The European Commission is failing civil society in enlargement countries and other states according to MEPs and think-tank representatives at a conference held on Wednesday (12 October), back-to-back with the presentation of “highly irrelevant” annual enlargement reports.
The conference “Strengthening democratic resilience in the EU’s neighbourhood” was held in Brussels, co-organised by the Center for the Study of Democracy, a Bulgarian think-thank, and SELDI.net, a think-thank from North Macedonia. EURACTIV Bulgaria was the media partner of the event.
Viola von Cramon-Taubadel (Greens, Germany) argued that the biggest problem of the EU relationship with enlargement countries and countries in its neighbourhood was that it failed to reach out at the local level and to civil society, because, by default, the EU institutions deal with governments.
She said that this was even more important in a period when there would be “huge” investment for the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war is over, and civil society should be empowered to scrutinise the money and “the very likely fraud”.
Nobody pays attention to the situation on the ground in Russia, von Cramon argued, referring to the times when Putin’s regime would undoubtedly collapse, adding nobody is preparing to tackle this period by engaging with civil society.
‘Huge frustrations’
Regarding the Western Balkans, she said that the Thessaloniki summit of 2003 made big promises, but did not deliver, which created “huge frustrations”. This, in her words, leads to ant-EU attitudes, which she said were “extremely dangerous”.
Except for Albania and Kosovo, where pro-EU sentiments remain high, for the first time in Serbia, there were more people critical of the EU and supportive of Russia, and the EU was not doing much to debunk pro-Russian narratives.
Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield (Greens, France) said it was clear to civil society she was working with that the Commission was not acting sufficiently to enforce EU values. She agreed with von Cramon that the EU approach was “high level to high level”, neglecting local authorities and civil society.
She gave Brexit as an example where the EU did not communicate ahead of the referendum and completely neglected civil society.
“When the EU is not answering crazy lies about itself, it is not fulfilling its role”, she said.
She added that the same mistake was repeated when the EU was working on a commercial agreement with the UK in which there was no dialogue with civil society.
The fact that the EU is “not dealing with its own problems” regarding the rule of law, in reference to Hungary, does not help.
“We are now legalising 10 years of misuse of EU money”, she said about the EU preparing to unblock EU funding for Hungary.
Delbos-Corfield said the EU should do more to support independent media inside the EU and in its neighbourhood, which in her words, would be indeed “a way forward”. The problem, however, was to help independent media reach people because even in Hungary, independent media exist but has limited reach.
This situation, in her words, allowed the Hungarian propaganda to spread the message about the risk of young Hungarians being sent to fight in Ukraine.
“This was a blunt lie, but we didn’t answer. We just go to the government and say, please stop doing that. It doesn’t work”, she said.
Delbos-Corfield was very critical of the Commission report on Montenegro, which in her words, was just as critical as on Serbia. “This is not reality. Is this how he helps those who make efforts” she said.
Cultural-religious divide?
She added her concerns about her perception of the EU being more interested in countries with a Christian majority and less in “more Muslim” countries, mentioning Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Asked to elaborate, she said the problem also stemmed from “having a Hungarian commissioner for enlargement, in the way he incarnates that crusade for Christian values”, adding that was “a larger problem”.
Dusan Reljic, head of the Brussels office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the economic basics of the Western Balkans explained the grim situation.
He said that the whole Western Balkan region has a GDP smaller than Slovakia after 30 years of post-communist development, citing Eurostat. And of this GDP, 50% is produced by Serbia. Seventy per cent of Western Balkan trade is from the EU, and most of FDI comes from the EU, but FDI laws in the Netherlands, for example, are conducive for opaque investments, he added.
“The investments coming from the Netherlands come from completely different regions; my personal suspicion is a lot of the money from the region is being recycled”, he said.
In countries like Kosovo, every second euro came from diaspora flows, Reljic said, who argued that FDI in the region came because of “recklessly cheap labour”.
‘Slave-like situation’
“In a society where people are poor, their experience is that this democracy and the EU is actually keeping them in a slave-like situation”, he said, adding, “the only thing a normal young person can do is emigrate, and I think Bulgaria and other countries in the region have ample experience from this”. In his words, about one-quarter of the Balkan population has emigrated in the last quarter of a century.
“In 2019, every two minutes, a citizen from the Western Balkans received a residence permit in the EU for a period longer than three months”, Reljic said.
“The Commission reports – and they used to be called Progress reports, but not any longer, are highly irrelevant for the situation on the ground”, Reljic said.
In his words, people in the region don’t care about Russian or Chinese propaganda.
“They receive their information from state television, and this a kind of sterilised atmosphere that is being projected on them, that things are going well, that factories are being opened. And that Mr Vucic is hugging Mr Scholz again, and Mr Rama is Madam Merkel’s favourite, and Frau von der Leyen is paying high compliments for the region’s fight against corruption.”
Speakers presented the report Geopolitics, State Capture and Peak Corruption. What is Next for Anticorruption in the Western Balkans?, focusing on the dynamics of corruption and state capture levels in the Western Balkan countries.
