BY CORINA STRATULAT

The democratisation of the Balkans is the focal point of the EU’s engagement in the region and a sine qua non condition for the Balkan countries’ accession to the Union. Ever since the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003, when the member states offered their unequivocal support to the European perspective of the Balkans, the enlargement process has put a high premium on transforming the aspiring countries of the region into democracies.

A decade or so later, the Balkan countries are all recognised as democratic regimes and the status of democracy, as the only legitimate and desirable form of government, is uncontested by their political elites and citizens.³⁹⁹ Yet for all these good news, the different shades of democracy in practice throughout the region – as captured by the Freedom House and Bertelsmann Transformation Index – tarnish the Balkan democracy’s balance sheet and call into question the EU’s model of democracy promotion through integration.

The cornerstone of the EU’s democratic conditionality for the region make for apt ambitions: the introduction of free and fair elections, the adoption of popular rights, and the protection of these certified freedoms and liberties through an effective rule of law system. The EU’s understanding of democracy in these particular terms is reflected in the Copenhagen political criteria that all Balkan countries must fulfil before they can hope to join the Union, and it is also reinforced by the European Commission’s ‘new approach’ to enlargement. But where does this strategy of enacting and enforcing EU-compatible norms and standards – democratic as they might be – leave party politics? In short: largely unaccounted for.

To be sure, the EU is ill equipped to make room for political parties on its already (over)loaded democratic agenda in the Balkans. There is yet no democratic acquis inside the Union – let alone laws dealing explicitly with political parties – that the Commission could bring into play for the aspiring countries of the region. Nor are there commonly agreed yardsticks or examples of best practice among the member states for democratic party

399 See Krastev, Ivan (2011),”Democracy and dissatisfaction”, Journal of Globalization Studies, Volume 2, Number 1, pp. 22–31, especially p. 23.

8

development and interaction that Brussels’ executive could transpose in the Balkans. And resources to sponsor potentially new initiatives and/or policies in this field are increasingly limited in times of crisis. Small wonder then that the situation of parties in the region is not systematically addressed by the membership conditionality, even if this could provide the best possible evidence of the nature of the Balkan regimes.

To say that party politics is a hot potato for the Union is not to suggest that it is unaffected by the EU integration process. While involvement in domestic politics of the aspiring Balkan countries may not have been in the Commission’s intention – or indeed, mandate – through its demands and incentives put forward at different stages to individual EU-hopefuls,

‘Brussels’ did become an intervening factor, influencing inter-party relations as well as party links to electorates. This influence has been by and large positive but, in the absence of a fully-fledged strategy, the EU’s piecemeal approach to party government has on occasion either overlooked crucial aspects or took steps that have negative implications for the democratic project in the Balkans.

This is all in spite of the fact that the EU is not a novice in democratisation via integration. For example, its Central and Eastern European enlargement rounds in 2004 and 2007 supplied various political lessons (especially in regard to good governance practices) – many of which the Union learned and incorporated into its enhanced conditionality for the Balkans. Still, past observations about the interplay between national party politics and EU integration have arguably not received due attention in the process of upgrading the policy. Four such observations, verified in previous analyses of the EU-15 and CEE countries, were presented in the introduction to this paper, as baseline for the subsequent chapters on Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. They refer to the impact of integration on domestic politics in light of (1) parties’ proximity to power; (2) office seeking and coalition building; (3) party-society links; and (4) the time-scale until EU entry.

So, according to the case studies covered, does the experience of political parties ‘East’ and ‘West’ find resonance also in the Balkan context?

(1) Protest-based party Euroscepticsm

It was first suggested that office tenure is likely to have a moderating effect on parties’ rhetoric on ‘Europe’, while being in opposition – and even more so, on the political fringes – can facilitate the espousal of a critical EU stance.

With the overwhelming majority of parties in the Balkans – irrespective of their position in the party system – declaring support to the goal of European integration, this argument seems prima facie of little relevance in the region.

However, the Serbian and Albanian case studies revealed examples of Balkan political parties that fit the profile sketched for peripheral parties elsewhere in the EU. For instance, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) is the only anti-EU party in the country and it is clearly marginalised by its

counterparts on those grounds. The calls of the party for the severance of ties with the Union – primarily due to the US/EU-sponsored process that led to the recognition of Kosovo – might help to set it aside from its mainstream competitors but it also serves to explain its location on the flanks of the Serbian party system.

Similarly, the discourse and initiatives of the Red and Black Movement (RBM) in Albania, promoting the unification of all Albanians in the region into one state, are both at odds with European principles, as well as largely responsible for the party’s domestic political isolation.

Additionally, much like in the rest of Europe, the government or opposition status does mediate Balkan political parties’ reactions towards integration when assessed through the prism of the membership conditionality (including, most notably, the requirements of full cooperation with the ICTY and normalisation of relations with neighbouring countries), as well as the Commission’s annual Progress Reports on the EU-aspirants in the region.

Instances of unpopular demands from Brussels being instrumentalised by opposition parties as a means to criticise the Union and steak out a clearer stance against the government (often by accusing it of acting against the national interest) have been documented, for example, in the cases of Croatia and Serbia. The Croatian Democratic Union’s firm stance before 2003, while on the opposition benches, against the EU’s request for the arrest and extradition to The Hague of Croatian war-criminal indictees, is evocative in this sense. Especially since the party took a ‘U-turn’ on the subject once in government, starting to facilitate the capture of fugitives and thus helping Croatia to make important strides forward towards integration.

Similarly, the Serbian DSS and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) initially attacked their governments in the early 2000s for compliance with the ICTY condition only to have a ‘change of heart’ on this issue once they gained office, ultimately lending support to Serbia’s efforts to fulfil this requirement.

Furthermore, the chapters on Montenegro and Albania showed how specific reforms asked by ‘Brussels’ have opened space for political

‘blackmailing’. Such was the case when the Montenegrin opposition parties asked for concessions from the government on largely unrelated policy areas in exchange for their support to the electoral law that was conditioning the country’s opening of accession negotiations with the Union. Or when the Albanian Socialist Party (SP) – in opposition at the time – refused to vote on legislation tied to Albania’s chances of becoming a candidate country (like the reforms of the judiciary, public administration and parliamentary statute) over disagreements regarding the outcome of the 2009 general elections.

In addition, all case studies uncovered marked differences in the way the governing and opposition parties interpret the Commission’s Progress

Reports. As a general rule, and similarly to the standard practice noticed in previous rounds of enlargement, throughout the region, governments try to put a positive spin on the reviews received from Brussels and to book recognised progress as their own merit. Conversely, parties in opposition normally tend to downplay the role of the ruling parties in any achievements, and to shine a bright spotlight on the less positive comments made by the Commission about their country’s reform efforts (or lack thereof).

On this point however, an interesting recent development noted, for example, in the chapters on the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (for 2011) and Albania (for 2013), is that governing parties themselves (that is, the Internal Democratic Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) and the Albanian SP) evaluated the Progress Reports as overtly critical. Their reactions were arguably prompted by their interpretation that the countries’ integration paths are being obstructed by hurdles – the name dispute with Greece and internal EU dynamics, respectively – which have little to do with their actual record on the EU agenda. This type of responses could increase in the future if the enlargement process continues to be held hostage by outstanding disputes or by random preoccupations on behalf of the member states. In turn, this might not bode well for the reform momentum if the commitment of governments in the region to the integration process weakens under the perception of changeable considerations for progress or an apparent absence of ‘promised rewards’.

(2) The European Union and inter-party relations

Second, it was argued that the parties’ efforts to gain office and appeal to prospective coalition partners might translate into a softening of anti-EU party sentiment and, vice versa, periods of exclusion from power can strengthen Eurosceptic tendencies within parties.

The account provided in the Croatian case study on the internal transformation undertaken by the HZD between 2000-2003 demonstrates the impact that the EU can have on the identity of a party. The fact that the HZD shed its hard-line stance on the cooperation with the ICTY and refugee return issues, and started to project a pro-EU image, was described by the author of the chapter as a pragmatic decision to cultivate the favour of the EU, precisely with the intention of eliminating any potential external veto on the party’s inclusion in government. The move paid off as the more EU-compliant HZD seized office in 2003. And the reverse might also hold true as post-2011 elections – which the HDZ lost – the party seems to fall back on Tuđman’s dogmas and neo-fascist discourses, even if it is still premature to properly qualify these tendencies or assess their prospective impact.

By the same token, the fragmentation of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) in 2008, when the majority of party members broke ranks with the minority fraction of ultra-nationalists and went on to form a new, pro-European party – the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) – was also triggered by strategic competitive considerations. As the Serbian case study explains, the SNS came

KEEP TO SET