Kosovo like Norway, Serbia like Switzerland

Instead of the European integration process, a proposal was given for inclusion in the European common market. Possible?

1.

North Macedonia (then called the Republic of Macedonia) ratified the Stabilization-Association Agreement with the European Union in 2004, some ten months before Croatia. In 2005, it became a candidate country for EU membership. After fifteen years, it will again remain a candidate state: next year, in 2020, the prime minister of North Macedonia will be invited to the EU Summit in Zagreb, the capital of the Republic of Croatia, the next EU president.

At that summit, it can be assumed with high probability that the Prime Minister of North Macedonia will be promised a secure European future, integration according to reforming merits, full support for the democratic forces in the country and so on. He (or she) and his colleagues from the other five countries of the Western Balkans will be told that without the integration of their countries into the European Union, there will be no Europe free and at peace with itself, a formulation, which for curiosity is not a European product, but was born in Washington, after the Second World War.

North Macedonia with other colleagues - Albania that was not invited to open negotiations, Serbia and Montenegro that are in the negotiation process, Bosnia and Herzegovina that is a dysfunctional state and Kosovo that is a captured and contested state within the EU - are entering an area where their former imperial administrator, Turkey, is located, a country that has had candidate status since 1999.

Fifteen years ago, the intellectual debate among EU foreign policy pundits was how likely (if at all) Turkey would one day be a member of the EU. Today, this debate has gradually included the countries of the Western Balkans.

2.

ESI (European Stability Initiative), a well-known think tank based in Berlin that has been familiar with the Western Balkans region for almost a quarter of a century, has concluded that the current model of EU integration has come to an end. The French president, Macron, put a lid on this model when he stopped the opening of negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania, on the grounds that the EU needed to be reformed first and then accept new members, but according to ESI, this model had already failed . In the research conducted by ESI, it appears that the main criterion is not merit in the reforms, but the political criterion of the member countries.

In 2013, Macedonia was better prepared than Serbia and Montenegro, but the latter two were favored for political reasons. For the same reasons, a country like Serbia, with a long list of convicted and unconvicted war criminals, has liberalized visas (as a kind of sedative after the declaration of Kosovo's independence), but Kosovo, where these crimes were committed, has not .

According to ESI, a new approach is needed that will create an authentic space of integration for the six countries of the Western Balkans. And since the EU is in the process of its internal review to find a new governing formula, this organization proposes a mechanism which is already in place, even since 1994 and which is called EEA, short for European Economic Area . This was the idea of ​​the former president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, who had an offer for the "other Europe", that is, those countries that did not want to become part of the EU, such as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland. They were offered to be part of the European common market even without being a member of the EU; consequently, these countries and the EU would harmonize laws and administrative procedures in order to ensure the European "four freedoms" (freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and persons).

So, the idea is that instead of an undefined and immeasurable "European perspective" with reformist implementation parameters, entry into the EEA is offered to the six countries of the Western Balkans. From the aspect of legal subjectivity vis-à-vis other EEA states, Kosovo and Albania would become, for example, like Norway and Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example like Switzerland. Kosovo's passport would have the same value within the EEA almost as Norway's (Great Britain would require visas for Kosovars), Serbia's slivovica would have the same access to European markets as "Williams" pear brandy and Switzerland, the Belgian investor would have the same legal certainty in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and North Macedonia as in Iceland.

Such a shock therapy would require legislative agreement and a concrete package of funds to aid the transformation. It would also require, ESI proposes, that the six countries of the Western Balkans come up with a concrete political request before the Zagreb Summit in the spring of 2020.

3.

The idea has its own clear benefits. It dismisses the EU from the integration agenda until it decides what it will be on its own. It prepares the six countries of the Western Balkans to be in legislative harmony with the other countries of the unique European economic space so that one day they are naturally ready to be full members of the EU. From the geopolitical point of view, a signal is given to non-European actors, such as Turkey, Russia and China (as well as some Gulf countries) for the rounding of European borders, within a unique economic and, why not, political space. From the administrative point of view in the EU, the financial cost for the inclusion of the six Balkans in the EEA is negligible; the six countries account for half of the Romanian economy.

But, the problem lies in, as the English say, the elephant in the room to be addressed. The elephant is called the unfinished conflicts Kosovo-Serbia, as well as the one in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was easy to propose the inclusion of Norway in the EEA in 1994, almost 90 years after it had declared its independence contested until then by Sweden. It is not easy to propose that Kosovo be in the EEA, since its independence is contested not only by Serbia, but also by the five EU member states. Or to look further into unfinished conflicts, it was easy to include Switzerland in the EEA, 800 years after it had finished its own identity wars. It is difficult to frame Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a lack of constitutional order a quarter of a century after the end of its identity wars.

Moreover, Serbia has already chosen another area of ​​free trade, the Eurasian one, in which several states of the former Soviet Union are part. It cannot be part of a free trade area, simultaneously, with Ireland and Spain on one side, and Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, on the other.

4.

ESI is right that a new approach is needed. And perhaps this approach will be the inclusion of the six Western Balkans in the Single European Economic Area, EEA. As with any other revolution, there happens to be political will first and then a deep focus on details.

Perhaps this process would be helped by a design task: how to resolve the unfinished Kosovo-Serbia conflict in parallel with the entry of the Western Balkans into the common European market?