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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spent two days on a tour of the Western Balkans, as well as visiting Thessaloniki, Greece, to meet with representatives of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), where Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who chaired the meeting, called on European leaders and member states to commit to speeding up decisions and proposed that all EU candidate countries join the EU by 2033; Scholz then focused his tour on dealing with Bulgaria and North Macedonia to address the dispute preventing the latter's accession negotiations from starting.
Upon arriving in Serbia last Friday, Scholz declared that "sanctions against Russia must also be supported by the candidate members of the European Union", including the government in Belgrade. In addition to the sanctions against Russia, there was a second clash with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in the middle of a press conference, as they again disagreed over the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. Incidentally, it is interesting to read this article by Kosovo's president, Kosovo Albanian jurist Vjosa Osmani.
Vučić began his rejoinder to Chancellor Scholz by drawing a parallel between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and NATO's military mission against Serbia in 1999:
"What is the difference if someone attacks Serbia without a decision of the UN Security Council, or if someone launches an aggression against Serbia? Ukraine without a decision of the UN Security Council? Please explain to me the difference", Vučić said.
It is true that NATO attacked Serbia in 1999 without a UN Security Council resolution, as both Russia and China had imposed their vetoes, but it did so to protect Albanians in Kosovo amid fears of possible genocide, a precedent that is found in Russian rhetoric, which has been busy pointing to "genocide forcing Russia" to wage a war against Ukraine, though it refuses to call it that and which takes the forms of a war of conquest with imperialist overtones.
Vučić added further arguments to justify Serbia's reluctance to sanction Russia by referring to Moscow's loyalty to Serbia in the Security Council and the centuries-old close ties between the two countries, as well as Belgrade's dependence on Russian energy imports, and other factors. While Vučić stated that he condemns Russia's invasion. For a broader overview of these aspects and their possible evolution, it would be good to read this article and this one.
In turn, on the same Friday, before Scholz's meeting with Vučić, the German Chancellor had said during a visit to Kosovo's capital Pristina that both Kosovo and Serbia could only become members of the European Union if they recognised each other as independent states. On this issue Vučić told Scholz that they felt threatened, and with such an attitude Serbia would not respond favourably, adding that Serbia was surprised by the German Chancellor's statements in Pristina. Scholz went on to reply that "our opinion on the Kosovo issue is not new" and argued that it was "obvious" that countries that want to join the EU must recognise each other. Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 2008. Most Western countries recognise its independence, but it has not been granted a seat at the United Nations due to opposition from Russia and China. EU-mediated dialogue between the two Balkan neighbours, initiated more than a decade ago, has so far failed to normalise ties.
The alliance of Hungary and Serbia, to which I have referred already in the past, is highlighted by Freedom House in its 2021 "Freedom in the World" report, which classified both countries as "partly free". Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia practice a strongman form of government imbued with cultural conservatism, friendship with Russia and China, and support for their national minorities abroad (in the case of Hungarians in Serbia, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine; and Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina).
This is notable in the context in which it occurs, since unlike other countries, such as France, Germany's stance on the integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU can be seen as that of an ally, hence the harshness of the two leaders' statements is noteworthy. For this reason, and as part of Vučić's strategy of playing a "double game" on different issues, he tried to tone down his tone by adding that he recognised that Chancellor Scholz takes this issue very seriously and that there is always something to be learned and the atmosphere between Serbia and Germany can be improved by Russian sanctions and Serbia's recognition of Kosovo.
Indeed, one of the first signals of the German coalition government upon taking office was to set a high priority for the Balkans and appoint Manuel Sarrazin of the Greens as the government's special representative for the Western Balkans. The Greens' foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia to make it clear that the EU is serious about allowing these countries to join. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also mentioned the Western Balkans at a press conference on 28 March and said that EU negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania should begin "as soon as possible". All in all, this goes in the direction of Germany taking a different approach to the Balkans than Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).
Vučić is a former ultranationalist who rose to fame as former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's propaganda minister, and in recent elections campaigned on a message of stability following Russia's invasion of Ukraine as Serbia's traditional ally. Moreover, a significant proportion of his voters sympathise with Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggression against Kiev and resent the West, which bombed Belgrade during the Yugoslav wars in 1999.
Overall, how long Vučić can sustain such a policy will ultimately depend on factors such as whether the EU and the US tolerate Belgrade's sanctions non-alignment, as well as the issues I have outlined in this article and this one, which exacerbates the reaction that Western discontent would cause in Serbian public opinion, and which would add to the country's dependence on Russian energy and the desire for alignment with Moscow and revanchism on the part of certain elements of Serbian society, as well as Moscow's strategic game-playing.
As I noted earlier in this article, Russian companies own most of Serbia's energy sector, its largest gas storage facility, and control the country's gas supply through the new TurkStream pipeline. Indeed, before the Ukrainian war Serbs had protested against Vučić in a series of escalating demonstrations over inadequate environmental protections and perceived leniency towards multinational corporations, which led Vučić to do a U-turn on a lithium mine, in the Jadar valley, which was one of the country's largest investment projects by "Rio Tinto", which is not without interest for Chinese and Russian positions, helping to shape Europe's industrial policies on the basis of key metals for such purposes. In fact, Serbia has a growing, and very interesting, weight of technology in its GDP, as can be seen in this article in The Economist. This situation is highlighted by the tolerance shown towards China, for example, and how it acts on the environment in Serbia, which is key to its BRI.
On the integration of the Western Balkan countries into the European Union, during the second summit of the Presidents of the Western Balkan Parliaments in June 2021, the then President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, stated that enlargement is more than ever a geo-strategic investment for a stable, strong and united Europe.
In this regard, we have already pointed out how the Western Balkans are increasingly becoming an area of geostrategic competition between the EU and other international actors seeking to increase their influence in the region, often advocating an alternative model to the one proposed by Brussels, and gave the example of Albania.
In this matter, the European Union Institute for Security Studies published a Chaillot Paper on 3 September 2018 in which it considered three potential, and contrasting, scenarios for the future of the Western Balkans in 2025. The first scenario, 'Time for Europe', draws an optimistic future of the region's inclusion in European integration. A second scenario has a more moderate outlook, "Balkans in limbo": the road to European integration will remain on track, but not without difficulties. Finally, if the EU fails to establish itself as a geostrategic partner in the region, the ISS foresees the darkest scenario: the Western Balkans will be haunted by the "ghosts of the past". Which scenario seems more realistic after what has been pointed out in this article and this one? The scenario that has been unfolding since 2017 regarding Russia, the movements leading up to 24 February 2022 and the latest developments that I analyse in both articles that I have recommended reading lead me to consider a scenario that is not at all rosy.
In this regard, this position of Fabio Massimo Castaldo, Member of the European Parliament for Movimento 5 Stelle and Vice-President of the European Parliament (2017-2022), who states that:
"The Western Balkans are not and must never be a defeated periphery of the West, but are and must remain the beating heart of the present and the future of the great European family".
If the EU is to become a credible geopolitical actor on a global scale, it is essential that it be able to take a leading role in the Western Balkans, bearing in mind also that the European project in a broad sense will not be truly complete until Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are fully included. I will return to this idea later in this commentary.
But suffice it to point out more elements to be considered, such as the "Open Balkan" initiative, established on 29 July 2021 between Serbia, Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia. In this regard, it has been considered that we were basically dealing with a partial duplication of some of the development plans already presented at the EU-Western Balkans summit in Sofia in November 2020.
Indeed, one of the most important of these is the Regional Common Market (RCM) 2021-2024, whose objectives include the creation of a regional trade area for the free movement of goods, services, capital and people in accordance with EU standards, which has had the obvious major problem of the non-participation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro, who have decided to withdraw for very different reasons. Another aspect to note is the support given to these initiatives by actors such as Russia (and how it has been using local leaders and their agendas in the face of EU and US positions, for example in Bosnia), Turkey and China, which cannot supplant the EU's role as the region's main donor and trading partner, but which highlights the involvement of geostrategic competitors in their grand strategies, and that in this sense, since the EU does not have adequate means, let alone Germany, it could be financing China's and Russia's expansion in the region for its own purposes with European money.
So the Obama administration's withdrawal from the region, leaving it in the hands of the European Union and offering no clear signal of US willingness to defend its bipartisan legacy of institution-building in the region, has created a vacuum that has been filled by these other actors, which should give Germany itself a more accurate picture of its own capabilities, especially given its gaps with Russia and China, for example.
The gas aspect also turns out to be crucial, as we would have two types of approach in addition to the Russian one. Following the Joint Strategic Declaration signed between Azerbaijani President Aliyev and then European Commission President Barroso in January 2011, which pioneered the project, in 2013 the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) was selected to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz II field. Acting as an extension of TANAP (the gas pipeline across Anatolia), TAP transports gas from the Caspian Sea through Greece and Albania to Italy on the Puglia coast.
The TAP is part of the implementation strategy of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), the European Union's alternative to diversify gas supply and not become overly dependent on Russian gas. The TAP became operational at the end of December 2020 and has the capacity to transport 10 bcm (billion cubic metres) of gas per year. Capacity is expected to increase to 20 bcm per year in the future. Thus, if before Russia's aggression against Ukraine the EU was already looking towards Azerbaijan, after 24 February 2022 REPowerEU's development points in the same direction. Azerbaijan is thus on track to increase gas exports in 2022 and the following years through the 3,500-kilometre Southern Gas Corridor that crosses seven countries and supplies Turkey and Europe. Currently, Azerbaijan supplies 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas to Europe and 6 bcm to Turkey through the Southern Gas Corridor.
In order to meet demand, Azerbaijan will also bring two new gas fields on stream and is open to investments to expand SGC capacity, for example by installing additional compressor stations that can double gas flow. But Azerbaijan's economy minister says the European "lack of investment" may slow down the country's ability to supply more gas. Azerbaijan's energy minister told the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi last week:
"We are now working very intensively with the European Commission... we are working on ways, in a relatively short period of time, to improve this infrastructure and, subsequently, to increase our energy supply to Europe in terms of natural gas."
The pipeline linking Azerbaijan's Baku-Tbilisi-Supsa on the Black Sea was temporarily closed (until the end of June) and product was diverted to the pipeline running along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. The redirection of oil to Ceyhan will also strengthen Turkey's position, as it also hosts the middle section of the SGC, the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline.
Land transport is being reorganised to avoid Russian and Western sanctions.
Azerbaijan does not wish to maintain antagonistic but not feudal or vassal relations with its neighbours, Russia and Iran, but neither does it propose itself as a platform for NATO action against Russia, or an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear programme. Baku has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but has not openly criticised Russia. We can conclude that Azerbaijan can be a reliable source of energy and transport for Europe, but it will have to take into account its neighbours and the developing game between Iran and Turkey, forcing Brussels and Washington to take a much more active agenda and give its place to the South Caucasus... and again, Turkey's positions are and will be key. Of course, there are other avenues through which to obtain gas, and of course Russia is in the mix in one way or another.
The second axis on which to bring gas concerns liquefied natural gas (LNG). Following their meeting at the White House on 25 July 2018, then European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and President Donald Trump announced an agreement to strengthen strategic cooperation on energy, confirming that the European Union would import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to diversify its energy supply. Natural gas is a key element in launching the Industry 4.0, among other strategic aspects of the future, so this is about more than making or not making money by Russians or Americans: this is about capturing a market, and with that and the European Union's technological vision, which is nothing more than that of a consumer and not a creator (China and the United States are creators), we begin to have more clarity on more elements. ... if we add to this the great strategic competition with China, which is a colossus with capabilities and potential superior to those of the United States, and which obliges the United States to build new partnerships and new strategies that include allies, and to build a large connected space that is capable of matching the scope of China's challenge. Technology and the definition of blocs in the competition for global hegemony that is now unfolding are discussed in this article.
To the Russia-Ukraine conflict, both in a more latent and more open state, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline issue and tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean over offshore reserves, put natural gas at the centre. Of course, natural gas may not be renewable, but it is less polluting than oil and especially coal, it is cheap as a fuel to generate electricity, it is key to launching the Industry 4.0 and it has become easier to transport.
In this sense, the development of LNG, and of special ships to transport it, has made it possible to internationalise what was previously a very localised industry but avoiding the mutual dependence between exporters and importers that pipelines entail, although the process is not simple: the gas is liquefied by cooling it to -161°C, then transported by ship and then regasified in plants that have this purpose in order to be distributed.
The United States has become the world's largest producer of natural gas (but not the country with the largest proven reserves), and has been extracting around 88% more gas than some 16 years ago, while Russia's production remains static (but it is the country with the largest natural gas reserves). The differentiating factor was the discovery in the 2000s of shale gas, extracted by the highly polluting technique of hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking'. Since 2008 its intensive exploitation has been facilitated by the US government's determination to achieve energy independence, and fundamental to this was the adaptation of the legal framework for exploration and production, according to which ownership of land in the United States implies ownership of the subsoil, so that whoever owns the land does not need government permission to exploit what lies beneath it.
Although the United States consumes most of the gas it produces, its excess production continues to grow, and of the three major energy markets the strategic element is Europe and the transformation of Africa and the Middle East, to which we would add the Black Sea area (as I have explained several times, the invasion of Ukraine is aimed at annexing and/or establishing a puppet government to take away these kinds of resources, along with Russia's presence in Africa and the Middle East, which I described earlier as "putting its foot in the hose", not to mention food security, among other factors that are tools of Russia, in combination with China, to trap Europe, isolate the United States and win the competition for global hegemony, the rest is information warfare or propaganda to sow its interests. ... and no one should expect anything other than this in terms of their ultimate ends).
In July 2017, President Trump attended the Three Seas Initiative. This annual forum brings together 12 countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), which, as we can see, are located between the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and which pursues goals such as promoting cooperation for the development of infrastructures in the energy, transport and digital sectors. President Trump defined as objectives to expand the north-south supply within Europe, at the suggestion of Poland, which becomes an energy hub, although against the wishes of a certain part of the establishment in Germany linked to Russia (and China), and for this purpose the distribution of gas from the LNG terminal in Świnoujście (Poland) to the rest of central Europe, until reaching Croatia, thus competing with gas piped from Russia, also to the Balkans, is used.
Serbia, Germany and the Balkan Parts
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (German Agency for International Cooperation), which opened its office in Belgrade in 2000, states in its public report that:
"Serbia continues to struggle with high unemployment rates, especially among young people, as well as corruption, a weak legal system and excessive bureaucracy. Like all countries in the region, Serbia aspires to become a member of the European Union. EU accession negotiations were opened in 2014. As a precondition for accession, Serbia must continue to initiate and implement a series of reforms to meet EU criteria in the areas of good governance, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human and minority rights."
Germany's imports from Serbia were US $ 3.34 billion during 2021, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade; if you wish, you can expand on the following link to this macroeconomic data, or also this other link, or this last link.
In turn, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), KfW Development Bank is supporting Serbia in achieving the goals agreed with the EU in the energy sector, climate action and the environmental sector, and sustainable urban development. KfW also promotes economic development and secure jobs by providing credit lines and loan guarantees for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and supports Serbia's vocational training system.
According to the German Federal Foreign Office, different estimates put the total number of people of Serb descent currently living in Germany at between 400,000 and 800,000. It also states that Germany has been one of Serbia's main economic partners for years. More than 400 German-owned companies employ some 75,000 people. The German-Serbian Business Association has more than 370 member companies.
If we look at the Balkans as a whole, the Serbs are, after the Greeks, the second largest nationality in the territory, with some 8 million people, and the largest Slavic people in the Balkans. Part of their heritage is Byzantine and their religion is Orthodox Christian, with a Slavic language, usually written in the Cyrillic alphabet. In the state of Serbia, Serbian can be written using either the Cyrillic or Latin alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet is the alphabet that has been used by reference newspapers. Latin-script newspapers tend to be more general, less "elitist" and more "popular" or "progressive". The two alphabets are almost bijective, i.e. the passage from one to the other follows mechanical rules; however, some words are exceptions.
The Albanians, who number 6 million people throughout the Balkans, are the fourth largest nationality in the Balkans. They claim descent from the Illyrians, a protohistoric Balkan people that appeared in the 20th century BC, to which they add as their second cultural heritage Rome, which settled in the region around 229 BC. The Albanians are mainly located in the area of contact and confrontation between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, with the majority of the Albanians opting to convert to Islam during the four centuries of Ottoman occupation, although there is a Christian minority that is difficult to know whether it is Albanian or Greek. Albanian is written in the Latin alphabet. The Albanians are traditionally divided into two groups, originally separated geographically by the Shkumbin River: the Guegans in the north, who include Kosovars and most Macedonian Albanians, and the Tosks in the south, who include the Albanians of southern North Macedonia around Bitola. The northerners present themselves as mountain dwellers, who have long lived in isolation, with a high respect for customary law and a tribal organisation that has enabled them to overcome the hardship of their geographical isolation. Whereas the southerners, who originally lived in the plains and valleys, had a more open tradition. In addition to the variety of geographical origins, there are differences between the southern (or Tuscan) and northern (or Guegan) dialects. However, the process of unification of the Albanian language, now used by the vast majority of Albanians, seems to have been more influenced by the southern (or Tuscan) dialects.
In addition, there are cultural and, to a lesser extent, linguistic differences between Albanians in Albania and those in Kosovo. Unable to overcome these differences, the Albanians had little political clout in the Balkans for a long time. In fact, they acquired state independence late compared to other nationalities: Albania's proclamation of independence came in 1912 and was recognised by the major powers in 1913, but with a restricted state perimeter, the result of negotiation at the ambassadors' conference in London. As for Kosovo's independence, it is even more recent (2008) and, in 2017, for lack of sufficiently broad international recognition, and led for different reasons by Russia and China, Kosovo is not a member of the UN. Therefore, in terms of uniqueness, it is the Albanians who seem to be in a less favourable geopolitical situation than the other Balkan nationalities.
One aspect that stands out in the Balkans is the distinction we can make between state territories and nationality territories. In this respect, we can speak of three multi-state nationalities due to their cross-border character, with the Albanian nationality having the largest number of members outside its eponymous state, as only 50% of Albanians live in Albania. The highest concentration of Albanians outside their eponymous state is found in Kosovo, where more than 90% of the population is of Albanian origin, followed by Northern Macedonia, with approximately 25% of its population, and then Greece, as a result of very recent migratory movements. This is one of the factors that partly explain the armed conflicts in the territories where Albanians are in the majority. In Kosovo, under the sovereignty of the Yugoslav state and then the Serbian state, the numerical dominance of the Albanians allowed them to declare independence, of course as a result of the 1999 war with NATO intervention, which officially came to "defend" the Albanians against Serbian attempts to control the territory (the same argument that Russia is now using with Ukraine).
In North Macedonia, the Albanian minority launched an armed rebellion against the central government in 2001, which led to an autonomous status following the Ohrid agreements. But some Albanian nationalists are calling for a Greater Albania project that would bring together Kosovo, Albania and the Albanian part of Macedonia.
The second multi-state nationality, of a character defined by a presence in three states, concerns the Serbs. Seventy-five percent of Serbs live in Serbia. Then 1.4 million Serbs live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they make up a large third of the total population of that state and are mainly grouped in the so-called Republika Srpska. There are then 200,000 Serbs in Montenegro, with a fairly similar proportion to Bosnia. In Croatia, the number of Serbs is the same, but they now make up only 4.5% of the population, because their presence here was reduced as a result of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, Serbs now number less than 100,000, concentrated in enclaves, making up 5 per cent of the total population. For Serbs, as for Albanians, there is a mismatch between Serbian state territory and Serbian settlement in the Balkans.
It is worth noting here a "non-paper" that was allegedly presented by Slovenia to the European Council with a plan to redefine borders that was, to say the least, controversial. We are talking about the Slovenian government when it was presided over by Janez Janša and this "unofficial" document was presented in view of the proximity of the six-month presidency of the European Union (July-December 2021).
The scenario presented in Brussels presented the opportunity to definitively dismember, on the basis of a multilateral diplomatic consensus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as to create a Greater Albania by merging Tirana with Kosovo and part of North Macedonia. If so, North Macedonia would face another potential "humiliation" after changing its name, changing its constitution and capitulating to the historic demands of Greece and Bulgaria.
Clearly, that unofficial proposal did not address the question of what kind of tensions would arise in this hypothetical scenario between a territorially revitalised Serbia, a Greater Albania - a scenario not at all desired in Belgrade - and a Greater Croatia.
In turn, contradicting most projections and after a lengthy vote count, socialist leader Edi Rama won Albania's elections for the third time in a row, characterised by a turnout of less than 50 per cent of those eligible to vote. His party, which has led the country since 2013, won an absolute majority of the 140 total seats in parliament. US and EU ambassadors went to the polling station in Tirana on Sunday night to call for maximum correctness in the vote count after it emerged in previous days that a third of the population had been illegally registered. Despite this, international observers have reported empty ballot boxes, missing ballot papers, allegations of fraud, personal scuffles between scrutineers and accusations of vote buying. The election count was so slow that it exasperated many Albanians, who called for the intervention of the National Election Commission and the Presidency of the Republic. On the other hand, Albania has fallen to 102nd place in Transparency International's ranking in recent years. The big loser, needless to say, is the leader of the Democratic Party, Mr Lulzim Basha who, convinced of the veracity of the exit polls that gave his coalition a clear lead, had declared the opposition's victory a few hours after the closing of the polls.
However, the elections have not only reignited internal social tensions, exasperated by years of political corruption scandals, but also regional ones. Indeed, Kosovo's prime minister, Albin Kurti, went to vote in Albania, along with a group of supporters of his Self-Determination party, which has an absolute majority in the Pristina parliament. This led to an immediate protest by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to the authorities in Brussels.
Depending on how this scenario plays out, Rama's victory could strengthen the plans to unite the Albanian populations of Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania, so often proposed by Kosovar Prime Minister Kurti and always supported by the Albanian prime minister himself, and also directly influence political elections in neighbouring countries.
Germany was very clear in this regard, and took a stand against these proposals.
Conclusions
As we can perceive, corruption and what it is born or nurtured from is a central element in the Western Balkans, and in other parts of the world.
President Biden has made the fight against corruption and nepotism one of his domestic and foreign policy pledges. In his Foreign Affairs article 'Why America Must Lead Again', President Biden emphasised his intention to 'address the conflicts of interest, dark money and pervasive corruption that serve narrow, private or foreign agendas and undermine our democracy' and furthermore sought to establish 'the fight against corruption as a core national security interest and democratic responsibility', both in the US and abroad.
Evidently, the EU has also made the fight against corruption and organised crime the centrepiece of its efforts in the Western Balkans, clashing at various levels with those interests and actors that by conviction or interest rely on Russia and China. The European Commission's 2018 progress reports show that all countries in the region are lagging behind on three key priorities:
A/ Fighting corruption;
B/ Tackling organised crime; and,
C/ Improving the judiciary.
Some countries, including Bosnia, performed better on these metrics in the early 2000s than they do today. At the same time, the region has lost 5 per cent of its population in the last five years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, most of those leaving cite corruption as a key factor behind their exodus. Meanwhile, corruption fuels organised crime and the pouring of public and other transfer money into the pockets of those who would foment unrest and pursue their own agenda, in tune with Russia and China, where they find the support to entrench themselves in a quid pro quo relationship that we, the citizens of those countries, and the entities that transfer money to those countries for other purposes, are nurturing, even if complied with, involve corruption and favouring the interests of Russia and China, allied with elites of all kinds who depend on the entrenchment of the current status quo for their survival, making as such impossible any intention to change or direct public policies, and their impact on private actions, that would modify their hegemony. This, I insist, is not just a problem of the Western Balkans.
On the other hand, with Scholz's visit to Serbia and the region Berlin executes a threefold approach:
1/ Berlin perceives what I have pointed out both in this paper and in this article and this one; so it wants to try to defuse this front in the rear of Ukraine moved by Russia, and it perceives that Moscow has been able to trap Vučić for its purposes. So Berlin aims not so much to force the Serbs to adopt an Atlanticist posture, but to persuade them not to drift towards the opposing bloc. This is the reason for the emphasis on European integration. A cause that Berlin has long supported, unlike France, which, however, taking into account everything we have seen in this paper and in all the references, opts for the path of promoting a Commonwealth, an element also followed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and which he subsequently raised with the French president.
The Commonwealth solution is undoubtedly the ideal way forward, and it must be defined in a broad, inclusive manner and with elements that are fully tuned into an offensive that opposes the bloc that will increasingly unite China, with Russia playing its role in a way that is subordinate to Beijing.
Precisely this is one more example that pushes for the optimal solution: the most effective decision-making forum, for example on the Western Balkans (or for energy policies, security and defence, intelligence, industrial policies, infrastructure and a vast and vital etcetera including technology) will not simply be the European Council, but a coalition of like-minded states, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Norway... and the European Union itself at the stage of a new European Union. and the European Union itself in a phase of transformation and structuring through federalism and fiscal, monetary and banking unity, since by working together, the United States and the European Union could better coordinate international financial leverage with political tools, and promote multilateralism and the coordination of the elements created at the beginning of US hegemony towards the end of the Second World War and its subsequent stabilisation through Bretton Woods, etc., but adapting it to our times and with the tools and means that are now available and that define global hegemonic competition.
2/ The second approach pursued by Scholz in the Balkans seeks to present himself as the guarantor of stability in the region, and thereby demonstrate his alignment with the Euro-Atlantic bloc, although he seeks not to create a direct confrontation with Moscow... but this attempt has not yielded results, as demonstrated by the forceful response of his Serbian counterpart and the scenario that is being drawn at the global level on all fronts.
3/ The third approach pursued by Germany has to do with the outcome of Russia's strategy, which had been lurking before the outbreak of open conflict on 24 February 2022 in the Balkans. Recall that Germany is transforming its military capabilities as a means of gaining weight in this emerging world, and in doing so is perhaps thinking of becoming a more active player in the region by adding its already economic projection to its geopolitical influence in the region... but it is necessary to perceive the size and the real challenge where it is headed... and in all these fields, if the United States cannot do it alone... Germany should be aware of its real capabilities in a world of giants the likes of which we have never seen before.
