More than 23 years ago leaders of European union met in the Croatian capital Zagreb with their counterparts from the Western Balkans to open a new page in history. While the rest of Europe was in the process of unification, through enlargement of the EU towards eastern Europe, the region of the Western Balkans just came out from the cold.

The Zagreb Summit was an opportunity to celebrate what was then considered the end of conflict and destruction and the opening of a brighter future. Many EU leaders were sending messages that the Western Balkan countries are leaving behind their dark past of conflicts, war crimes, destructions, and mutual mistrust and turning towards a brighter joined future, eventually as EU members.

EU leaders were sending messages that the Western Balkan countries are leaving behind their dark past of conflicts, war crimes, destructions, and mutual mistrust and turning towards a brighter joined future, eventually as EU members.

It was a time of big optimism, what the then-President of the European Commission Romano Prodi called “Time of hope in Europe.” In Serbia the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević was overthrown. Croatia started reforms necessary for progress towards EU membership. Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina were undergoing the first phase of reconstruction while the international community was donating billions of Euros and was showing massive military and humanitarian presence on the ground to help reconstruction, state building, and the required socio-economic recovery in post conflict societies.   

More than 23 years have passed, but the picture in the region is far from what was expected at the time. Yes, many positive things happened. But comparing achievements with the time-period of more than two decades leaves little room for satisfaction.

If one asks the European Commission, they will always point out the progress achieved: Croatia has been a formal member state of the EU for more than ten years. All Western Balkan countries, except for Kosovo, have a status of candidate countries with Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, and North Macedonia negotiating membership. Citizens of all Western Balkan countries can travel freely in the EU and there are simplified procedures for travel within the region. There is an increase of cooperation within the region through many initiatives, from the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) to the Regional Cooperation Council, and regular meetings of South-East European heads of state or their foreign ministers. From the so called Brdo-Brijuni Process, an annual multilateral event in the Western Balkans, to the Berlin process, an intergovernmental cooperation initiative linked to the future enlargement of the European Union, progress is tangible.

But there is another rather bleak picture of the region. Relations between Kosovo and Serbia are less normal than 12 years ago when the EU started the facilitation of dialog for the normalisation of their relations. The last attack on Kosovo police by an armed Serbian group in the north of Kosovo, which the EU High Representative called “a terrorist attacks,” was a serios reminder that the situation is closer to war than to comprehensive normalisation.

All western Balkan countries are facing dramatic brain drain with many young people leaving

Bosnia and Herzegovina is in constant political turbulence that prevents any progress towards making it a functioning state. The Leader of the Bosnian Serb entity “Republika Srpska,” Milorad Dodik, openly speaks about secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina and favours joining not only Serbia but annexing Montenegro and Kosovo which, in his mind, are part of the “Serbian World.” Montenegro lost two years on its path towards the EU due to political deadlock. All western Balkan countries are facing dramatic brain drain with many young people leaving.

Serbia, as the most important country in the region, bares the biggest responsibility in this regard. According to the latest progress report of the European Commission, there is a continued glorification of convicted war criminals in Serbia and a denial of the Genocide in Srebrenica, while convicted war criminals get public space and even engage in political gatherings or hold lectures in the military academy. The latest study by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights from Belgrade (YIHR, a network of autonomous non-governmental organizations active in Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) describes how little young people know about the war and how little they care about reconciliation. 

Around 74 percent of young people in Serbia have never heard that mass graves have been discovered in Serbia. Only 8 percent know that one mass grave, with the bodies of around 750 Kosovo Albanians, was discovered in Batajnica in Serbia (now a military camp near the capital Belgrade) in an attempted effort to hide the crimes committed by Serbian forces in Kosovo. Remarkably, 85 percent of respondents believe that war crime trials did not help at all or did not further reconciliation in the region.

Only 13 percent believe that the Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was guilty of crimes for which he was convicted. A vast majority of young people have never heard about the crimes of Serbian forces towards Croats and Kosovo Albanians, but most of them know about the crimes committed against Serbs in Croatia during the operation “Oluja” (storm) 1995 and by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Those findings should not surprise us since they are fully in line with the narratives used by the Serbian government and the media it controls.

A vast majority of young people in Serbia have never heard about the crimes of Serbian forces towards Croats and Kosovo Albanians but most of them know about the crimes committed against Serbs in Croatia […] and […] in Kosovo.

When they are asked questions about the soft approach of the EU on issues such as prosecutions of war crimes or finding the fate of missing persons from the war, EU bureaucrats often answers with criticism that insisting on those issues “shows that people in the region are not ready to move forward but they look too much to the past”.

More than 28 years have passed since the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Almost 25 years since the war in Kosovo. There is a new generation of politicians in the European Union and many of them do not have enough sensibility for understanding the consequences of war for the collective memory of a society that went through it. Surely, it is important to help overcome the past, not allowing it to be an obstacle for the future. But at the same time, it has to be ensured that crimes and victims are not forgotten. The Russian aggression in Ukraine is another reminder that Europe is not united entirely (i.e. the Hungarian stance) but has lived in peaceful coexistence in the past decades since World War II.

Their statements about reconciliation, overcoming divisions from the past, respecting the victims and their request for no relativisation of well documented war crimes look like hypocrisy.

If the EU really wants to help reconciliation in the Western Balkans, establishing the truth on war crimes and missing persons should be the first priority. EU leaders and representatives should insist in their contacts with political leaders in the region of Western Balkans, particularly in Serbia, that behaviour and rhetoric that goes against reconciliation will not be tolerated.

For a long time, the EU has neglected reconciliation and democratisation in the region for the sake of perceived political stability and security. This phenomenon has been coined as “stabilocracy” by independent analysts and experts of the region. If EU politicians believe that insisting in democracy or condemnation of crimes will damage their relations with “partners” in the region, then they will not insist on such issues. This behaviour of the EU, which seems to only care about stability and demand an overlooking of those who are responsible for war crimes to achieve cooperation is cleverly exploited by political elites from the region. Some of them play the role of firefighters after helping to set a fire. By doing so, they deliberately create tensions.

If the EU really wants to help reconciliation in the Western Balkans, establishing the truth on war crimes and missing persons should be the priority. EU leaders and representatives must not tolerate rhetoric of regional politicians that goes against reconciliation.

By engaging in such a behaviour, politicians from both the EU and the region are as much hindering as helping reconciliation. In societies where almost everything is politicised, the role of the media, of academics, and of intellectuals is reduced.  Some of them accept to be extended arms of political elites and contribute to keeping existing narratives rather than helping progress towards more democracy, respect of human rights, and media freedom. A small look at the headlines in many news outlets in the region will show how little they have moved from the war time rhetoric of the nineties. The media sector is particularly vulnerable in the Western Balkans. Subject to political influence, dependent on different business interests, and subject to foreign interference, particularly by Russia and China, the media is more a part of problem than the solution.

While Chinas influence was more oriented towards economic interest and spreading anti-western narratives, Russia is actively working in disinformation campaigns, trying to destabilise the region and provoke tensions in the Western Balkans.

The European Union and its member states are investing a tremendous amount of money, supporting civil society and the media, initiating, and taking part of many regional initiatives. This is very important. But for real success there is a need for more transparent political engagement and public support for those who work for reconciliation. And more criticism for those who hinder it.

As it was firstly stated at the Zagreb summit of 2000, the first EU-Western Balkans summit, and repeated at the Thessaloniki summit in 2003 and in every summit since, regional cooperation, stabilisation, and reconciliation remains one of the key conditions for progress of every country on its EU integration path. It is not just an issue of will, but it is part of EU conditionality. And it should remain so in the future.

The EU should insist on regional cooperation also as a condition for the disbursement of financial assistance. But this cooperation should not be limited to trade and the economy alone. It should include cooperation in other sectors. There is great potential and good examples exist. More and more citizens of Serbia spend their holidays in Albania or work in Croatia and many Croats visit Belgrade. People to people contacts in the region have improved much more than one would conclude based on political relations between the countries or headlines in the newspapers. 

But there was one incident that dealt a serious blow to EU credibility in the region and that had a negative impact on the progress towards respect for EU values in the region. That was the failure of the EU to keep its promises towards the region that it will progress towards membership if it meets the necessary criteria. There were many cases when Western Balkan Countries did their part of the job and the EU failed to follow up and move in the accession process.

People to people contacts in the region have improved much more than one would conclude based on political relations between the countries or headlines in the newspapers.

North Macedonia even had to change its name to overcome a decade-long blockade by Greece and avoid  another blockage caused by an identity issue dispute, this time from neighbouring Bulgaria. This was an opportunity for those EU member states who were no big friends of enlargement, including France, Germany, and Netherlands, to slow down the process that was to slow already.

The Momentum has changed and there is now much more support for enlargement. The German government is particularly supportive for this process. This momentum should be used to move ahead with the integration of the Western Balkans. Support towards EU membership from one side and regional cooperation and reconciliation from other side are interlinked. The one does not go without the other.

There is no doubt: Nothing more than the real prospect for EU membership will help the region to overcome the atrocities and divisions from the past. The responsibility to achieve this is on the EU side as much as it is on the countries and societies in the Western Balkans. Restoring trust on the EU enlargement process will help build more trust also within the region.