The EU and Macedonia

The small country’s second city, far off in its northwestern corner, is a stronghold of its minority population. Cut off from their ethnic kin across the border at the beginning of the twentieth century by the arbitrary decisions of an international treaty, they have not found it easy to participate in the new state. Their grievances include high unemployment, the funding of the university that they believe their city should rightfully have, and vivid memories of civilians who were shot dead by security forces in bitterly disputed circumstances.

This city has two names, Derry and Londonderry. In 1984, a junior British Minister had to decide which name could be used by the City Council, a decision as important and as symbolic as deciding which flag should fly on the town hall. Historically the official name was Londonderry, and Protestants demanded that this name be kept as a reminder of their cultural heritage. However the Minister decided, after much reflection, to change the official name of the city to Derry, the name used by the majority of its population.

This British Minister has moved on to other things. His name is Chris Patten, and he is now the European Union’s Commissioner for External Relations. However, anyone who wants to understand the EU’s approach to the problems of Macedonia should begin by examining what the EU’s member states have done in their own territories. Patten has personal experience of both Ireland and Hong Kong. Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, has personal experience of a transition to democracy and the problems of dealing with Basque and Catalonian demands for autonomy in his own country. Their personal experiences are the background against which EU policy is formed.

For Macedonia, this is no bad thing. Some outsiders – particularly those journalists who like dramatic stories of conflict, blood and ancient hatred- automatically assume that any armed insurgents must have the majority of the population on their side. However, both Patten and Solana know that the IRA’s violence never had the support of a majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and that ETA has never had the support of a majority of Basques in Spain. On the other hand, both have experience of the negotiations that are necessary to reconcile the ambitions of different parts of a divided country; how to satisfy the reasonable demands of a minority population without sacrificing the rule of law and the confidence of the majority.

Both men know that it is not an easy process, and neither is keen to make any specific demands for reforms from the Macedonian government apart from setting up some more visible process of national dialogue than has hitherto existed. Neither Patten nor Solana will want to see the political representatives of any terrorist group brought into the official negotiation process, while violence continues. And even in the event of a ceasefire, they will be sympathetic – perhaps even too sympathetic – to Macedonian reluctance to talk to people who have recently been using guns rather than words.

Both men also know that an excessive government reaction against terrorism can be counterproductive. Solana’s party lost office in 1996 when the truth emerged about the anti-terrorist militias which it had sponsored to act against ETA ten years before. Bloody Sunday, when 14 civilians in Derry were killed by British soldiers in 1972, is still a live issue in Northern Ireland. When the EU and NATO urge restraint on the Macedonian government, it is because they have learned their own lessons the hard way.

Britain and Spain are old powers, which have lost their empires but are adapting to a European future. Their borders with their neighbours are not an issue to get excited about. Their internal organisation of course can always be reformed, but this does not mean that the country will cease to exist. Autonomy for Scotl and, Wales, Catalunya or Euskadi is not the end of the United Kingdom or of Spain. The use of Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan or Basque may irritate those who prefer English or Spanish, but it is generally accepted that people have a right to their own official language in their own communities.

Therefore, neither Patten nor Solana understands the insecurity within Macedonia about the country’s very existence. There is no sensitivity in Brussels to the perception in South-Eastern Europe that borders have been changed arbitrarily in the recent past and, that this could easily happen again. When the British Foreign Secretary says, “It is time that we asserted that the borders within the region are inviolable and cannot be changed by violence,” he does not mean that the policy should be changed, he means that what seems to him a self-evident truth should be stated again for those who don’t seem to believe it.

The signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement on 9 April is therefore significant because it shows that the EU accepts Macedonia, within its current borders, as an associated state, with all the mechanisms that applied with the Europe Agreements, updated to account for ten years of experience and of evolution in the EU’s structures. The Agreement also includes some pointers towards the sorts of regional cooperation that are expected of Macedonia and of the other countries in the Western Balkans, which are not much more substantive than the existing provisions of the Stability Pact.

It is also a signal that the EU accepts Macedonia as a future member. Not too quickly, though. It is now accepted in the EU that the next enlargement will include several Central European countries and will take place before 2005, maybe even in 2003. There is a reluctance to give commitments on imminent membership to any other countries, really because the EU does not completely trust in the competence of its own structures to cope with the burdens of Eastern Europe. In the fourth century, St Augustine famously wanted to become virtuous, “but not just yet”. Similarly the EU wants to include the Western Balkans, “but not just yet”.

The present policy is thus to allow Macedonia to join the regatta of countries in the queue for EU membership at some time in the next ten, twenty, thirty years. This is all very well, but is it imaginative enough? It may sound convincing on the Rue de la Loi in Brussels; but the people who need to be reassured of their European destiny are those who live in Gostivar, Prizren, Korce, Prijepolje, Bjelovar and Bijeljina. When they have time to do so, Patten and Solana should reflect on the positive contribution of the European dimension in managing the problems of their own countries, and they should begin to think of how they can further accelerate the European integration of the Balkans. Full membership of the EU or NATO for Macedonia is a very long way off. We may not have the luxury of waiting.

Nicholas Whyte, Research Fellow, CEPS

For an in-depth analysis, see CEPS

Europa South East Information Centre.