Balkans’ jobless ‘must be higher priority’

Date: 23/05/02

By David Cronin

UNEMPLOYMENT needs to be given higher priority in EU efforts to rebuild the Balkans, according to a report from the UK's House of Lords.

Published by its select committee on the European Union, the paper cites statements by Balkans experts, who believe chronic joblessness is a cause of the region's volatility and that the EU has not addressed it.

Vladimir Gligorov, a professor with the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, said: 'Most of the [EU's] strategy and most of the aid in the Western Balkans has not targeted the main issue there, which is unemployment...it has been a persistent problem for ten years and, if anything, it is getting worse.'

Doubts are also cast on efforts to bring Balkan states into the EU. Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said that those who suggest the 'stabilisation and association' agreements which the EU has signed with the region's governments constitute 'the solution to keeping the whole show together' are 'probably smoking something'.

Concern was also expressed that EU aid focus is too short-term.

External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said: 'I worry that, because of nervousness about getting things wrong, we tend to be too focused on process and not sufficiently focused on output.'

Unemployment needs to be given higher priority in EU efforts to rebuild the Balkans, according to a report from the UK's House of Lords.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200102/ldselect/ldeucom/107/10701.htm http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200102/ldselect/ldeucom/107/10701.htm

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