded in 1999, and NATO forces bombed the territory of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo from April to June of the same year, in order to stop Slobodan Milošević’s regime perpetrating atrocities on Kosovo’s Albanian population. Violence emerged in Macedonia in 2001 between Albanian and Macedonian groupings, brought under control with the Ohrid Agreement. All these conflicts created new conditions, destroyed the economic wealth of these countries, devastated trust between people(s) and increased social distances. Searching for a wise, just and enduring solution in all these cases was a tough endeavour. In this light, the steps achieved in the ‘European pathway’ of the former

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Yugoslav countries and Albania may be interpreted as an unprecedented advance in almost all politico-social domains, and should be appreciated as such. From the other point of view, the EU actors—politicians and officials—have constantly been forced to understand not only how to teach and translate good (liberal democratic) patterns and practices to their counterparts in the Western Balkans, but also—and even more difficult—to comprehend what to teach. At each turn the situation demanded innovative ability in problem solving, and the questioning of ineffective models based on a business-as-usual bureaucratic approach. In this sense the enlargement/accession process has to be explored as circular and reciprocal, while the WBs remain a polygon of practising (de)construction and (re)integration from every possible perspective, enormously useful for the structural and institutional transnationalization of the EU. In the next chapter the communication flow between the actors involved in the process will be examined, giving voice to real people in real contexts, in order to analyse and better understand the complexity of the process through the lens of subjects performing significant institutional and social roles in European and national institutions.

Notes 1. See the site of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, web page of the Chronology of relations between the Republic of Serbia and the European Union—http://www.mfa.gov.rs/en/foreignpolicy/eu. 2. Increasing trend of negative attitude towards the future enlargement was reported in the Chap. 2. 3. Link to the EC Enlargement website: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/countries/check-current-status_en. 4. In fact, the EC considers 2002 as the year in which the annual reporting to the Council and Parliament started, while the (Progress) Report format was adopted only in 2005. 5. See Chap. 2. 6. While writing these sentences the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has just been elected.

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7. For example, the Analytical Report of the Commission for Serbia in 2011 nominates the following institutions as sources: “Serbian authorities, the EU Delegation in Serbia, reports of expert missions, reporting by the Member States’ Embassies in Belgrade, European Parliament reports, assessments by international organisations (including the Council of Europe, OECD, OSCE, IMF, World Bank), as well as local and international non-governmental organisations.” 8. BiH is the only fully recognized former Yugoslav country that lags behind in the process of accession, together with Kosovo, yet not recognized by all UN and EU member states. 9. The Commission recommended to the Council the opening of the accession negotiations with the FYROM in October 2009. 10. France, Denmark and the Netherlands were the three EU member states that opposed the beginning of the membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania at the Luxembourg Summit of the European Council. The then President of the EC, Jean-Claude Juncker, defined the decision as a “grave historical error”. 11. Agreement signed in November 1995 between Croatia and Serbia for peaceful transition and reintegration of the region of the Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium within Croatia. For more information see https://peacemaker.un.org/croatia-erdutagreement95. 12. In that period the trial began against generals and commanders of the Croatian Army Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač. They were indicted for crimes against humanity and violation of laws of customs of war. The case triggered for years nationalist incidents and disputes, and was one of the main reasons of partial delay in accession process. For more information see http://www.icty.org/case/gotovina/4 and http://www.icty.org/case/cermak/4. 13. The case of Kosovo is an exception in this sense, as its fight for independence has roots in the 1980s’ movement guided by Ibrahim Rugova, for the republican status within the SFR Yugoslavia. 14. Positive assertion labels such as ‘good progress’ were attributed in just nineteen cases, while ‘no progress’ (30), ‘some progress’ (85), ‘limited’ (72), or ‘insufficient’ (27) labels appeared in the text much more frequently. A similar trend continued within the Report 2012 with more generous use of a ‘good progress’ label (27) and less ‘limited’ (37) and ‘insufficient’ (11) labels (EC PRs on MNE 2011 and 2012). 15. See Chap. 6.

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16. Council Conclusions of March, October and December 2011 and of June 2012 (PR 2012: 5). 17. The military base of the US Army, Camp “Bondsteel”, was established in Kosovo immediately after the NATO intervention against the Yugoslav Federation Army controlled by Slobodan Milošević in 1999. It is defined as “the main base of the United States Army under KFOR command in Kosovo”. It hosts the Multinational Battle Group-East (MNBG-E)—a NATO command that should conduct “peace support operations in Kosovo to contribute to a safe and secure environment and freedom of movement” (https://jfcnaples.nato.int/kfor/page185715346.aspx). Two hills at the location of Ferizaj/Uroševac were flattened to build a 3.86 km2 camp space, with 11 towers, a 52-helipad airfield, 2.5-metre-high wall, 84 kilometres of wire, and 7000 soldiers and staff at the beginning. It was defined by independent sources as the largest and the most expensive foreign military base built by the United States in Europe after the Vietnam War. 18. In five years of reporting on Croatia the word ‘progress’ was mentioned within the texts 1076 times; in eleven years of reporting on other WB countries, the word appeared 1890 times within the Reports on FYROM/North Macedonia; 1358 times in the case of Montenegro; 1354 in the case of Serbia; 1620 times in the case of Albania; 1316 times in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and 1133 times in the case of Kosovo. 19. In fact, the frequency also decreased significantly in the years 2013, 2014 and 2015 for a reason impossible to discover. It might be hypothesized that different political input of the EC higher ranks on how to construct the specific language of the reports was given to the rapporteurs, but we have no evidence demonstrating this. In any case, the specific message of the reports did not change in those years. 20. The word ‘however’ was constantly used in the texts from 2008 on, with the peak in the last Analytical report on Bosnia and Herzegovina, published in 2019: 249 times. In the case of Croatia it appeared 494 times in five years; in eleven-year reporting on other WB countries it appeared 1016 times within the reports on Macedonia; 991 times in the case of Montenegro; 1062 times in the case of Serbia; 1111 times in the case of Albania; 809 times in the case of B&H; 662 times in the case of Kosovo. 21. The Comprehensive Monitoring Report was produced only in the case of Croatia in 2012, as an instrument that preceded the final act of acces-

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sion. The frequency of occurrence of the word ‘commitment’ increased significantly in this case (54 times), and the quality changed, as the mutual commitment of the two parts at that point of the process became crucial. 22. Considering the economy indicators, four indicators were analysed: GDP (euro per capita), GDP (in PPS per capita, EU-25/27/28=100), growth rate of GDP (national currency, at constant prices, % change on previous year) and consumer price index (CPI) (total, % change on previous year) [Inflation index]. The last three indicators are considered as structural. For financial indicators we selected only gross foreign debt of the whole economy, relative to GDP (%). 23. Labour-market selected indicators were: economic activity rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64 that is economically active (%); employment rate (15/20–64): share of population aged 15/20–64  in employment (%); share of male and female population aged 15/20–64 in employment (%); youth unemployment rate: proportion of the labour force aged 15–24 that is unemployed (%). Only the second, with gender distribution, is considered as a structural indicator. 24. Referring to the demographic indicators, all five items were taken into consideration: natural growth rate (natural change—births minus deaths—per 1000 inhabitants), net migration rate (immigrants minus emigrants per 1000 inhabitants, infant mortality rate (deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 live births) and life expectancy at birth in years, with gender difference between male and female. 25. Index of real wages and salaries (index of nominal wages and salaries divided by the inflation index); GINI coefficient; poverty gap; early leavers from education and training: proportion of the population aged 18–24 with at most lower secondary education who are not in further education or training (%), the last is considered a structural indicator. 26. National Agency of Statistics, Croatia.

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Documents and Reports Ohrid Peace Agreement 2001. Retrieved from https://peacemaker.un.org/ fyrom-ohridagreement2001. Progress Reports, Analytical Reports, Opinions and Comprehensive Monitoring Reports Were Downloaded from the Official Web Page of the DG NEAR.  Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/ countries/check-current-status_en. - Albania—Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2019 - FYROM/North Macedonia—Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2019 - Bosnia and Herzegovina—Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2019 - Serbia – Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2019 - Montenegro – Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2019 - Croatia Progress and Analytical Reports 2008–2011 - Comprehensive Study 2012 - Country Report 2019 - Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges (2008–2019) The General Framework Agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Agreement). Retrieved from https://www.osce.org/bih/126173? download=true. Treaty of Lisbon 2007. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri =OJ:C:2007:306:SOM:EN:HTML. Treaty on European Union – The Maastricht Treaty 1992. Retrieved from http:// eurlex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/11992M/htm/11992M.html. Washington Peace Agreement 1994. Retrieved from https://www.usip.org/sites/ default/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/ washagree_03011994.pdf.

6 Narrating the Process of Enlargement and Accession: European Union Versus Western Balkans

The semi-structured interviews were considered the second most important methodological instrument in the investigation. The first of the sixty interviews were conducted in my native city, Sarajevo, in October 2009. During the same month, I travelled from Sarajevo to Belgrade; from Belgrade a round trip to Podgorica, and then back again to Sarajevo. The last week in October I met interviewees in Zagreb, before getting back to Milan. I travelled by plane and by car. The planning of the schedule and contacts and agreements with the informants preceded the encounters, involving months of intense work in selecting, approaching and obtaining the agreement of the interlocutors, as was explained in Chap. 4. What may appear at first glance a brief and commonplace ethnographic report on one month of field research gains specific weight if considered in connection with the 1990s, and within the specific context of the area of former Yugoslavia, involving the long-term interruption of connections and viability between Zagreb and Belgrade; the long siege of Sarajevo, almost impossible to leave or to enter for three years and half; undesirable passports and ethnic backgrounds leading to high individual risk at every check-point, formal and informal. Indeed, Kosovo citizens still lack full rights of free movement across the region, and in Europe, as © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_6

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they are not yet recognized by Serbia and by Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by another five EU member states. All these dimensions represented the distorted and dramatic reality the citizens of the Western Balkan countries were up against and which they experienced for such a long time. The European integration process in this sense may be considered as a powerful instrument for coming to terms with the recent past, at least from the perspective of free movement and internal border-crossing experiences. Many of my interlocutors at a national level confirmed that their personal, positive attitude towards accession was based on that argument, amongst others. The first round of interviews proceeded with a long visit to Brussels in January 2010, and another two visits in autumn 2010, to Skopje,1 the capital of North Macedonia; and Tirana, the capital of Albania. The only capital I did not visit at that time was Pristina, but I had the opportunity to meet Kosovo diplomatic representatives in Brussels. The second round of interviews involved a restricted group of people, as it was not possible to extend the research, with its scarce time and funding, to another visit to all WB capitals. I met the informants in Brussels, at the seat of the DG NEAR, and at the country Mission and Embassies’ offices, in November 2018. The last two interviews were conducted in Sarajevo at the beginning of January 2019. The only missing interview this time was with diplomatic representatives of Montenegro in Brussels. One more interview with a Bosnian academic, conducted in 2012, was included in the analysis, for its relevance to the topic. I met two of the informants both in 2009 and in 2019. The interviewee codified as no. 43 is the same person as no. 51, working in the same institution in an upgraded position; the second interviewee, codified as no. 46 and no. 52, was a diplomat who had retired in the meantime, but continued to work on EU integration within the civil sector. A small number of interviews were conducted with two informants at the same time, but each person was considered individually. A certain number of interviews could not be tape-recorded, and were reconstructed from notes. This posed a limit to the critical-discourse-approach-inspired methodology of analysis and hindered the use of any software for textual analysis. These limitations were constantly taken into account.

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In all cases, the interviewees here were not considered only as representatives of a single national case, as the number of country-related interviews was insufficient for any scientifically significant outcome on a national level. The different roles each informant had been performing within the integration process as such, in relation to the specific context, made it possible to explore how different versions of reality were constructed with regard to progress in accessing the EU (Abell and Myers 2008: 146). As DeVault and McCoy proposed concerning the institutional ethnography approach, the interviews were: used not to reveal subjective states, but to locate and trace the points of connection among individuals working in different parts of institutional complexities of activity. (DeVault and McCoy 2006: 18)

On the one hand, it was exciting to explore what the Balkans looked like from the windows of the European Commission, through the lenses of the officials in Brussels2 and in the local seats of EU Delegations in each WB capital. On the other hand, the national fieldwork and its different perspectives—political, institutional and civic—in the diverse but still familiar contexts of the post-socialist states and cities—were even more challenging. Here, the confusion starts immediately, as the overlapping of space and place regarding the frame of action of these actors emerges: is the Embassy or Mission’s site in Brussels still Belgium and EU, or is it Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo and so on? The same question is valid for the seat of the EU Delegation in the WB capitals: are we in EU territory protected by an official, institutional role and by the EU member state passports while living in Sarajevo, Tirana and Podgorica? Defining the context of each situation was thus a rather complex issue, as the concrete speech event of the interview always happened in a precise place and at a precise time, as a direct, face-to-face interaction. At the same time, the conversation referred to texts, objects and agencies beyond the immediate surroundings, in space and time, analysing the past and the present state of the art when referring to the process as such, while projecting argumentation towards the uncertain future of a country’s accession (Goodwin and Duranti 1992: 14–15). As Lynggaard stressed, the advantage of the interviews is that they “allows us to qualify and establish

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relationships between discursive categories”, and to understand better “how ideas travel” (Lynggaard 2019: 50–53). The research was designed to distinguish analytically between two main dimensions of the process—enlargement and accession, and three main fields of action—political, institutional and the field of civil society. Both dimensions and fields emerged as deeply intertwined in the visions and arguments of the interviewees. At the same time, these fields extend far beyond the EU integration process in its widening components. They affect the process directly—with the concrete EU policies and decisions expressed in the Strategy papers, Reports and Opinions of the EC, and their translation and re-interpretation by the local actors; and indirectly throughout the semi-transparent space of action within the geopolitical sphere of national interests on both sides, and with regard to the effects of global capitalism. Of course, the limited aim of the research could not embrace the latter: the ambitious focus of the inquiry—to disclose “the features of ruling that operate across many settings” of the accession process—came close to exhausting the researcher’s already limited capacities (DeVault and McCoy 2006: 18). In order to frame the specific discursive practices relevant for the inquiry, each country represented a specific ‘context of situation’. Each of our seven case studies manifests certain common features highlighted in the following sections, which allowed me to draw up a final interpretation of the findings. At the same time, each national case encompasses a set of problems targeted by the interviewees, which needed to be distinguished and analysed separately. Accordingly, the context-dependent topoi emerging from the conversations did not coincide in every case; when a distinct topos appeared as a constant valid for the majority of cases, it was considered as significant both in a narrow sense, as relevant for the single country case, and in a broader sense, as relevant for all cases in its diverse nuances. Other specific arguments emerged as characteristic of a single national context. Twenty-eight topoi valid for the majority of case studies were identified in the analysis of the interviews. Moreover, they were identified as relevant for the national agency, and/or as relevant for the European agency.3 Subsequently these topoi were correlated to the specific types of discourse through which the enlargement dimension related to the ­EU/

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EC actors and agency interwove with the accession dimension related to the local actors and agency. All the empirical material provided by the sixty interviews was scrutinized in order to identify the main topoi and significant types of discourse. The interviews were examined through the specific lenses related to both the enlargement and accession dimensions of the process, and with regard to the political, institutional and civil society’s fields of agency. Moreover, two case studies are reported here with major attention to the details: the progressive association of FYROM/North Macedonia and of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the EU. The choice rests on the relevance of the two countries for the analysis, considering ongoing interest in their applications for candidate status. Macedonia applied and gained the status in 2005, the first after Slovenia and Croatia, but in January 2020 the country was still waiting for the European Council’s decision on the opening of talks. Bosnia and Herzegovina was the last to apply in 2016, receiving a negative Opinion from the EC in late May 2019, a decision posing a new threat to its precarious political condition. In these two cases the interviews were narrated here as a short stories, as an illustration of the comprehensive analytical work that has been done and as an attempt to make room in the text for the authentic voices of my interlocutors, impossible to achieve in all sixty cases. The analysis of the documentation—in this case of the transcripts of sixty interviews collected from 2009 to 2019, accompanied by the notes of the logbook—faced me with the choice of how to downsize and organize the material whilst maintaining a sense of responsibility towards each interviewee and respecting methodological rigour, which is never an easy task. I decided to firstly summarize a selected number of conversations to be read as narrations, reported in the following section, trying to reconstruct every single narration as faithfully as possible. In my view, the choice was meaningful for this research, where several limitations had to be taken into account at every step of the investigation and in the final analysis. The most serious one regards the specific nature of institutional work processes as such, as organized by “conceptual schemes and distinctive categories”, regulated by “procedures and accountability”, in order to be able to transcend the local settings and order the process in its translocal, relational dimension (De Vault and McCoy 2006: 37). The majority

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of interviewees, encountered in very different sites in Brussels and throughout the Western Balkans, were selected according to their institutional roles within the framework of the European and national agency engaged in the enlargement and accession process. Even in the case of the civil-sector activists and ‘independent intellectuals’ the selection was made according to their particular positioning within accession discourse. The specific institutional conceptual language the first group of interviewees shared at a certain point—whether expressed in English, Italian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin—was determined by specific institutional categories and interpretative schemata related to their roles. Any kind of mutual understanding among the actors interviewed would have been impossible outside this specific type of language, but at the same time, this situation initially created a serious limit to an analysis and interpretation of the transcripts as texts which had inevitably lost their material nature as speech, and of non-verbal communication. Many of my interlocutors used the same concepts and categories, the same issues were tackled without my intervention during the interview, diversified in part by a country case, but even there shared among the actors involved. Moreover, the transcripts reduced the dialectical content of the conversation, right down to the basic themes tackled by my interlocutors, even more so with the interviews reconstructed from notes where there was no chance of going back into the past and hearing their voices again. At the same time, I was interested in understanding if and when my interlocutors would shift from their institutional ‘we-ness’ to a more personal utterance, such as a backstage story, or by using metaphors, or when they simply began to refer to themselves as individuals. In any case, what occurred in the transcripts was a standardized pattern of narrating the process among the many different actors, which did not change much over a ten-year time span, where both concordant and contrasting interpretative models built different sides of the same semantic frame. I initially saw this as a huge difficulty, to which I was not able to attribute any sense. Then it turned out to be maybe the most import finding, which I would try to examine in greater detail. The second limit regarded the semi-structured feature of the interviews. As my research interest was related from the very beginning to enlargement/accession as a process with exceptional transformative

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power, carried out institutionally by several groups of agencies, I could not use the strategy of the in-depth interview, which usually leaves more space for spontaneous speech. Although the interviews proceeded according to a basic structure, though not to be strictly imposed on the interlocutors, certain themes sometimes arose from a suggestion by the interviewer. For this reason it was necessary to explore retrospectively the way the conversation was conducted. One of the issues that was directly introduced by me, for example, was the question of the Berlin Process, as it was evidently not on the mental agenda of most of my interlocutors in relation to EC-guided enlargement. Once the topic was put on the table, many interesting observations and opinions emerged. The other example was more significant for this analysis: the production of the (Progress) Reports. Only in a few cases did the interviewees mention this spontaneously without entering into details but when asked, many of them were able to reconstruct the process, the best reconstruction being reported further on in this chapter. The third theme was related to a personal, or even intimate, consideration of Europe/the EU, elicited by the simple question: “What is Europe for you?” The question had a sort of ‘displacement’ effect, quite unexpected, particularly during the first round of the interviews. Not one person had a ‘ready answer’ and all of them took a moment to collect their thoughts. Informant 30 (EC—EU/SB, Brussels 2018, W) stepped back, exclaimed, “Oh, what a question!” and then addressed me with a counter-attack: “What is Europe for you?” This had the effect of displacement, as we had switched roles, a feeling of losing control. I heard myself saying: “I’m not here to provide answers but to ask questions!”, but then I tried to put across my vision, and she followed me. It is the best moment to remind the reader that we speak here about an extraordinary and unique process of rapprochement between the EU and the WB countries—states, institutions, citizens—real people in space and time, socially and culturally embodied and embedded within their specific local and European contexts, shaping their own experience. I learned a lot from the interviewees, but this conversationally constructed knowledge only shed light on a particular piece of the extended relational chain through which both dimensions of the process were constructed in time. Considering the complexity of the process as such, the research

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remains merely an attempt to grasp fragments, through spotlights on the chain of actors interconnected and intersecting within the broader frame of the European integration process. As Turner has suggested, understanding certain aspects of “people’s experience and accounts of their experience” with regard to their institutional agency was helpful for the enterprise (Turner 2006: 139). In the following sections I will first go deeply into the two country cases—FYROM/North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Secondly, I will analyse the main nodal points—topoi—emerging from all the interviews. Finally, these points will be considered as constituting specific types of discourse that have emerged as characteristic of the enlargement and accession process.

F YROM/North Macedonia: Not Just a Question of Name Brussels The first interviews with the informants related to the FYROM4 with a seat in Brussels were conducted in January 2010, a few months after the recommendation of the EC to the European Council to open negotiations with the country, and thus launching the second phase of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) implementation (Chap. 5). Immediately after the usual formalities and introductions, Informant 12 (EC—EU/MK, Brussels 2010, M) expressed his satisfaction at the outcomes of an “intensive and ultimately reasonable year” (2009), as “the conditions were met for the commission to issue recommendations to start negotiation”. Although the Council postponed the decision to the first half of 2010, my interlocutor did not give any sign of doubt about an imminent positive decision from the Council. Yet, he was a long-term official in the EU institutions, engaged in enlargement through several roles before his current one. He continued: “It was a good year, because there were three concrete achievements that the country has been waiting for for a long time”, and the EC opinion was even more important for

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him in view of the citizens’ many years of frustration at the slow progress of the process. The recommendation for opening the dialogue “demonstrated to both the government and to the population of Macedonia that reforms, an effort at home, do bring results in Brussels”. For him, the further aim of visa liberalization was extremely important too, for giving citizens a sense of being free to move, increasing their will “to catch up … to see the same material circumstances for life being present in their country”. The official was aware of the country’s complex interethnic constellation and wished to highlight the way in which it had managed the problem since its independence in 1991, and, with regard to the violent phase of the conflict in 2000, regained a political and institutional balance with the Ohrid Agreement in 2001. Yet, according to him, the problem persisted, on a normative and practical level, but just as they had “managed to save themselves from the cliff-edge of civil war”, they had also demonstrated their problem-solving capacities in other circumstances too. In a country whose economy was “built from scratch”, but whose will to join the EU was unique, a Eurobarometer survey at the time showed that 90–95% of the population was pro-European, the highest result he could recall. Thus, the political will and consensus on EU accession was never questioned, notwithstanding considerable differences between the main political parties on ideological bases. During the conversation we never entered deeply into the ‘name issue’, disputed with Greece. My interlocutor spoke more about the social dimension of the accession process, considering the bad economic situation or the brain drain. He saw the aim of enlargement as such, and of its agencies, as addressing the challenge of persuading young people to remain in their home-country, and empowering them to be agents of development. Yet politics had the final word, according to him, on both national and European levels. In that sense, he described the importance of his job within the enlargement unit as “a daily working relationship between authorities in Skopje and daily work in relationship with our own political decision makers”. The advocacy of interviewee 12 for enlargement was stressed in his words: “It is a real pity … not for us policy makers here, but for Europeans as people … not to celebrate the fantastic achievement that enlargement has obtained.”

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Skopje Unlike interviewee 12, who was one of the few EU officials in 2010 who gave permission to tape the interview and who spoke openly about sensitive issues, informant 13 (DEL—EU/MK, Skopje 2010, A.) did not permit the use of an electronic recorder, and asked to remain anonymous. A. wanted to review my reconstruction of the interview from my notes, and asked not to mention any specific feature that could lead a reader to identify him/her. Informant 13 defined him-/herself as an expert on the Balkans, working in international and European institutions since the war years in the 1990s. A. spoke cautiously choosing the words with attention, while describing a typical working week in Skopje mentioning regular two-week meetings with the US Ambassador and NATO representatives, three-weekly meetings with the EU Ambassadors and constant meetings with ministers from different governmental sectors. The dual presence of the EU in the country as Delegation and as Special Representative Office characterized the work of the informant. The conversation focused at the beginning on the interaction of different local agencies within the process, solicited by my mentioning the National Council for European Integration, a Parliament body chaired by the opposition party leader, where I had met other informants a day before. According to A., the choice had two opposite effects, a good one as the Council included broader representation of society, such as NGOs, journalists, local self-government: “they are all represented in the NCEI”. But, the opposition leadership led to the “negative side-effect” that it was not taken seriously into consideration by the government, sometimes becoming merely an “arena for political disputes” instead of “an important arena for public discussion”. Macedonian civil society was described as quite present and pro-European—“I cannot remember who is against!”—but at the same time highly politicized, not only because of its “being resource driven”, but also because of the generalized politicization of society, including the media. According to A., “there is no NGO which is not affiliated and is politically neutral… In general it could be said that the social forces are heavily politicized.” That condition however did not affect the widespread orientation of all political and social forces in favour

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of accession to the EU—ideology, or ethnic affiliation or any other social or cultural diversity did not interfere with the positive attitude, which remained over 90% over the years. A. affirmed: “It seems that EU integration is the key cohesive factor in this complex society.” When asked about the consequences of the delay of the European Council decision on the date for opening negotiations, the answer was rather vague: “Now it is less positive (then in 2009 n.a.) … We are stuck now, it has had of course an impact on the motivation, which has suffered”, subsequently adding: “there is nobody to blame … it is just reality.” The issue of political and other ‘realities’ was mentioned several times by A. when speaking about the ‘name issue’ with Greece: “the name issue is not a criteria (for accession, n. a.), it is just a political reality” and had to be accepted whatever the price. Towards the end of the interview the conversation returned to social issues and young people, seen as quite similar to those in any other EU member state—“the same lifestyle, the way of dressing, the music they listen to”—yet at the same time facing a “much tougher future, as their opportunities are limited”. Not much was said critically about the EC and EU agency: in fact, nobody to blame. Still, the “European Union is a model for this country”, stressed A.

Brussels I met informant 15 (EC—EU/MK, Brussels 2018, W) almost ten years later, in November 2018. A long-term official of the EC, on her 20th Report regarding the enlargement process. Her room is smaller than usual, as most of the EC offices are small and modestly furnished; walls covered by the records of those past years. She described herself as a “believer” in the European project of integration and enlargement “because it’s a treaty, it’s a moral promise, because it’s the right thing to do.” She initiated the conversation by speaking about the ups and downs of the present political moment in the EU—“we’re not in a good a moment for enlargement and policy right now”, but high politics aside, “we deal with poor people who work on the real reforms”. In that sense, according to her, at the moment Macedonia had “bright prospects”, as its year-and-a-half-long efforts to regain the recommendation to open

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negotiations were being acknowledged and rewarded by the Commission. For her, no doubt about the main question: “Have they met the conditions?” and in the case of Macedonia, “the Commission has publicly said they’ve met the conditions”. But, a “new stage in EU relations” was opened here, as certain member states expressed their doubt about the credibility of the Commission: “We have never been not believed before.” For her, what was at stake was the credibility of the EU, as “we will lose more than Macedonia!” The informant’s responsibility within the sector also regarded Kosovo, and during the previous years she had been part of the sections dealing with other WB countries. Based on her long experience, one of her conclusive remarks was that “we might have that conversation again in ten years, sadly.” In any case, the core themes that emerged from the conversation concerned two main aspects of the process: political will and capacity building, the latter being understood as a circular process of learning, with awareness of the power asymmetry between parts. The rule of law returned as fundamental for the reform process, and the recent decision to put it at the core of the accession agenda was, according to her, “a lesson learned from the mistakes of previous enlargements”. She affirmed: “The rule of law, I think, needs to be tackled first, because it takes longest, it is generational, it is psychological, and it is a difficult construction of reforms and changes in the countries.” Moreover, transformation of that specific field requires time, and is difficult to measure: “Fundamental rights, how the judiciary works, these are much more difficult issues to reform, adapted to the country, and to be quantified.” In that sense, “being sufficiently on the right track” has to be taken into account, as it is a process that is concerned, which was appreciated in the Macedonian case. Two years ago she found the main problem of the country to be in the absence of the political will to continue with reforms, a specific set of circumstances that led to “state capture”. The situation, however, had been freed from the impasse, so that now she saw the main problem as the capacity of state agencies to deliver the reforms. The inner contradiction of the accession process emerged here, according to the interviewee, “because ironically we want them to go as fast as possible, and we also want things to be done properly”, which were seen by her as an opposite message, since there were so many aspects of the reforms required that needed time. Civil society was another important segment

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of Macedonian society according to her; notwithstanding its limits, in comparison with other WB countries, she saw it as “empowered, as a part of the government”. In the middle of the process, there is “a lot of pain”, and that was the reason she described the EC as “the best critical friend” of each accession country. It is in this sense that her words about the role of the European Commission and its agency should be construed: “We do technical things that transform a continent, but it’s the most political thing the Union has ever done … We are very aware of the strength and the responsibilities of all we do.” Annual collection, selection and interpretation of the information about the country’s progression and condition, in order to produce reports and opinions, created a specific memory about enlargement that “nobody except us” had.5 Informant 15 did not use the word ‘guardian of memory’ when speaking about the DG Enlargement/NEAR agency, but I find it appropriate for describing the specific meta-objective of the Directorate my interlocutor returned to several times during the conversation. The collective memory of enlargement, as hidden within the archives and untold stories, while explored in its de-personalized and objectivized political, bureaucratic and technical superficies, emerged throughout the field research as ever more significant and worth investigating more deeply.

Brussels Back in 2010, in Brussels, I had the conversation with informant 8 (DIP—MK, Brussels 2010, M), a high-ranking diplomat and scholar in the field of international relations, with a book on enlargement freshly printed. His overview of Macedonian accession to the EU started with remarks about the geopolitical character of the enlargement process. According to my interlocutor, the accession of the post-communist CEE states could be seen as one of the Western and European geostrategic goals during the Cold War, accomplished successfully in 2004 and 2007: “The EU had achieved what it wanted.” The Balkans entered into the European perspective, but with other premises: “It has already been ten years … no real progress, with major policy goals exhausted.” According to him, the process had become rigorous, harder, non-negotiable, but the

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conditions to be implemented involved high expectations in this complex context: “It’s like it is in the high-jump, where everything depends on how you place the ladders.” He spoke about European integration fatigue, in its three dimensions, institutional, communitarian and regarding the enlargement process. What was indicative for him was the coupling of DG Enlargement with the Neighbourhood department, signalling that the widening dimension was no longer an EU priority. The accession process of the WB had been slowed down and in his view: “it would not be stopped, but would not advance with the desirable dynamism.” Five years had already passed since Macedonia gained candidate status, and the negotiations were still being delayed—he underlined—wondering aloud about the consequences of an alternative of a “failed enlargement”. Speaking about Macedonia, he saw the decisive cause of the delay in the ‘name issue’ with Greece, describing it as “a sui generis case”. For him, the way in which the EU dealt with it signalled that the “ethnocentric forces in the EU, and Member States’ interests, were still stronger than communitarian interests”. Getting back to the country’s and regions’ problems, the interviewee focused on the “unresolved national question”, the only solution to which he perceived to be in EU integration, and in second place within regional integration into the Atlantic Alliance. In that way, he said, we would have a European Parliament where Albanians from Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania, or Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, would sit and work together. Yet, the Balkans were seen in Brussels as a region of instability, lack of safety, unemployment, and with a high level of organized crime. A stalemate in the accession process, according to him, would lead to the destabilization of the region with very bad consequences for the whole of Europe: “another ten years (of a stalemate) and you could have a ghetto, a reserve… with another norms, another rules.” In his view, the only way to avoid that scenario was to persist in European integration: “Europeanisation of the Balkans, instead of balkanisation of Europe”.

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Skopje Informant 9 (NAT—MK, Skopje 2010, W), whom I met in Skopje in October 2010, was a politician with a long career in the field of EU integration, “from cooperation with the EU (in the 1990s) to accession to the EU”. Her focus was more on the political realm and agency, internal and European, and social conditions and consequences, than on the geopolitical dimension of the process. While she considered 2002 to be a difficult year—the Ohrid agreement was signed a year before—and the European perspective seemed “a mission impossible”, in just two years the country had made a big step forward, and the EC seemed to become highly interested in “helping us to make this jump”. The application was a “risky step” politically speaking, as “raising the expectations” of the citizens brought up the responsibility of domestic political actors and institutions. According to her, it was the right moment and, in fact, the European Council granted the country candidate status. At the same time, the risk was real and the party governing that part of the accession process, SDP, had lost the following elections. The country soon entered a period in which accession passed through a series of “ups and downs”. She nonetheless underlined the political capacity of the state institutions to build up consensus about important matters, as was the case for the National program for European integration, adopted in 2005. Indeed, in 2009 the country moved forward and the EC gave a positive opinion on opening negotiations. The frustrations came with the Greek veto regarding the “name issue”. The interviewee proposed an unusual view of the dispute with Greece. She saw the new situation as a kind of instrumentalization of a sensitive issue for internal political disputes, used by certain political forces in both Macedonia and Greece: “both sides became hostages of this game.” She reminded me that Greece did not use its veto in 2005 to stop the application to become a candidate country, and that “in the past we learned how to live and cooperate economically and politically without solving that problem.” Now what had happened had raised doubts about a merit-based system of the accession process in the eyes of public opinion, as well as the doubt about double standards partially eroding the “El Dorado image of the promised land” the EU was seen as

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in Macedonia. It was even harder because, according to my interlocutor, twenty years had already passed since the country started to approach the EU, and so many conditions had had to be satisfied well before any talk about accession began. “And now we are still talking about accession talks,” she said. The power of “a positive myth of Europe” was politically important, and it had been restored despite all the problems, according to the public opinion surveys. More important for the process was the relationship between Macedonian institutions dealing with the integration process, and the European Commission, based on mutual trust. “When we have this level of trust things have moved forward, but when this trust is missing,” she said. Her experience was that the coordination between the EC agency and local accession institutions worked very well, while the problems had occurred on two main levels—the level of coordination of domestic political institutions, and the level of EU decision making. Nonetheless, the country had demonstrated several times in the past twenty years that the internal divisions could be solved peacefully. She interpreted that capacity as a genuine characteristic of the European power to transform since its first steps towards integration: the EU was a “symbol of all these dramatic changes that have occurred” and had become sustainable.

Brussels Almost ten years later, I spoke with a Macedonian diplomat in Brussels, informant 14 (DIP—MK, Brussels 2018, M), with a twenty-two-year-­ long career, then on his third mandate. The interview took place at the new seat of the Macedonian Mission to the EU, whose windows faced the DG NEAR building. The topic that opened the conversation was the same question as with informant 8—delay in the Council’s decision about the opening of negotiations. The geopolitical issue was again on the table: while according to him it was evident that the EU’s geopolitical interest in Macedonia had passed through several years of decline, he had the impression that it had started to return. In any case, he stressed that the period of stalemate and backsliding had persisted for too long, the impasse being provoked mostly by the ‘name issue’. But the ‘state capture’

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condition had ended in 2017, and the new political leadership had created all the conditions for “getting back to the reforms and the European pathway”. The Prespa agreement (2018) solved the question of the name, whatever the cost of a painful decision for the country. He hoped that it would be confirmed as soon as possible, as it was still pending at that time, awaiting the Parliament’s decision in both Macedonia and Greece. For the interviewee, the political dimension was again a decisive one—as “there were Tzipras and Zaev signing the agreement”, while a danger still lurked as the next Greek government could boycott the decision: “we are under pressure from time!” He remarked that the country had been creating political and administrative structures capable of managing the accession process for more than eighteen years and that the institutional building process empowered the state’s capacities to deal with EU requirements. The track record of the reforms in the fields of Rule of Law, public administration, jurisdiction and media was positively assessed by the Commission, although there were still many open issues. He stressed several times how important the opening of the negotiations with Macedonia would be, as a support to the progressive forces in the country. He looked back to the period 2008–2017, defining it a kind of “social agony on all levels”, with disappointment, apathy, politicization and party-dominion over the state: “people were scared to express their opinion publicly.” It gave space to corruption and clientelism, while all public positions were controlled, and free media and NGOs were persecuted. His fear was that another delay would provoke a new crisis in the country. My interlocutor wanted to underline his awareness about the current situation in the European Union, and the need for consolidation of its structures and institutions. At the same time, he said, “we do not want to be collateral damage” in this process, as they had proved to be a reliable partner, according to the positive opinion of the EC.

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 osnia and Herzegovina: Rising B from the Ashes of a Broken Society The armed conflict formally started in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 6th April 1992, the same day the UN recognized the state’s independence and sovereignty. The war came to term as a result of negotiations at the US military base in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, an agreement ratified one month later in Paris. The war destroyed the country’s social, economic and material heritage, leaving more than half the population dependent on humanitarian aid in early 1996. The State institutions, divided among the conflicting sides, had to face demilitarization before starting to construct the new administrative apparatus. In addition to the tragedy of the dead, the whole country had experienced lost and wounded people and a radical institutional change, vertical and horizontal, above all demographic: at the end of the war, more than half of the citizens had changed their place of residence compared to the 1991 census (Sekulić 2002, 2017). Indeed, the Dayton Agreement ratified the separation between groups bound by a new form of ethnonational solidarity. The Agreement legitimized the conceptual and real tension between groups as ‘ethnic communities’ and as ‘constituent nations’. In the case of the Western Balkans, the national issue was and still is cross-border: Croats are considered as a constituent nation of Croatia and of BiH, in the same way that Serbs are considered a constituent nation of Serbia and of BiH. Only the Bošnjaks, Bosnia’s third constituent nation, do not have an alternative ‘mother-­ land’, while other Muslim-origin groupings, different from ethnic Albanians,6 are present in Serbia and in Montenegro (Brubaker 1996). Moreover, many citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (and other WB countries) have dual citizenship—the second one mostly Croat or Serb, but also of other regional and EU member countries. According to the Dayton agreement, BiH is a democratic state with sovereignty still limited by the presence of a High Representative of the International community; it is a sort of consociation, but is not republican—its institutional composition remains problematic from several different points of view. Its Constitution was drawn up as one of the annexes

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to the Dayton Agreement (Annex IV), and in its other minor acts: a constitution without democratic consultation and without a politically defined demos- or demo-cratic constituent (Bellamy and Castiglione 2013). The state is composed by two entities with high levels of sovereignty—the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ratified by the Washington Agreement in 1994), the Republic of Srpska, and the Brčko District. The Federation is composed of ten cantons, with high levels of autonomy in several socio-political and economic realms: education, health, culture and others. A significant part of the political institutions at the state level—the three-leader presidency and the Chamber of Peoples—excludes the possibility of citizens who do not recognize themselves in one of the three constituent nations being elected.7 At the same time, the members of the three constituent nations are not recognized as such at the level of the constitutions of the entities where they represent ethno-national minorities; in this way, all citizens are deprived of their full rights of political participation and institutional representation. Dayton transformed armed conflict into institutional conflict. Its exceptional success was to have stopped the war and to have created the conditions for a peace, albeit ‘negative’, or ‘cold’. The fundamental contradiction of the Agreements—the recognition and legitimacy of the ethno-national ideology, guarantor of the dominant role in political life for the nationalist parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina—continues to reproduce the structures of the state and the paradoxical and precarious socio-political condition (Keil and Kudlenko 2015; Sekulić 2017). These elements would inevitably emerge from the interviews, both with the informants connected to the European institutions and with the local political, institutional, and civil society actors. The DG NEAR head office of Section D1 for Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where I conducted one of the interviews in 2019, was decorated with a poster representing the curious BiH state structure, as a reminder of the complexity of the context. From 2009—the year of a first round of interviews—to 2019, BiH maintained the status of potential candidate, entered into the visa liberalization process and applied for candidate status in 2016. The negative Opinion of the European Council was published at the end of May 2019, after the last interview was

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conducted, enumerating key priorities the country had to deal with in order to complete the requirements for becoming a candidate country.

Brussels Informant 48 (EC—EU/BiH, Brussels 2010, M) had worked for the EC since 1996; with a PhD from LSE, he had spent a year in BiH before coming to DG NEAR.8 He constantly used the ‘we’ pronoun or impersonal form, speaking about his job in the EC, interrupted only when asked about his professional background, and about his personal consideration of the EU. Four main topics were considered in his interview as significant for the Bosnian Herzegovinian case: constitutional order, the political realm and agency, public administration and technical support for the accession process, and civil society; the EU/EC institutions and agency emerged as the fifth important argument. The first—constitutional order—was defined as “peculiar” and one of the main reasons for the slow progression of the accession process. He underlined the absence of a single interlocutor as a main feature creating problems, where for every single issue—he mentioned as examples education, social issues and employment—we have to speak with three to thirteen interlocutors … try to have coordination!—he exclaimed. His “dream” was to have to deal with one voice only, according to his experience in many cases an impossible enterprise. He defined the situation in terms of “uniqueness” compared to the other countries in the region. The Constitution clashed with the civil and electoral rights of the citizens—referring to the ECtHR ruling in the Sejdić-Finci case. The second topic—the political realm and agency—was defined as “troubled”, and a “main concern”; the loco where every agreement built up on administrative and technical level was called into question “whatever at stake”, with the constant interrogative effort of understanding whether the issue would “really be endorsed at all levels”. While on the technical level and within civil society the “difficulty was felt very much”, political issues and decisions had been “blocking everything”. “It can be a real WALL for the job”, he said. Political games increased the corruption risk within public administration, and civil society was seen as a channel to help (the process), to “change the

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mentality (of citizens) regarding politics”. Yet, for him civil society in the country was “isolated, marginalised, politically in a status quo”. As an illustration of the general situation he mentioned the vicious circle of constant postponing of the 2011 Census: “IT IS CRAZY! How hard are we working on this issue?!” In any case, according to the informant the “EC cannot do many things” if there is no political will and consensus at the local level. The limits of its agency had “a reason behind” them in the local political environment, while Greece (for FYROM) or Brussels was “readily blamed for everything not going well”. Yet, it was “our responsibility to pass on the message properly”, said the informant. At the EU level, getting visibility for the accession process was not easy; the EU institutions and the European Council in particular, were described as affected by nationalist and populist discourse, which had not been helping the situation concerning enlargement. Just to remind readers—it was 2010.

Sarajevo Informant 47 (DEL—EU/BiH, Sarajevo 2009, W), with a PhD in European Studies, one year in Sarajevo, previous work experience in the EC, adopted a less formal mode of conversation, using the first-person singular much more than the plural, or an impersonal form. She tackled the issue of experience-based knowledge at the very beginning of the conversation, where “work on the ground” permitted one to “see things in different perspective, details” to build up “knowledge on a deeper level”. Regarding the topics emerging from the interview with informant 48, constitutional order and administrative capacity did not have a particular place in this interview. Enlargement/accession was referred to here constantly in terms of the knowledge-based perpetual learning process. The integration process as such was considered as “fantastic” and enlargement “the most successful tool of the EU”. Working within the process was defined as “very complex” from a “personal prospective”, especially when there were so many “things that were not going well.” Working in Bosnia was for her a “constant learning process” as she considered her previous formation and training as limited: “no training for the specific countries;

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some reading, some feedback with people.” On the other hand, the communicational flow was defined as often unidirectional—from the EC to the local level, while for her “we had to learn from them”. The process of EU integration was mostly understood as a “teaching process” while “partnership was more needed”. The political realm and agency were considered as quite important—ethnic parties, nationalist rhetoric and above all the difficulty of reaching compromise on any issue. However, this was mentioned without emphasis, as taken for granted, while institution building, the economic reforms and prosperity, and personal relationships among the actors involved in the accession process on both the EU and local levels were considered as more important. Notwithstanding her criticism towards the EC, she highlighted her personal uneasiness about the European Commission and Brussels being “blamed for everything”. The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina according to her “was not fantastic” and the “road was very long” while there were “a lot of things to do with legislation, and with mentality”.

Brussels The conversation with informant 53 (EC—EU/BiH, Brussels 2018, M) happened after a nine-year time span from the previous interviews. Informant 53 had more than ten years of working experience on enlargement matters, several in the field, and an MA in European studies and international relations, and agreed to tape-recording the interview. The meeting took place while the Analytical report and the Opinion on Bosnia and Herzegovina were under construction, as underlined by the informant several times. Asked about the changes over the ten-year period, he offered a personal observation about the increased political will of the WB leaders to “advance fast towards the EU”. The topos of the political realm and agency entered the conversation immediately. “Enduring political will” was mentioned in this context for the first time and would remain the most important issue indicated by the informant. The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined, unlike informant 48, as “a little bit opposite, but quite a little bit” to the other WB countries. The accession process, according to him, in a stalemate from 2010

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to 2014, was deblocked in 2015 and 2016, while it was recently “almost halted again because of a multitude of factors in the country” due, firstly, to the lack of the leadership’s political will. The second most important issue concerned the conditionality principle of accession—a dimension that was not mentioned so explicitly in previously reported interviews. The principle was never questioned, but the way of using it as a tool and the “right time” for imposing further demands on the country were criticized: “the big question of WHEN to have conditionality on”. The topos of constitutional order was considered constantly in relation to political will. The Constitution related to the Dayton peace agreement was not to be considered as “some sort of holy totem that cannot be changed”; if the Opinion of the EC should say that the Constitution would have to be amended, “that would become the Bible in a way for us”. Quite an interesting use was made of religious-based metaphors, on what can, or cannot be discussed, and on who should decide about it. A will to join the EU was seen as directly proportional to the EC’s demands for meeting the requirements, an aut-aut condition. “Tailor-made solutions” for any local case were needed, according to him, but it was up to the local actors to build on that, with the assistance and constant pressure of the EC; still he was uncertain about the kind of final product here—“a monster?” it would end up with. The methodology of accession, according to the informant, did not change substantially with the fifth enlargement; what changed was the focus on fundamentals, not only on the 23rd and 24th Chapters of the Acquis, but also the focus on good governance, public administration reform and the economy. The change in approach of the EC was the result of the learning process throughout the previous waves of enlargement, and was considered by him in terms of “evolution, not as revolution”. The common goal was to build institutions and improve the socio-economic situation of the country by meeting the conditionality requirements, and any claim to preferential treatment by the country’s leadership could only lead to loss of the country’s credibility. Notwithstanding the reiterated awareness that the need for stabilization after the conflicts in 1990s distinguished the WB countries from other EEC member states, the interviewee recalled the last EC Strategy paper for 2025, highlighting that it clearly stated that “any country, if it wants

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to, can catch up”. Adding with perplexity: “Now, do they want to catch up? That’s the whole issue.”

Brussels I met the informant codified as no. 46 (DIP—BiH, Brussels 2010, M), and as no. 52 (NGO—BiH, Sarajevo 2019, M), twice in nine years. The first interview in 2010 was not taped, due to the high-level diplomatic role of the interviewee; our conversation in 2019 was recorded, as he was already working in the civil sector. My interlocutor is perhaps the person with the longest experience in the accession process amongst all my interviewees, having worked in the public administration of the country (Direction for the European integration), then as a diplomat, and finally as coordinator of a country-based NGO acting as a think tank. Three main topics were highlighted in 2010: the state and institution building process, political will and the agreement on the future of the country. He insisted at the time on calling to mind the EU presence within the context of the country and region not only since the signing of the Stabilisation and Association Partnership, but also during the period of conflict and in the aftermath, with special representatives within the diplomatic, military and police sectors. As for the dilemma that emerged in previous interviews—whether BiH should be treated as any other country in the accession process, or whether it demanded special treatment due to the legacy of the war in the 1990s—according to him, the EC had declared the former option, but acted as if the latter were the right one, not by giving any “discount” to the country, but through the massive human and material resources involved. He said also that the EU was “testing some instruments of international agency in solving the problems of the country for the first time ever”. The regional component was underlined as crucial in this case, although his “feeling” was that “no holistic comprehensive approach that would then be continuously advocated and implemented” was employed by the EC. He pleaded for “a different approach, more objective and long-term”, capable of “adapting” conditionality tools to the context and providing continuity.

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Sarajevo The interview in 2019 initiated with retrospective insight into the country’s accession process to the EU, underlining its discontinuity, provoked, according to him, mostly by the lack of the local leadership’s political will and by scarce public administration capacities. However, my interlocutor wanted to focus on the conditionality choices of the EC, and on their effects on the process over a ten-year time span. The question posed before by informant no. 48 about the right time to impose a specific condition on the country returned more than once in his discourse. The first stalemate followed a prosperous initial period 2003–2005/6, when the “unluckily formulated condition” of closing the Office of High Representative was at stake. The previous agreement to treat the OHR issue separately as part of a peace building process, complementary but not to be identified with EU integration, was lost with the new composition of EC and EU staff in Brussels and Sarajevo, as “no written trace was maintained”. The impasse was created, as the implementation of the condition was not possible at that stage; at a certain point, the condition was reformulated as a part of the process, and the process restarted. According to him, the following years, 2009 and 2010, were to be considered prosperous, leading to the realization of the “174 conditions” for visa liberalization. During the same period, the ECtHR provided the ruling in the Sejdić-Finci case. Imposed by the EC again as a condition for the continuation of the process, it provoked a long and problematic stalemate reinforcing, in his view, the ethnic political principle and discourse in the country. Not until 2014, with the German-British initiative, supported by the Croatian and Slovenian leadership, was the condition re-­interpreted as a part of the process, and not as a condition. The interviewee insisted throughout the conversation on the country’s substantial need for “incentives and encouragement”, on the need to be given “a positive sign (from the EC) to mobilize the resources”. He considered such a sign the opportunity to deliver the application for candidate status, and subsequently the answers to the questionnaire, while expressing his hope in a positive outcome. In all this time, the informant stressed, “the view of the EU towards the enlargement changed”, and “competition substituted

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cooperation”, which affected the country and the region with serious consequences. For him, the responsibility of the local actors nevertheless remained the main point, as the “narrative that has been arriving from the country as such seems not to be well articulated”. The Dayton-based constitution did not create an insuperable barrier, as the text permitted change based on consensus in any realm. As was the case in 2010, agreement and a view of the country’s common future remained the main obstacle for the implementation of the accession conditions, where the political will of the actors continued to block decisions at both entity and state levels. According to him, the EC’s role here proves to be crucial for helping the country in “defining the claims to what we need and what we wish to become”.

Brussels For informant no. 50 (DIP—EU, Brussels 2018, M), a long-term diplomat with experience of the European integration process since the late 1990s, the EC “has to be present at every process, at every procedure when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina”. For him, the political pressure of the EU should increase, as “we invited them to get involved in our matters”. The danger that “things might worsen” was real for my interlocutor: “there is a certain border … not yet surmounted … a sort of a mountain pass … until it is overcome they have to engage more.” The interviewee expressed his deep concern about the future of the country, and the risks the EU and the whole region could face if the process of accession should not maintain or accelerate its pace. In fact, the first issue he tackled was the “foreign affairs” nature of the goal of accession to the EU, a unique interpretation amongst the informants. Consequently, he opened the conversation by speaking about the difficulties related to the regional approach of the EU regarding the accession of the former Yugoslav countries, which dates back to the 1990s. The spectre of the restoration of a sort of Yugoslavia within the EU caused important local actors in the region to tend to reject it. At the same time, he underlined the necessity of tackling the problems at a regional level, and in that sense he supported the initiative of the Berlin Process in 2014. Every period of

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stagnation reinforced the negative attitude of the political forces in BiH towards the deliberative process regarding EC conditionality, while the final decisions had to be taken on a political level. He confirmed the statement expressed by all other interviewees regarding the pole position of the political realm and agency in BiH’s delay in delivering better results. The only exit from the impasse my interlocutor saw was in the regional approach of the EC towards all WB countries; he recalled the importance of Croatian accession in 2013, and the perspective opened up to Montenegro and Serbia. In this sense, he returned to the commitment of the EU, facing a choice between “acting preventively in the region … triggering it into membership in a coercive way, or maintaining a reserved attitude towards the region”. He was visibly upset while speaking about the possible consequences of the latter strategy, and of the continuous delay in accepting new members, leading to a possible crisis of catastrophic dimensions.

Brussels The same day I spoke with another diplomat, informant 49 (DIP—BiH, Brussels 2018, W), at the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, just a few steps away from Rue de la Loi 15. She introduced herself with a brief summary of her previous positions, as a politician and diplomat, involved in the process of approaching the EU from the very beginning, in 2000. In her view, the process as such could be distinguished by its two dimensions: the political dimension crucial for determining the dynamics of accession, and the technical one, which had its own bureaucratic life. These two dimensions were not always coherent, which could be proved in the specific case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to her. She anticipated the topic of the country’s recent achievements to which she would turn back again during the conversation: “from our side” the institutions and capacities were built, and the questionnaire was delivered to BiH in December 2016. By February 2018 “we had answered more than three thousand questions and 1600 people took part in it”, while in November 2018 the response to another 650 questions was going to be delivered. The informant continued to illustrate her affirmations with

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backstage stories9 about the “battles” to maintain the already marginal position of the county on the political agenda of enlargement, once it was re-collocated together with Kosovo into the ‘non-candidate’ niche. The moratorium on enlargement announced by Juncker in 2014 created, in her view, an unsustainable situation in the country, in which the achievements in institution and capacity building were not visible to citizens— she mentioned 334 of 378 requirements that were achieved in that period, but passed unobserved. According to her, this was a period with a quite positive political climate and efficient cooperation between domestic institutions. “If the process were to happen, it had to start—so we decided to deliver the application.” The decision was received negatively within the EU institutions: “the resistance was huge … incredible resistance.” Hard work in lobbying and diplomacy eventually yielded the consent of the Netherlands Presidency of the European Council, and the application was delivered “on Monday 15 February, from 9.00 to 9.30, in the presence of Mogherini10 and Hahn11 … a beautiful atmosphere”. The next “phase” regarded serious work on the questionnaire, coordination mechanisms, tackling unresolved issues, such as the Sejdić-Finci ruling of the ECtHR—“while the cards were shuffled, this atmosphere fell apart”. The informant insisted on considering Bosnia and Herzegovina a society able to function well: “there was a war, but the day after we started to function as a society again … it is a quality of ours” although the country would never become a Nation-State, as many other European and non-­ European countries, such as Belgium, Luxemburg, or one day Syria. Political and institutional solutions had to be found for the representation of three constituent peoples, and all other citizens. My interlocutor considered the state in its three components, diverse in language and ethnic belonging, and insisted that every single amendment to the constitutional order of the State would have to respect this diversity. On the other hand, she insisted on a common BiH society able to find solutions, or even offer two answers to the problem which would satisfy both parts in a dispute. For her the application meant that “we managed to communicate our strong commitment to our European future, and that this was the unifying element for us!” Moreover, she added, the country provided proof of institutional capacity at an administrative and technical level—that the country was well prepared and competent at that stage.

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From the political point of view, the application demonstrated, according to her, that the country spoke with a single voice in its determination to proceed with the process. For her, a negative opinion from the EC was unimaginable—“we haven’t taken it into consideration in the last three years”. In any case, the country would have to tackle a number of sensitive internal issues, such as the constitutional challenge, the electoral law and further institution building. According to her, looking at the current centrifugal tendencies in Europe, “enlargement is only possible if it would unify Europe … that is the way we have to work … and become an attractive, and not a problematic State.” But the country needed support, and positive signs from the EU able to increase its citizens’ self-­confidence and motivation, and to empower pro-European political and institutional actors.

Sarajevo The informant codified as no. 43 (NAT—BiH, Sarajevo 2009, W) and as n. 51 (NAT—BiH, Sarajevo 2019, W) continued to work within the same institution over a ten-year time span, upgrading her position. During our first interview, she immediately connected the topic of the country’s political instability to the lack of political will by its leadership, unable to arrive at consensus on any issue, while the conditionality principle, considered one of the EC’s main tools within the accession process, could not work without political support. In such a specific context, she noticed, the European institutions sometimes used the principle as a “political criterion”, and often without sufficient sensitivity towards the problems the country was facing. The informant mentioned two examples—police reform, and, further, the demand to close the OHR office— as significant for sustaining her assertion. These two cases required “much better defined” conditions, as “it was clear that they would provoke political problems” at the local level; therefore the “constitutional revolution” should not have been demanded at that time. The presence of the International community in Bosnia and Herzegovina was widespread for many years, so that “they could not pretend not to know the situation well”, she said. In her view, the problem with the EC agency resided in an

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unclear definition of specific conditions, but also in its weak support for their implementation, occasionally accepting halfway solutions. However, from 2003 to 2006, according to her, many valid results were achieved; after these years came “a handbrake, and reverse” in the process. Her criticism regarded either the lack of institutional and administrative capacity to deal with the EC requirements, mixed with the diverse attitudes the three ethno-national corpora had towards the common state. However, with more wisdom and intense political pressure from the EC, the problems would be solved more efficiently, as was experienced during the initial period of the process.

Sarajevo We met again in Sarajevo in the first few days of January 2019. Informant 51 started the conversation by affirming that she felt “we had done something, however” in all these years, in spite of a “generally bad situation in the country”. The problem of “different visions of the state” endorsed by the leadership of the three constituent nations was identified throughout the interview as the main obstacle constantly hindering the country’s accession process. According to her, this situation became the number one political issue, and affected “every single problem that arises within the framework of European integration, from the census, through the law on food security … meaning literally in each area where different visions of the state were somehow reflected.” There was declared consensus from all the parties in charge about the country’s European pathway, but at the same time the construction of the common roadmap had been exhausting energies and motivations. The interviewee considered the work of her institution—Directorate for European integration, the country’s main administrative body responsible for the coordination of the process—as positioned in the middle of conditionality pressure from the EC, and the resistance of dominant political actors to agreements on the rules and implementation of any important normative and structural dimension of the reforms. According to her, all the spheres of a highly politicized society were affected by the constant difficulty experienced by the political agency to build up consensus in every field. In the case of the Questionnaire,

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the coordination mechanism was agreed politically at a state level, so that the process of answering could start. But, building the coordination structure on all other institutional levels—two entities, ten cantons of the Federation and Brčko district—produced such an “awkward construction”12 of working groups and their secretaries, as to structurally hamper the communication and the efficiency of their work. According to her, the fact that the country managed to deliver the answers at all, notwithstanding the extended time and effort required, was to be considered a “miracle”. The role of the Directorate was crucial in her view, being a public servant agency , neutral by definition, which enabled it to assume the role of mediator in all sensitive issues. She mentioned an interesting element in this process—how, in producing the documents, they (officials of the Directorate) tried to find such textual formulations able to conciliate conflicting positions between the main political actors wherever possible, and still be acceptable to the EC counterpart. In some cases a dual answer to a single question was delivered, and a small number of questions (22) remained open. But, she said, it took so much time, and so much dispersion of energy: “In other countries, these working groups were seen as some kind of a technical support, while in our country the agreement on the coordination mechanism assumed dimensions of Constitutional change”, with all the negative consequences for the accession process. We had the conversation before the EC’s negative Opinion was given, as this would arrive at the end of May 2019. She spoke openly about how the Dayton constitutional order and its reinterpretations had been perpetuating conflict among the ethno-national political leadership assuming the role of the exclusive representatives of their three respective constituent nations. Concretely, concerning the accession process, it had been preventing the construction of the National programme for integration, indispensable for starting the new stage in the association process. Her criticism of the local context was huge, but she constantly recalled the responsibility of the EC regarding the bad situation in the country, in quite strong words: “In general, the principle of conditionality of the European Commission has failed on exam in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” According to her, the EC was not present enough with clear messages; the conditions were often imposed with bad timing (as in case of the OHR, or the ECtHR ruling in the Sejdić-Finci case). Moreover, she said again,

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as in 2009, that once a single condition had been imposed, the agency of the Commission did not always insist on its full implementation, but in any case accepted a half-way solution. According to her, it was much better to speak in clear terms, and not “in euphemisms”, usually manipulated by the local politicians. People like her instead “knew how to read their messages, which meant SIT DOWN, INSUFFICIENT!—but which didn’t sound like that”. Again the school metaphor appears, recurrent in her words about the relations between the European and local agency. It emerged again when she spoke about the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of a “school for pupils with special needs”, that could not advance with the programme for “normal schools”. Greater sensitivity from the EU was needed here, especially in deep understanding of what condition should be imposed and when, with decisions followed up by a firm statement and competent assistance in its implementation. She mentioned several “grey zones” related to what was defined “a negative conflict of competences” between the state, entities and cantons, as being a priority problem, the solution of which was indispensable for moving the country forward in the accession process. Despite this, many things had been accomplished to a certain point, she said, regarding better capacities in the domain of the Rule of Law, such as the improvement of the judiciary system, or human rights regarding minorities, gender equality or others. The common information system of the accession process was built up, permitting full transparency and direct communication among the actors involved. Things did “move from the dead point” in society, notwithstanding all the negative political and other circumstances.

Interviews as Narratives About Enlargement and Accession A number of topoi emerged from these conversations, common to the large majority of cases, independently of the role (EU and EC or national officials; diplomats and political advisors; national representative institutions; civil sector actors; intellectuals). I tried to distinguish them by a

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EU/nation state dichotomy, or by first and second round of interviews, but it turned out to become a copy-paste job of almost the entire list of topics. In the end, I decided to maintain everything in its integral version, as significant for both agencies—European and national—and showed it over a ten-year time span from 2009 to 2019 (Table 6.1). The themes were tackled with greater involvement and competence by EC and country institution officials during the second round, probably due to the greater experience and knowledge accumulated over the ten-year time span. Nonetheless, with the exception of Croatia, which became a member in 2013 and was not involved in the second round of interviews, for all other countries the same issues were still on the table, despite important steps having been made in the meantime.13 The general framework of European integration discourse is continually re-constituted with respect to a specific set of problems and to the available devices, political and other, for solving them from one cycle to another. These problems concern, on the one hand, the countries that Table 6.1  Outline of topoi identified in ‘European’ and ‘national’ agency in 2009/2010 and in 2018/2019 Political realm and agency Institutional and state building Constitutional order and capacity building Conditionality principle and Acquis Administrative and technical support of the process War legacy and stabilization Enlargement as a learning process Public administration reform Regional issues and relations with neighbours Preferential treatment Responsibility of the EU and of the country Catching up with the accession process Political realities Personal relationship and mutual trust

Common values and vision about the future Civil society agency Rule of Law Fundamentals first Good governance Culture and lifestyle Aspirations and Expectations Commitment versus Engagement Competition versus cooperation Socio-economic reforms and prosperity National sovereignty Ethnic political principle versus citizenship Bilateral relations Migration and brain drain

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have been progressing within the accession process. The management of the process is delegated to the European Commission whose agency in this case could be seen as a zero-instance institution engaged in mediation between other institutions of the European Union (and its Member States) and every single accession country, and whose work is based on the principle of conditionality. The other component in the set of problems correlates with the specific constellation of relations between Member States, and the particular interests of supra- and transnational institutions of the European Union. The core instance of policy decision-­ making on the EU level is dual: the European Council, and the European Parliament, institutions in which the tension between the will of the Member States and the trans-national European sphere of interest directly and indirectly influences the decision-making process, with consequences for each individual country in the accession process. At the same time political decision-making at the national level proves quite complex, extending the time and effort spent on meeting the requirements set up by the European Commission. As reported throughout the interviews, and with reference to the academic literature, these countries have been suffering from ‘institutional weakness’ and ‘limited statehood’, from internal divisions that might be of an ethnic and/or ideological nature, as well as from unresolved bilateral relations in the region. The economic situation in each of them is still underdeveloped compared to the EU average and standards. These context dimensions have created a fertile terrain for using accession discourse for specific political purposes that may sometimes have positive effects on the process, but may also create obstacles to a more efficient translation and adoption of the reform requirements. My interlocutors regarding both the EU and accession country’s agency were positioned by their roles at the margins, or outside the decision-­ making political power centre. It was my choice in this research not to interview members of political elites with a decisive role, but people involved institutionally in frequent, mutual interaction, forming a network created within, and delimited by the enlargement and accession axes. Even high-ranking officials of the EC—Heads of units as in the case of informants 59 (EC—EU, Brussels 2010, M) and 60 (EC—EU, Brussels 2018, M)—could only suggest or recommend certain decisions

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to the higher levels of the EC and EU hierarchy. Informant 59’s answer, when asked about the competence of the Unit for enlargement strategy and coordination (DG Enlargement), was that “it is a sort of coordination unit but also for making proposals on enlargement strategy.” The same lack of effective decision-making power characterized informants related to the national agency, even when Ambassadors or Heads of Country Mission to the EU14 were involved. However, all these interviewees mentioned quite similar sets of problems, as cited before, sharing a set of issues related to these problems, while the way of approaching and interpreting them changed according to their positioning within the EU/EC, or within the national institutional agency and civic sector. The split is thus evident along the EU— Western Balkans axis, even when my interlocutors endorsed a critical approach towards internal EC or country matters, or, in the case of EU and EC officials, advocating in favour of the country they were in charge of. The importance of political agency and of core deliberative power was the issue most tackled, and a constant in all the conversations, with different interpretations. It was quite evident that the commonly shared awareness of my interlocutors was that the real political power was elsewhere and that both conditionality determination and the final word on accession and its phases lay with other quarters and agencies. The EC actors were aware of their relative political impact on the decision-­ making, notwithstanding the quality and amount of their work. At the same time, they demonstrated an ability to re-appropriate their unique power over discourse production regarding the accession process (Krzyżanowski 2009). The EC was recognized in their words as a mediator, as “a best critical friend” of the accession country, and even when it appeared as a severe teacher, there was no doubt about the legitimacy of its decisions. The national counterpart’s efforts regarded the production of a specific discourse able to convince the Commission’s representatives about achievements even when the requirements were not fully implemented. If the arguments were convincing enough, then the trend of progression in approaching the threshold of candidate status or of membership was to be seen as much more important than the achievement as such.

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These two main dimensions of discourse on enlargement and accession within the specific research frame were reproduced in various forms over time and, in my view, had a lasting effect in creating a sort of a crystal bowl, in which the same argumentation relating to the same unresolved or partially solved problems was perpetuated on a continuum. Accordingly, the real achievements became constantly diminished in comparison to the shortcomings, and with regard to new requirements to be approached.15 While listening to the second round of interviews, I had the intuition that a kind of negative emotion was often communicated during the interviews, transversally and more or less openly, regarding the frustration, and even anger, at the slow progress, compared to relative efficiency of endeavour in almost all cases. At the same time, the claustrophobic sensation of closeness within the enlargement impasse had emerged while reading and listening again to the interviews. Just to mention some of the rare metaphors used by the interviewees in both cycles as an illustration of this shared condition of not being able to get beyond the burden: wall, school, teachers versus pupils, holy totem, Bible, stick and carrot, high jump race and ladders, monster, (EU seen as) El Dorado. ‘Business-as-usual’, whatever it might mean, did not work in this case: as well as the renewed will to integrate the Western Balkan countries politically within the EU, a new kind of political imagination is needed here. People I met at the European Commission were deeply aware of this and declared they were (strongly) committed and determined to push the process towards the final aim of accession. What was defined as a ‘technicality’—implementing conditions and monitoring the process—still had a political meaning and importance, as often stressed by the informants related to national agency. During the ten-year time span, the competence and personal commitment of EC officials towards the countries increased significantly, while the inclination towards bureaucratic reasoning diminished.16 This kind of social and cultural capital in the enlargement process risks getting lost if not sustained politically and institutionally. Now, the question here regards the issue of the negative perception of the results of EU accession politics and policies, seen mostly as inefficient, slow, uncertain and unsuccessful, for a variety of reasons. The broader frame of the discourse is constructed by questioning the ability

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of these two agencies—EU/EC and WB—to bring up the results defined by the accession agenda. The first question is the ability of the Western Balkan countries to move forward efficiently and implementing the EC requirements of accession more successfully. The second question regards the ability of the EU and EC institutions and agency to enact political, economic and social measures to substantially enable and empower the accession countries in their efforts to transform and reform society. As was demonstrated before, the topics and arguments were shared by both agencies, while often leading towards different conclusions. I would like to remind the reader here that the intention of the analysis was not to explore the discursive construction of European, or national, identity. The focus was on the interactional construction of a specific discourse of EU enlargement and the WB countries accession, seen as a constitutive part of “co-constructing the institutional and political reality of Europe/ EU” (Krzyżanowski 2009: 100). Ten basic types of enlargement and accession discourse were identified by tracking the entanglements between two specific agencies taken into consideration in this part of the research: the EU/EC agency, and the WB country’s agency (Table 6.2). Following Wodak and Meyer’s theoretical explanation (2016), discourse was understood as a specific social practice co-constructed by the selected actors with regard to a specific set of questions proposed in the interview, concerning the process of accession of the Western Balkan countries to the EU. The informants belonging to the EU/EC agency produced a binary track of argumentation. The first track was constructed as a sort of advocacy defending the accession of the Western Balkans against criticism from the EU institutions and member states. Enlargement was constantly supported during the first and second rounds of the interviews. Table 6.2  Outline of the types of enlargement and accession discourses Discourse of politicization Discourse of (mis)understanding Discourse of merit Discourse of (dis)continuity Discourse of commitment and engagement Discourse of context exceptionality Discourse of responsibility and Discourse of dissatisfaction accountability Discourse of technical versus political Discourse of emotions

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Enlargement as such was never presented by them as a problem in its fundamental aims and rationales, while at the same time they insisted on the legitimacy of the strategy based on conditionality, merits and fundamentals. The arguments were related to normative, moral and ethical dimensions (informant 15: “because it is a treaty, it’s a moral promise, it’s the right thing to do”) but also to political and practical reasons. Western Balkan countries were seen as a geopolitical part of the EU sphere of interest, and as already strongly tied to the EU in many dimensions. This advocacy, in some views, was one reason, among others, why the EC agency in this field was called into question by the other EU institutions and member states (informant 15: “we have never been not believed before”). The second track regarded awareness of the specific role of the DG NEAR—Enlargement department, in controlling accession by means of the conditionality principle. My interlocutors were amongst the officials responsible for the construction of an assessment register considering the state of art in reforming institutions and implementing requirements, since they were the co-authors of the annual production of Strategy papers, Reports and Opinions, as demonstrated in Chap. 5. This particular competence of the officials could be interpreted in terms of the exclusive right to hegemonic discourse production in the field of the accession, justified as necessarily conditioned and normatively defined in order to guarantee merit-based and responsible participation in EU membership. Their agency must be seen as significant for the reproduction of unequal power relations between the two parts. Strategy papers, Reports and Opinions are genres in which high level political decisions become fixed in the text, within which any trace of intersubjective communicative practice by real people—whom I have had the opportunity to speak with—disappears. For this reason it becomes even more important to devote attention to what they said and to how they described and argued their agency. It was as if the overt and covert power dimensions in this case at least partially manifested divergences, where the latter partly relativized the open demonstration of the asymmetric power relationship between the two agencies. Nonetheless, the enquiry offered proof that the shift in enlargement politics, from 2004 and 2007 onwards, expanded the asymmetry of power between the parts. Reisigl and Wodak (2016: 26)

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reported four power principles defined by Popitz, three of which could be traced in our case. The first is related to the authority of the EU in seeking unquestioned submission of the WB accession states, defining requirements and implementation deadlines, and assessing their fulfilment. The second principle concerns threats and promises as modus operandi, where the annual formal indication on the (credible) perspectives of accession for every single country is used in both ways. The third regards the exercise of technical control over resources, which is exactly the aim of the EC agency in the field of enlargement—it controls every sort of resource—human, material and informational—made available in a short- or mid-term time span to each national state engaged in the process.17 Keeping that in mind, I will firstly try to reassume the main features of discourse constructed by the EC agency. Western Balkan countries are seen as deeply troubled societies emerging from violent conflicts or political isolation, as in case of Albania, where unsolved political and bilateral issues do not permit better and faster transformation and capacity building. All these societies are described as highly and transversely politicized, and this is seen as affecting the democratic division of political power, while corruption continues to proliferate in many segments of society. It is seen as one of the reasons for the slow reform of the judiciary system and the rule of law in general. Politicization embraces the realm of civil society, so that the real effects of its agency become relativized. The informants were aware of the specific nature of the context, perceived as more or less different compared to the other CEE countries of the fifth enlargement, but the principle of merit was underlined as the only acceptable one if the common aim of integration was Europeanization, understood as the progressive approach by the accession countries to EU values, norms and standards. The agency of the EU and EC was seen as fully committed and engaged while aware of its responsibility, although the informants continued to underline the split between the technical and political dimension when speaking about their single competences. The discontinuity of the process, its “ups and downs”, was interpreted mostly as the responsibility of the counterpart, with rare exceptions where the right timing for introducing a single condition was questioned, but not the condition as such. The possibility of mutual misunderstanding was

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mentioned many times, but the focus was instead on the constant communication flow and exchange of information and opinions with several types of actors within the national agency, among the colleagues of different units in the Enlargement department, or the European Council and Parliament commissions.18 The aim of understanding each other properly was considered to be of crucial importance. In fact, failed understanding, uneven speed and inefficient implementation of the requirements were experienced in terms of personal dissatisfaction and frustration, mentioning the imbalance between the energy and endeavour invested in the enterprise and the results, assessed as constantly limited and insufficient. Yet, as informant 13 (DEL—EU/MK, Skopje 2010, A.) said in 2010, “EU integration is the key cohesive factor in the internal and regional integration of these countries.” In my view, the shared dissatisfaction correlated with greater awareness of the content of the reported statement, which increased with a better knowledge of the context over time. In this sense, the informants underlined the importance of the way of communicating accession and its achievements within the EU institutions and in a broader European space. The counterpart’s voice was more diversified and plural, but still sufficiently delimited by common history, and by positioning within the accession process, to enable the specific features of the national agency’s discourse to be summarized. The first shared feature was criticism of both internal country and regional matters and the EU/EC agency. The intellectuals and civil sector informants conveyed their remarks and observations with greater fervour, speaking about several malaises regarding every single country, the WB as a region and the EU agency. Ethno-nationalism was indicated as the main cause of division and partition within the region, and within new states, accompanied by a deficit in the democratic and liberal political culture, common to all former Yugoslav countries and Albania. A regional approach was strongly advocated during the first round of interviews, whilst these actors were missing from the second phase of the enquiry, with a few exceptions. The institutional actors— informants with political and administrative roles engaged in the accession process—pointed to the politicization of their societies as a strongly negative effect of the transitional democratization pattern. Ethnic divisions were understood as a political reality of the respective countries,

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where constitutional solutions had to be found and improved in order to better recognize and represent every single constituent nation with respect to minorities. The “Croatian question”, the “Albanian question”, the “Serbian question” or the “Bosniak question” was put on the table with shared awareness of the importance of the European pathway for the reconciliation of these societies with the legacy of the 1990s and for their future perspectives. My interlocutors insisted that EC agency should pay more attention to the specific nature of the context in which equilibrium was achieved with all its sensitive points, especially in the cases of the BiH and North Macedonia, or where the situation was still precarious as, for example, the dispute between Serbia and Kosovo. The commitment of all political forces and societies on a national level was underlined continuously during the interviews, while the commitment and engagement of the EC was perceived differently in the two rounds of the interviews. In 2009 and 2010, it was not yet so clear what the consequences of ‘enlargement fatigue’ would be, although there were a few prophetic voices: “another ten years and you can have a ghetto … a reserve … with other norms, other rules” (informant 8, DIP—MK, Brussels 2010, M). Greater concern emerged from the second round of interviews, notwithstanding the achievements accomplished. Many informants underlined that notable results had been achieved with regard to institutional capacity building and administration reform, permitting efficient implementation of all matters where ‘technicalities’ were concerned. Ideological divisions within the political realm were identified as the main local component of the delay in delivering requirements, with the collateral effect of eroding the country’s respectability and accountability. The EC agency was criticized for not being committed enough to understanding better and communicating the importance of every single achievement in terms of the specific context vulnerability, whilst instead emphasizing all shortcomings. The competitive model of the EU agency was identified transversally as inefficient and damaging for the WB context, while cooperation was indicated as much more appropriate for those countries that had been dealing with the heavy burden of a state and institution building process, limited economic development and poverty, as well as the legacy of dramatic conflicts. Finally, not a single doubt emerged about the unique importance of European integration for all WB accession

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countries, supported by a deep sense of belonging to a common European identity.

Epilogue Analysis of the documents presented in Chap. 5 is directly correlated to the analysis of the interviews. Each informant encountered during the second round of interviews was asked to tell his/her story about the way the (progress) reports were produced, as almost all of them constituted a part of the ‘chain of action’ that had annually been producing these important documents in the accession process. The stories collected in the interviews created a fairly complex and comprehensive jigsaw of the plurality of voices involved in the production of the texts, each of them perceived from a specific point of view, giving major weight to its own agency. One of these stories was so complete and comprehensive that it would be a pity not to report it here in full. I would therefore like to invite the reader, at the end of this journey, to have the patience to read the excerpt below, and then to turn back again and have a look at the analysis of the reports and opinions, before finally going on to read a brief conclusion. Making the (Progress) Report, 15, EC—EU/MK, Brussels 2018, W The progress report is the top of the pyramid, in terms of the knowledge we have, and what we can say, and what we can fit into the page limits we are allowed. For instance we are starting this year’s cycle right now, so the first draft—first we ask the countries for an input on, chapter by chapter, what they think they have done over the course of the year and, obviously, political and public administration before the chapters per se. Based on that input, our delegations a few weeks later send us—yesterday—the first draft … but it’s a very raw draft. We then start working on it in the units at the headquarter, so our political desk is the coordinator but she’s already formed it out through all the other people in the unit who deal with the different chapters. […] So the left hand knows what the right hand is doing […] And the colleagues working on all the chapters know all the sectors, and there are cross-common thing on the very

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different chapters. That’s within the unit. Then also within the DG Enlargement and still in the DG NEAR, we have horizontal people who look at the chapter for all countries; so they have a view […] are we assessing the same things in each country? […] We are simultaneously measuring—to make them comparative between themselves, over time and horizontally between the countries—we are simultaneously measuring state of play, so where is the country in the reform process? And the direction they’ve been taking over the last year, so they have been stable? Making progress? And that’s very different judgement. Kosovo may be at the low level of development of an area, but making rapid progress; Serbia may be at medium level and making no progress at all. We have to be able to judge apples and peers, very different things. So at the same time that we are processing the first input from the country and our delegations in the country. The horizontal desks will then be given 4 or 5 days, everything is on common drive, and people are locked out and allowed in, they would even be shouting with the “whoever is in chapter whatever right now, get out of it, I wanna make my comments!”. And horizontals will then begin to take a look and check if the description we drew and policy, agriculture policy, or energy—both matches our own horizontal policy, and also making sure that there’s balance between them, are we making the same judgement about each country. Taking account of where they are? It’s multidimensional level. The documents will…there will be a second input, an update from the countries, constant input from the delegation […] there will be another input from the country with anything else they’ve done in these chapters, that they have to take it into account. But then you’re going to write a stable document that we’ve also re-written, and our delegations are always very happy that at the headquarter we write some things. So we will be arriving at the politically more stable document, which at that point will then start to be seen by our hierarchy who also will apply its political vision across the way […] And the ultimate choice at the end of the process… Sorry, it will also be consulted with all our other different commission’s departments at a certain point, because we have expertise within the unit on energy, or agriculture, whatever. There’s a whole department that has real experts on this who travel, go to meet who we’re in coincident contact like who check the laws for us. So there will be a formal inter-service consultation,

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where they will also make comments. […] And ultimately it got to the political level, because at the end, this is a political decision. So our work may be objective, but it will eventually go to our commissioner for ∗∗, and he will maybe want us to increase the attention for a certain topic to all the countries, or for one country or whatever. And ultimately it will be adopted and published, and then we start defending it. And we defend it with lot more information that what we have fit it in … And we have also become more direct. We present (it to) the member states and we defend it; you also have then NGOs—sorry I should have say it… Through the process we are also in touch with OSCE in regard to the elections, Council of Europe, and we have formal consultations with civic society organizations, so they come to Brussels… International ones, but we also do consultations with the local ones in the countries. And who am I forgetting? […] … Nobody from outside should disagree with what we are saying after we speak, because we should have had a good enough process. […] And as long as we assess the same things in the same way for the all countries, it makes (the report n.a.) comparable and fair.

Notes 1. I shared my stay and work in Skopje with Valentina Anzoise, a visual sociologist from Milano. A few questions on European Union and Europe as a continent were proposed to the interviewees by Valentina. We made together significant photo-reportage of Skopje which both of us visited for the first time. 2. My Brussels interlocutor I met in 2019, with long experience within the WB accession process, told me with irony that (either) the individual officials involved in the D1 Sector of DG Enlargement were usually addressed as if “we were just the Balkans!” (57, EC—EU/KS, Brussels 2018, W). 3. The choice of the labels was inspired by Michael Krzyżanowski’s text “On the ‘Europeanisation’ of Identity Constructions in Polish Political Discourse after 1989” (95–113), published in the book “Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe”, Aleksandra Galasińska A. and Krzyżanowski M. (Eds.) (2009) by Palgrave Macmillan.

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4. For basic references about the contemporary Macedonia see Piacentini (2019a, b). 5. My interlocutor told the most complete story about the Report construction process, which the reader would find at the end of this chapter. 6. Ethnic Albanians are divided between Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, with significant minority groups in Montenegro and Serbia. 7. Dervo Sejdić and Jakob Finci Vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina concerns the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights following the lawsuit of the two BiH citizens who, as members of ‘national minorities’—Roma and Jewish respectively—could not stand for election to the Presidency and the Chamber of the Peoples. The judgment of the European Court, issued in June 2009, proved the plaintiffs right by acknowledging a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The sentence obliged the state to supplement the law to comply with European legislation. The pre-association process with the EU was subsequently bound by that ruling. In turn, the sentence could not have been implemented without a substantial change to the Constitution, and therefore to Annex IV to the Dayton agreement. To date, no suitable solution has been found, but the ruling was reinterpreted in relation to the accession process of the country, as explained in Chap. 5. 8. The two interviews conducted with the EC officials in Sarajevo and Brussels in 2009 and 2010 were not taped, while the third one in 2019 was tape-recorded. 9. In one of these stories my interlocutor mentioned so-called “Gymnich meetings”, informal encounters of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of all EU member countries, every six months in a year, in which Ministers of the accession countries and other invited guests could take part. BiH Ministers had been participating for several years in these meetings, but they were not invited anymore from the moment the country was coupled with Kosovo as a non-candidate country, notwithstanding its potential candidate status. Gymnich castle in Germany was the place where the first informal meeting took place in 1974. 10. Federica Mogherini is an Italian politician who was a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission from November 2014 to November 2019. 11. Johannes Hahn is an Austrian politician who served as European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations from November 2014 to November 2019. He previously

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served as European Commissioner for Regional Policy from 2010 to 2014 and as Austrian minister for science and research from 2007 to 2010. 12. The interviewee used the untranslatable Bosnian word skalamerija. 13. Just to remember the most important achievements: visa liberalisation (except for Kosovo), candidate status for Montenegro, Serbia and Albania, application of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Prespa Agreement that resolved the ‘name issue’ for Macedonia. 14. The relative and limited access to the political power centre within the country was confirmed when the new elected collective Presidency of the BiH revoked several Ambassadors who were not in line with the ideological premises of the winning parties. Among them was the Ambassador with the seat in Brussels. 15. “A carrot is always small!” exclaimed the informant 51 (NAT—BiH, Sarajevo 2019, W), just alluding to the second part of the utterance regarding the stick. 16. Of course, there is no way of ‘measuring’ these variables: these considerations gain their importance while keeping in mind the heuristic character of any qualitative and ethnographical methodological approach and its limits. 17. The fourth one defined by Popitz considered the “actional power” that presupposed use of violence (Popitz 2002). 18. Two examples: During the interview with the informant 19 (DEL— EU/MN, Podgorica 2009, M) we had to stop the interview several times as the Minster for the European integration of Montenegro was constantly calling for a friendly consultation: in those days the country was going to deliver the answers to the questionnaire. The second one: The informant 41 (EC—EU/AL, Brussels 2018, M) said at a certain point: “I speak in a day more with X (38, NGO—AL, Tirana 2010, W) than with my mother!”

Bibliography Abell, J., & Myers, G. (2008). Analysing Research Interviews. In R. Wodak & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (pp. 145–161). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Bellamy, R., & Castiglione, D. (2013). Three Models of Democracy, Political Community and Representation in the EU. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 206–223. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeVault, M.  L., & McCoy, L. (2006). Institutional Ethnography: Using Interviews to Investigate Ruling Relations. In D. E. Smith (Ed.), Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham et al.: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Goodwin, C., & Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keil, S., & Kudlenko, A. (2015). Bosnia and Herzegovina 20 Years After Dayton. Complexity Born on Paradoxis. International Peacekeeping. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13533312.2015.1103651. Krzyżanowski, M. (2009). On the Europeanisation of Identity Constructions in Polish Political Discourse after 1989. In A. Galasińska & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lynggaard, K. (2019). Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Piacentini, A. (2019a). Make Macedonia Great Again – The New Face of Skopje and the Macedonians Identity Dilemma. In E.  Doğan (Ed.), Reinventing Eastern Europe  – Imaginarıes, Identities and Transformations (pp.  77–93). London: Transnational Press. Piacentini, A. (2019b). State’s Ownership and “State-Sharing”. The Role of Collective Identities and the Socio-Political Cleavage Between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia. Nationalities Paper, 47(3), 461–476. Popitz, H. (2002). Phänomene der Macht. Tübingen: Mohr. Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2016). The Discourse-Historical Approach  – DHA. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Discourse Studies (6th ed.). London: Sage Publications. Sekulić, T. (2002). Violenza etnica: I Balcani tra etnonazionalismo e democrazia. Roma: Carocci. Sekulić, T. (2017). Bosnia Erzegovina, l’Unione Europea e l’arte di vivere insieme. Sul ventennio degli Accordi di Dayton. In G. Motta (Ed.), A venti anni dagli Accordi di Dayton (pp.  93–118). Canterano and Roma: Aracne Editrice.

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Turner, S. (2006). Mapping Institutions as Work and Texts. In D.  E. Smith (Ed.), Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of Discourse Studies (6th ed.). London: Sage Publications.

7 Conclusions: The Paradox of the European Integration

The final reflections about the complex accession of the former Yugoslav countries and Albania to the European Union were written, unintentionally, on 9 November 2019, a day in which the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated all over the Europe. A diversity of voices and many initiatives had been trying to identify and comprehend the transformation and challenges that characterized the last three decades of European history within the changing global constellation. Another coincidence regarded the debate opened after the publication of an interview with the French President Emmanuel Macron, conducted by The Economist, on November 7. Macron addressed the question of the future of Europe seen as “exceptionally fragile” and “at the edge of the precipice”. Many questions were raised in the interview regarding the European integration project, some of which in direct correlation with the topic of this book. Macron pronounced extremely tough words with regard to the future enlargement of the EU,1 words that could change the accession perspective of the Western Balkan countries if followed and supported by the France of gilet jaunes, and by the new established European Commission. Another symptom of the enlargement crisis concerned the difficulty to assign the role of the new DG NEAR Commissioner. At the © The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0_7

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beginning of November 2019 the EC had not yet announced who would substitute Mr Johannes Hahn, while the ‘first-choice’ Hungarian candidate, representing restrictive and nationalist politics towards the EU and its further widening, was rejected by the European Parliament.2 The intrinsic contradictions of the EU enlargement principle, questioned by Macron, were the subject of this work from the beginning, and the research was designed in order to reveal, at least in fragments, incongruities and even paradoxes underlying the normative and ideological construction of the enlargement discourse, with an analysis of the agencies of its production and the practices through which it was configured. The basic contradiction identified in the enquiry was a kind of cognitive split between two complementary processes—deepening versus widening—that was brought to the fore with the fall of the Berlin Wall. As it was shown in the first three chapters of this book, the enlargement process was never easy nor taken for granted. Cognitive, normative and socio-political development and transformation followed primarily the economic integration of Western European countries, while the political nature of the project was fundamental since the first steps. Each of these integrative dimensions had its own pattern, its own rhythm, rarely synchronized and harmonic, much more cacophonic or even dormant in certain periods, but always deeply interrelated. It could not have been different, if we turn back to the “Ventotene Manifest” roots of the European Union, a document written within a fascist prison between 1941 and 1944. Such a complexity regarding state, institution and trust (re)building, as we find today in the Western Balkans at narrow regional level, could evoke the aftermath of the WW2 situation, at the very beginning of the European integration process. In the 1950s, it was all about the ability of the new-born European Community of Steel and Coal founding states to come to terms with the horrific recent past, as we speak here of post-Nazi and divided Germany, post-fascist Italy, post-Vichy France and other three states that had capitulated as Belgium, were occupied as Luxemburg or had a collaborationist government as the Netherlands. The question of borders remained open for decades, as in the dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia, the UK and Ireland, France and Germany, just to mention some of them. The Soviet bloc built the wall, the collapse of which we celebrate today, not immediately after the war,

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but at the beginning of the 1960s, and it was finished in its concrete brick-made version only in 1975. For a long time the wall consisted mostly of a wire fence along the border of East Germany. It seems nowadays that pieces of collective European memory have been crumbled with its fragments. The revolutionary year 1989 represented a watershed moment in the history of the continent, starting the deep crisis defined so well by Hobsbawm: The collapse of one part of the world revealed the malaise of the rest. As the 1980s passed into the 1990s it became evident that the world crisis was not only general in an economic sense, but equally general in politics. The collapse of the communist regimes between Istria and Vladivostok not only produced an enormous zone of political uncertainty, instability, chaos and civil war, but also destroyed the international system that had stabilized international relations for some forty years. It also revealed the precariousness of the domestic political systems that had essentially rested on that stability. (Hobsbawm 1994: 10)

The immediate reaction of the pre-Maastricht European Community to integrating the Democratic Republic of Germany without any conditionality was in my view a crucial positive event for the future of European integration. It was a pure political act, in spite of all possible negative consequences that could be foreseen easily at the time. The two Germanys may still be traced and recognized in manifold dimensions, as a wide scholarship has demonstrated.3 But it was also the right thing to do, and the decision was taken before the Maastricht Treaty entered into force. The reinforcement of the EU by the enlargement during the 1990s was the best possible choice to face the new stage of the global crisis. The opening towards the Eastern European countries along the fourth enlargement was founded most of all on geopolitical and economic reasons, but the ideal of Europe unified by shared principles of liberal democracy, social justice, rule of law, human rights and liberties, economic prosperity, security and wellbeing was still there. “It was a project of life in dignity”, said Menasse, with the aim of contrasting nationalism and its arrogance (2015). It was a lighthouse that had oriented the turbulent transition of the post-communist states, described metaphorically by

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Elster, Offe and Preuss in terms of “building the ship at sea” (Elster et al. 1998). The norms and procedures of accession were re-thought and re-­ written in that period, and applied with effective results in the case of eleven post-communist states. Now, how did it happen that a project of the European unification, as an “open-ended cooperative adventure of departure” (Trenz 2016), arrived to “the edge of the precipice”? The crisis of the European integration project embraces both dimensions, deepening and widening, an intrinsic correlation that has been producing paradoxical effects and unintended consequences. Trenz spoke about the increasing attractiveness of the national project for many citizens, “as a safe harbor for their democracy and well-being” in terms of a paradoxical effect of European agenda expansion for redistribution and justice, related to migrants and minorities, a part of whom had come from the new member and accession states (Ibidem: xv–xvii). Another paradox, according to the author, involved the parallel process of unification and national diversification through the twentieth century, which directly concerned our case of unconcluded ethnonational political and territorial consolidation in the Western Balkans. The main hypothesis this research started with was that the fundamental paradox of Europeanization as such rested on a misconception, that is, the integration of an extended European space might be possible without a mutual transformation of the institutions and agencies involved in its construction. The current crisis of the European Union was seen here as a much deeper questioning of the European model of democracy, involving a serious difficulty in contrasting the erosion of vulnerable institutions of social justice and welfare, and creating stronger structures and devices for supra- and transnational political participation and representation of its citizens. On the other hand, this democratic deficit affected the ability of the European agencies to create sustainable transnational institutions and better political capacities to contrast the conflicts and to conciliate common interests with the increasing plurality of national states. It is possible that the horizon of the inclusive European project could not imagine its liminal zones as a part of the whole from the very beginning, but once it was opened for the Western Balkans, and other aspirant countries, there was no way of closing it without tragic consequences for

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both sides. The consequences of an improvised and unregulated reversibility had been evident in two cases. A broken promise given to Turkey, candidate since 1999, contributed to the authoritarian turn in its political order. A second example is the problematic opening towards the post-­ Soviet neighbourhood, guided prevalently by geopolitical interests, resulted fatal in the case of Ukraine in 2014 with another outbreak of violent conflict, which has not yet been resolved. In that sense, we cannot speak only about the enlargement crisis, or about insufficient efforts of the Western Balkan countries in addressing the demands of accession procedures, as it was demonstrated in this work. It seems conversely that European integration as such is at stake here. Habermas spoke about the crisis of the European democracy in terms of colonization of the societies by the neo-liberal technocratic elites, trapped in their national frames while operating to facilitate the interests of global financial capitalism (Habermas 2015: 6). The deep-seated contradictions between democracy and capitalism have become again the focus of scientific interest in the current global social and political constellation. The paradoxical effect of the transitional model imposed to the post-­ communist states concerned precisely the conflictual relationship between democratization and capitalism. The transition towards market economy had priority with respect to democratic institution building, beyond the emergence of pluralist party formation and the first elections in all post-­ communist countries. ‘Privatization first!’, and only then democratization, in countries where demos was nationally constituted, notwithstanding the diffused lack of any democratic political culture. It was a risky claim in all multinational countries as the former Yugoslavia, a federation of six constituent peoples and republics, and one huge minority—Albanians— all of whom demanded national sovereignty. The synergy created between nationalism and capitalization of the state and social property and enterprises, through the 1990s and in the post-war period, constructed the premises of the current confusing situation in almost all former Yugoslav states and in Albania, which was analysed in this book. Now, if this complex, manifold and intertwined process of deepening and widening would have to be something more than a mere survival form of the neoliberal capitalism after 1989, the EU have to aspire to and seek a new model of social justice, and thus of a Social Europe (Burchardt and Kirn 2017).

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In any case, old and new European societies, including the aspiring ones, share today the same difficulty to imagine an alternative European polity, much more democratic and equal than the current one, able to revive its own revolutionary and anti-fascist legacy. The novel forms of right-wing populism and even fascism, emerging in both Western and Eastern European societies, represent more than a simple symptom of the crises. Ethnonational movements and ideology, using populist forms of action, and then in several cases raw violence, destroyed Yugoslavia and constructed new national states on other premises. Today a similar political phenomenon has appeared as the nationalistic response to the ‘migration question’, both within and outside the EU (Favell 2016), while no significant counter-narrative confronts the tendency, and not enough civil society mobilization beyond indignation emerges against the spectre of new pro-totalitarian ideologies. The legacy of the European integration project, in its political and social dimension, has the potential to inspire a new European agency able to contrast the nationalist turn in Europe. Vision and solidarity above the national borders are needed in order to define new political aims and to rethink and reform the institutions and agency of the EU (Habermas 2015: 6). In this sense, the critique expressed by President Macron tackled real problems regarding the integration process. But, there is no doubt that the new fortressing of the European Union cannot produce any effect in searching for solutions, on the contrary. The research presented in this book experimented an institutional ethnography of the enlargement and accession process, combined with a critical discourse approach in the analysis of the institutional agency and practices. It started from the assumption of the uniqueness of the European integration project that has built since 1951 an amazing political and social structure, understood as highly dynamic and based on the praxis of a multitude of actors. The basic idea of the enquiry corresponded to Kauppi’s proposal to explore European politics as a complex web of social action, where “knowledge, experience and the capacity to learn are key assets in evolving institutional and social contexts like the EU” (Kauppi 2018: 239–240). The accession viewpoint towards the widening overturned the Eurocentric perspective of enlargement, challenging the dominant and hegemonic pattern of discourse formation in this field.

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The agency of the accession states emerged from the grey zone of ‘shortcomings’ and ‘insufficient or limited progress’ assessments. The process of accession was manifested in its complex intertwined dynamics, as a producer of concrete and measurable results, even if not sufficient to accomplish all requirements. The principle of conditionality unfolded as not effective if applied without an understanding of the real needs and capacities concerning the specific context. But the most important aim of the analysis was to demonstrate that the integration of accession countries does not begin with the achievement of membership, but from the moment the mutual commitment is formally signed. The Western Balkan countries entered into the process in 2000 and have been already deeply integrated with the European Union in spite of their subordinate condition and effective lack of political power at the EU level. In this sense the critical discourse analysis helped to unveil how the assessment of achievements and shortcomings was represented in official documents as Strategy papers, Reports and Opinions of the European Commission. If we should think about reforming the procedure of accession, one of the important tools might be to open the participation in the definition of conditionality terms to local agency. Visa liberalization and participation in European research projects and Erasmus mobility could be seen as already existing forms of a gradual redefinition of common European citizenship, in terms of a differentiated and realigned citizenship as proposed by Bauböck and Guiraudon (2009). A deep transformation of European society including the Western Balkan countries has been happening, and the rethinking and reforming of its institutions may go parallel with the accession process, renewing the legitimization and credibility of the EU. There is no paradox that can be solved once and for all, as an inclusive European politics of enlargement cannot be abandoned without distorting its fundamental principles. Our political capacity of acting in concert and ability to create anew better forms of living together, in which Hannah Arendt (1961) had never lost faith, should guide our research for a better, alternative Europe.

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Notes 1. “So my conviction is that, one, we need to reform our membership procedures, they’re no longer fit for purpose. They’re not strategic. They’re not political, too bureaucratic and not reversible, whereas you have to be able at some point to consider the question of reversibility. Two, if you’re concerned about this region, the first question is neither Macedonia, nor Albania, it’s Bosnia-Herzegovina. The time-bomb that’s ticking right next to Croatia, and which faces the problem of returning jihadists, is Bosnia-­ Herzegovina. The third issue is that we need to reform our membership procedures before we open negotiations. If we achieve this reform in the coming months, I’d be ready to open negotiations. If they’ve also made the few extra remaining efforts. But I don’t want any further new members until we’ve reformed the European Union itself. In my opinion that’s an honest, and indispensable, prerequisite.” https://www.economist.com/ europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-english. 2. The new Commissioner for the Neighbourhood and Enlargement (2019–2024) is a Hungarian politician Olivér Várhelyi. 3. For basic references see Berdahl (2010); Engler (1997); Gensicke (1998); Grüning (2016).

Bibliography Arendt, H. (1961). Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Publishing Group. Bauböck, R., & Guiraudon, V. (2009). Introduction: Realignments of Citizenship: Reassessing Rights in the Age of Plural Memberships and Multi-­ level Governance. Citizenship Studies, 13(5), 439–450. Berdahl, D. (2010). On the Social Life of Postsocialism. Memory, Consumption, Germany. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Burchardt, M., & Kirn, G. (Eds.). (2017). Beyond Neoliberalism. Social Analysis After 1989. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Elster, J., Offe, C., & Preuss, U. (Eds.). (1998). Institutional Design in Post-­ Communist Societies. Rebuilding the Ship at Sea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Engler, W. (1997). Die Ostdeutschen. Kunde von einem verlorenen Land. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag.

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Favell, A. (2016). Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agencies in Migration Studies. Colchester: ECPR Press. Gensicke, T. (1998). Die Neuen Bundesbürger. Eine Transformation ohne Integration. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Grüning, B. (2016). Commemorating the Berlin Wall: Forms and Spaces of Collective Memory After the Cold War. In M.  Hietala & K.  Pizzi (Eds.), Cold War Cities. History, Culture and Memory (pp.  17–44). Oxford et  al: Peter Lang. Habermas, J. (2015). Critique and Communication: Philosophy’s Missions, Interview with Foessël M., Eurozine (First Published in Esprit 8–9/2015). Hobsbawm, E. (1994). Age of Extremes – The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. New York: Random House. Interview with the President Emmanuel Macron, The Economist, 11 November 2019. Retrieved from www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/ emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-english. Kauppi, N. (2018). Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Menasse, R. (2015). A Brief History of the European Future. Eurozine, 17/07/2015. http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2015–07–17–menasse–en.pdf. Trenz, H. J. (2016). Narrating European Society. Towards a Sociology of European Integration. London: Lexington Books.

Index1

A

Accession, vi, 14, 24, 51, 71, 89, 175–216, 223 Accountability, xxix, 15, 179 Achievements, xxxi, xxxiv, 49, 52, 79, 95, 98, 102, 104–106, 128, 130–132, 137, 140, 143, 144, 154, 161, 164, 167, 182, 183, 201, 202, 209, 210, 214, 215, 220n13, 229 Acquis communautaire, viii, 31, 32, 55 Agency, 2, 11, 25, 73, 156, 164, 166, 178–180, 182, 185, 187, 189, 190, 194–196, 198, 201, 203, 204, 206–216, 228, 229 Albania, viii, xi, xxvii, 2, 9, 12, 16, 18n4, 24, 34, 36, 39, 40, 43, 54, 57, 59–62, 65n4, 83, 84,

90, 94, 102, 104, 118–120, 142–144, 154, 156–162, 166, 168, 169n10, 170n18, 170n20, 176, 188, 193, 213, 214, 219n6, 220n13, 223, 227, 230n1 Arendt, Hannah, 50, 229 Asylum seekers, 15 B

Barriers, vii, ix, xi, xxx, xxxi, 1, 14–17, 27, 28, 30–34, 53, 61, 63, 77, 80, 200 Barroso, José, xxxi, 43, 63, 78, 80, 94, 157, 158 Berlin Process, vii, xxxi, 36–39, 80, 95, 101, 146, 161, 181, 200

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 T. Sekulić, The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42295-0

233

234 Index

Berlin Wall, xxxiii, 2, 9–14, 27, 41, 104, 223, 224 Borders, v–vii, xi, xxvii, xxx, xxxiii, 14–17, 27, 28, 33, 53, 61, 71, 92, 127, 128, 200, 224, 225, 228 Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), v, xi, xxvii, 3, 16, 24, 34, 36, 40, 42, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 82, 83, 100–102, 121–123, 127, 144–146, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 165, 167, 170n18, 170n20, 176, 179, 182, 188, 192–206, 219n7, 220n13 Brubaker, Rogers, 28, 62, 192 Brussels, x, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv, 16, 29, 30, 33, 63, 79, 80, 82–84, 91, 97, 148, 163, 176, 177, 180–183, 185–188, 190–191, 194–203, 208, 215–218, 218n2, 219n8, 220n14, 220n18 Business-as-usual, 38, 92, 95, 168, 210 C

Capital economic, 37 political, 37, 158 social, 37, 39, 50, 158, 210 symbolic, 63 Capitalism, vii, xxvii, xxxiv, 3, 10, 12, 17n1, 76, 178, 227 Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), xxvi, xxix, xxxiii, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 28, 33, 37, 39, 41, 49, 55, 89, 90, 94, 98, 106, 139, 187, 213, 218n3

Citizenry, 74, 106, 136 Citizens, vi, vii, x, xxvi, xxviii, 1, 16, 23–28, 30, 35–40, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 64, 65n3, 77, 82, 91, 130, 139, 153, 162, 165, 175, 176, 181, 183, 189, 192–195, 202, 203, 219n7, 226 Citizenship, vii, xxvii, xxxiv, 2, 3, 23, 25, 28, 37, 38, 50, 53, 56, 59, 60, 64, 77, 192, 229 Civic, 3, 35, 37, 50, 53, 64, 78, 135, 177, 209, 218 Civil society, xxx, xxxii, 2, 6, 8, 9, 30, 37, 38, 50, 64, 78, 81, 97, 105, 178, 179, 184, 186, 193–195, 213, 228 Class, viii, 51 Cognitive structures, 83 Collective identities, vii Commitment, xxix, 26, 30, 31, 38, 56, 61, 84, 95, 101, 102, 104, 106, 126, 145, 148, 155–163, 171n21, 201, 202, 210, 215, 229 Communism, 225 post-communist, xxvii, xxix, 7, 8, 11, 13, 51, 54, 55, 57, 59, 139, 187, 225–227 Conditionality, viii, ix, xxvi, xxviii, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiv, 16, 55, 56, 63, 72, 73, 77, 79, 95, 131, 141, 155, 162, 167, 197–199, 201, 203–205, 208, 209, 212, 225, 229

 Index 

Conflict ethnic, 43, 131, 153 of interest, 58 national, xxvii, 28, 60, 83, 144, 226 Connectivity, vii, 95, 101 Constitution constituent peoples, 202, 227 constitutional change, 205 Copenhagen criteria, 30, 33, 93, 152 Cosmopolitan Europe, 53 Cosmopolitanism, 25 Crimes crimes against humanity, 59, 169n12 war crimes, xi, 59, 126 Crisis, xi, xxvi–xxix, xxxiv, 2, 11, 13, 15–17, 24, 26, 33, 37, 38, 42, 43, 49–51, 54, 57, 58, 65n3, 90, 91, 93, 103, 106, 129, 130, 134, 139–141, 147, 153, 154, 157, 191, 201, 223, 225–227 Critical discourse studies analysis, xxxiv, 63, 65, 77, 81, 85, 163, 229 approach, xxxiv, 63, 65, 81, 228 Croatia, vi, ix, xi, xxvii, xxxi, 16, 24, 27, 33, 40, 54, 57, 59, 60, 62, 83, 90, 94, 97, 98, 106–129, 149, 156–158, 164–167, 169n11, 170n18, 170n20, 170n21, 177, 179, 188, 192, 207, 230n1

235

D

Dayton Peace Agreement, 60, 167, 197 Deepening, viii, x, xxvi, xxxiii, 12, 23–43, 52, 55, 56, 65n3, 91, 224, 226, 227 Delanty, Gherard, 23, 28, 49 Democracy democratic deficit, xxvi, 24, 28, 51, 61, 103, 226 democratic transition, 3–11, 14, 57 democratization, 6, 8, 227 Democratic consolidation, xxviii, 6 Demos (demoi), xxvii, 77, 130, 227 Destruction, vii, 39, 40, 83, 84 Discourse discursive strategies, 132 nationalist, 195 populist, xxvii, 195 Disintegration, xxvii, 43 Diversity, 11, 28, 185, 202, 223 Drama (dramatization), 98, 136, 150, 153 E

Elections, 2–4, 12, 13, 54, 57–59, 78, 94, 101, 103, 142, 150, 189, 218, 219n7, 227 Elites ethno-national, vii, 10, 11, 59, 60 European, xxxiv, 26, 49, 50, 58, 91, 105, 131, 227 intellectual, 9, 50 political, xxxiv, 2, 9, 14, 30, 35, 38, 50, 92, 208

236 Index

Emancipation, 25, 59 Emotions, 210 Engagement, xxxii, 55, 58, 81, 103, 131, 145, 149, 158, 215 Enlargement enlargement fatigue, xxv, 24, 26, 55, 215 failed enlargement, 188 fifth enlargement, 197, 213 fourth enlargement, 225 Epistocracy, xxxii, 77 Ethnography, xxxiii, xxxiv, 54–56, 62, 65, 71–76, 177, 228 Europe alternative, xi, 229 better, xi, 229 cosmopolitan, 53 other, 41 European disintegration, 43 identity, 25, 216 integration, vii, xxvi, xxix, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv, 17, 23–43, 53, 56, 62–65, 71–86, 131, 159, 161, 176, 182, 184, 188, 189, 198, 200, 204, 207, 215, 220n18, 223–229 society, 17, 49–53, 76, 229 unification, 72, 86, 226 European Commission, viii, x, xi, xxx, xxxiv, 16, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 40, 54, 59, 65, 72–74, 78, 80, 83, 89–168, 177, 187, 190, 196, 205, 208, 210, 219n10, 219n11, 223, 229 Europeanization, xxv, xxvi, xxviii, xxxiv, 11, 25, 28, 37, 40, 51, 52, 55, 56, 62, 63, 79, 144, 167, 213, 226

Europeans, 56, 183 European Union (EU), vi, 3, 23, 50, 71, 89, 175–216, 223 Euroscepticism, 14, 15, 24, 103 F

Favell, Adrian, 24, 63, 75, 76, 228 Field of civil society, 178, 179 institutional, ix, xxx, 73, 85, 178, 179 political, 178, 179 Former Yugoslavia, vii, viii, 2, 10–12, 42, 56–59, 65n4, 82, 83, 90, 127, 144, 147, 175, 227 Frame (framing), xxvi, xxxii, xxxiii, 4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 28, 40, 52, 63, 71–86, 89–168, 177, 178, 180, 182, 210, 227 Free movement, vi, 150, 175, 176 G

Genocide, 8, 13, 59, 167 Groupings, xxvii, 11, 58, 60, 61, 167, 192 Guiraudon, Virginie, xxix, xxxv, 17, 28, 63, 75, 76, 229 H

Habermas, Jürgen, xxvi, 7, 13, 28, 36, 51, 91, 227, 228 Hegemony (hegemonic), xxxii, 77, 212, 228 History, 8, 10, 15, 41–43, 54, 57, 58, 86, 144, 214, 223, 225

 Index 

Hobsbawm, Eric, 10, 42, 58, 225 Human rights (and liberties), xxxi, 17, 30, 35, 43, 49, 56, 79, 127, 128, 148, 150, 206, 225 I

Ideology, 6, 9, 24, 185, 193, 228 Imagination, 23, 28, 210 Inclusion, 56 Institutions institutional ethnography, xxxiv, 71, 74, 177, 228 institution building, 25, 40, 147, 151, 154, 196, 198, 203, 215, 227 Internally displaced persons (IDPs), 127 International Community, 11, 42, 60, 97, 149, 192, 203 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 126, 127, 139

237

57–60, 62, 83, 99, 100, 104, 124–125, 140–142, 144, 147–154, 156–158, 166, 167, 169n8, 169n13, 170n17, 170n18, 170n20, 175–177, 186, 188, 202, 215, 217, 219n6, 219n9, 220n13 Krzyżanowski, Michael, xxx–xxxii, 71, 72, 76, 80–82, 209, 211, 218n3 L

Legacy, xxvii, 9, 11, 33, 60, 90, 139, 198, 215, 228 Legitimacy crisis of, xxix, 11, 49 democratic, 11 political, xxix, 193, 212 Legitimation, xxix, 77 Linz, Juan, 6–8, 18n3 Longitudinal analysis, 158 approach, xxxi, xxxii, 79, 80

J

Juncker, Jean-Claude, 37, 78, 80, 92, 103, 146, 158, 169n10, 202 Justification, 79, 134, 135, 154, 157, 166 K

Kauppi, Niiko, 92, 101, 228 Kosovo (Kosovo), x, xi, xxvii, 13, 16, 24, 34–36, 40, 43, 55,

M

Maastricht Treaty, xxix, 42, 58, 225 Macedonia FYROM, 33, 110–112, 130–136, 156, 169n9, 170n18, 179, 182–191 North, xxvii, 3, 16, 24, 33–35, 54, 102, 110–112, 130–136, 144, 156, 166, 169n10, 170n18, 176, 179, 182–191, 215

238 Index

Macron, Emmanuel, 39, 103, 223, 224, 228 Medrano, Juan Diez, 85, 86 Metaphor, 91, 180, 197, 206, 210 Migration, 101, 144, 165 forced, 165 Montenegro, xi, xxvii, 13, 24, 34, 37, 40, 54, 58, 60, 83, 103, 104, 113–114, 127, 136–140, 142, 144, 157, 158, 166, 167, 170n18, 170n20, 176, 188, 192, 201, 219n6, 220n13, 220n18 N

Narration(s), 81–86, 179 Nationalism, 14, 52, 54, 56, 63, 76, 225 ethno-nationalism, 214 Nation state, x, xxxv, 3, 11, 23, 25, 33, 50, 57, 59, 61, 202, 207 Negotiation(s), xxxi, 10, 24, 32, 34–36, 42, 51, 53, 58, 62–64, 74–76, 80, 85, 94–96, 100, 102, 103, 106, 126–130, 132–135, 137, 138, 142, 143, 152, 157, 169n9, 182, 185, 186, 188–192, 219n11, 230n1 Neoliberalism, 18n1 O

O’Donnell, Guillermo, 5, 18n2 Offe, Claus, 7, 13, 28, 50, 226

P

Paradox, x, xxv, 56, 151, 223–229 Participation, 1, 2, 23, 28, 31, 50, 53, 64, 77, 129, 137, 140, 143, 146, 148, 150, 193, 212, 226, 229 Peace, xi, 42, 58, 60, 89, 104, 130, 162, 193 building, 199 Political culture, xxvi, 10, 12, 59, 103, 214, 227 power, 2, 103, 208, 209, 213, 220n14, 229 sociology, xxxiii, 23–26 Politicization, 184, 191, 213, 214 Populism, xxvii, 14, 54, 56, 228 post-communist, xxvii, 54 Power, xxvi, 2, 6, 9–12, 36, 54, 58, 63, 65n3, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 84, 126, 154, 155, 162, 186, 190, 209, 212, 213 transformative, xxviii, xxxiii, 25, 63, 92, 180 Protest, 3, 24, 50, 51 Public space, xxxiii, 37, 53, 91 sphere, 8, 10, 30, 139 R

Reconciliation, xxvii, 101, 135, 215 Redistribution, xi, 23, 58, 59, 167, 226 Reform, x, xxviii, xxxi, 79, 92, 93, 95, 96, 100, 103, 126–128, 137–139, 143, 151, 153,

 Index 

159, 161–163, 183, 185, 186, 191, 196, 197, 203, 204, 208, 211, 213, 215, 217, 228, 230n1 Refuges, 16 Religion, viii, 11 Report analytical, 34, 89, 96, 98, 101, 102, 105, 106, 136, 140–142, 144, 158–161, 165, 169n7, 170n20, 196 progress, xxx, xxxi, 35, 59, 74, 77–79, 93, 94, 96, 97, 106, 126–128, 137, 147, 157, 159, 181, 216–218 Resistance, 50, 202, 204 Resources, ix, 11, 23, 27, 39, 42, 53, 59, 64, 77, 81, 95, 154, 158, 184, 198, 213 Responsibility, ix, xi, xxvii, 15, 16, 30, 34, 39, 42, 59, 61, 91, 98, 134, 179, 186, 189, 195, 200, 205, 213 Revolution, 1–3, 7–9, 12, 14 Rights of citizenship, 53, 60 civic, 53 constitutional, 11, 197 political, 60 social, xxv, 61 Risk, 40, 43, 56, 57, 60, 62, 82, 150, 164, 165, 175, 189, 194 Rumford, Chris, 25, 28, 33, 35, 36, 51, 53, 92 Ruzza, Carlo, 18n5

239

S

Schmitter, Phillipe C., 5 Serbia, vi, xi, xxvii, 3, 13, 16, 24, 34, 36, 37, 40, 54, 58–60, 62, 83, 99, 103, 104, 115–117, 136, 139–142, 144, 147–149, 152, 153, 157–161, 166, 167, 168n1, 169n7, 169n11, 170n18, 170n20, 176, 177, 188, 192, 201, 215, 217, 219n6, 220n13 Shortcomings, xxxi, 79, 95, 98, 102, 105, 131, 142, 155–163, 210, 215, 229 Slovenia, vi, ix, 16, 27, 33, 40, 43, 57, 60, 89, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 106, 127, 128, 156, 167, 179 Smith, E. Dorothy, xxx, 26, 63, 71, 74, 77, 85 Social actors, x, xxv, 8, 52, 62, 75 agency, 2 movements, 3, 8 practice, 37, 72, 73, 211 praxis, 96 Socialization, xxvi Sovereignty, xxvii, 27, 35, 36, 38, 44n2, 56, 58, 60, 83, 101, 136, 146, 167, 192, 193, 227 Srebrenica, 13, 167 Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), ix, 106, 127, 131–133, 135, 136, 138, 140, 143, 145, 146, 151–154, 160–162, 182

240 Index

Stabilisation and Association Partnership (SAP), 104, 106, 136, 140, 148, 150, 198 Stepan, Alfred, 5–8, 18n3 Strategy, 31, 38, 60, 61, 95–97, 105, 127, 138, 139, 156, 162, 181, 201, 209, 212 Supranational, xxvi, xxvii, xxxv, 23, 27, 35, 52, 54–56, 84, 101

U

United Nations (UN), 35, 42, 43, 44n2, 60, 97, 131, 141, 144, 147–163, 169n8, 192 V

Violence, vii, xxvii, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 58, 90, 92, 167, 220n17, 228 Višegrad group, xxvii, 15, 91 W

T

Time, vi, 1–17, 24, 49, 71, 90, 176, 225 time span, xxxi, 26, 79, 95, 106, 136, 156–158, 163, 165, 167, 180, 196, 199, 203, 207, 210, 213 Transnational, viii, x, xxv–xxvii, 14, 17, 24, 25, 27, 30, 33, 37, 51, 53, 55, 56, 75, 76, 84, 91, 103, 143, 149, 152, 163, 208, 226 Trenz, Hans-Jörg, xxv, 25, 33, 106, 226

War, vi, 8, 13, 40, 42, 50, 60, 90, 91, 139, 144, 146, 147, 167, 169n12, 184, 192, 193, 198, 202, 224 war crimes, xi, 59, 126 Western Balkans (WB), vii, viii, xi, xxvi– xxviii, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv, 3, 13, 15, 16, 26, 28, 33, 36–40, 43, 44n5, 54, 55, 57–63, 71–86, 89–168, 175–216, 223, 224, 226, 227, 229 Western Europe, 9, 39, 40 Widening, viii, x, xxix, xxxiii, 23–43, 52, 55, 56, 65n3, 80, 89, 91, 178, 188, 224, 226–228 Wodak, Ruth, xxx–xxxii, 17, 71, 73–75, 80, 81, 85, 211, 212