Enforcing the ties with the western Balkans

The top foreign policy priority of Slovenia’s presidency is to support the countries of the western Balkans as they seek closer ties with the European Union.

There is nothing surprising here: not only will Slovenia be the first former communist country to hold the EU’s presidency, it was also the first of the six (and soon seven, once Kosovo gains independ-ence) successor states of Yugoslavia to enter the EU, in 2004. It is widely assumed that Croatia, Slovenia’s neighbour to the south-east, will be next to join the EU.

The timing, however, could not have been more auspicious for any presidency interested in advancing the membership interests of the western Balkans, as Slovenia hopes to do, for example by devoting the June 2008 EU summit to the region. Just in the last couple of weeks, both Serbia and Bosnia took decisive steps towards eventual membership by initialling pre-accession agreements with Brussels.

The Stabilisation and Association Agreements (SAAs) with Serbia and Bosnia are set to come up for formal signing sometime during Slovenia’s presidency, and both countries now need fully to meet the conditions set out by the EU - police reform in Bosnia’s case, full co-operation with the UN’s war crimes court in Serbia’s. Whether this means that all four indicted war criminals who are still at large will have to be apprehended and delivered to the tribunal in The Hague or whether steps towards that end will be judged sufficient will be the subject of lively debate among member states.

Slovenia already stuck its neck out earlier this autumn, when Prime Minister Janez Janša sent a letter to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, calling for Serbia to be given formal candidate status as soon as possible. Slovenia’s ambassador to the EU, Igor Sencˇar, later said that "bold action" was required for Serbia to become a "strategic partner" of the EU. Statements such as these may well foreshadow a more determined push to try to soften up the EU’s conditionality towards Serbia. Slovenia would most likely be supported by the Italian government of Romano Prodi, who has also asked for Serbia to receive privileged status. Both countries see Serbia as a keystone state for stability in the entire region.

Behind all this lurks the issue of Kosovo. The status of this nominally Serbian province is the last major piece of unfinished business remaining from the demise of Yugoslavia, which began in the early 1990s. (Slovenia was the first to break loose from Yugoslavia.) It is generally assumed that Kosovo will declare independence in early 2008, leading to a chain of decisions that could severely test EU unity. Most EU member states will eventually recognise an independent Kosovo while others will hesitate, but the real problem will be to find a satisfactory formula which allows the EU to send a police mission and a political mission to Pristina, and for NATO to keep its peacekeepers in Kosovo, without running into legal trouble.

Slovenians may insist that they are not part of the Balkans - but the Balkans will certainly be part of Slovenia’s presidency.

The top foreign policy priority of Slovenia’s presidency is to support the countries of the western Balkans as they seek closer ties with the European Union.