Page 11 - bne_newspaper_April_07_2017

Southeast Europe
April 7, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
Backsliding on democracy raises risk of new Balkan conflicts, policy group warns
bne IntelliNews
The state of democracy and freedom has been backsliding or at best stagnating across the EU- aspiring Western Balkan countries for a decade, which could result in the reappearance of ethnic conflicts in the region, the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) says in a new report.
The group of analysts and scholars claim the EU has neglected democratic processes in the Western Balkans for some time, and now needs to speed up the process of integration for the countries in the region in order to prevent any further deterioration of the situation. Allowing the status quo to continue raises several risks beyond the further decline of democracy, including the threat of renewed ethnic conflicts in Macedonia and between Kosovo and Serbia, the report warns.
Over the past decade, all major indices of democracy indicate that the Western Balkan countries
have moved away from becoming consolidated democracies, with the decline being part of a global trend also visible among EU member states, BiEPAG says in its policy paper “The Crisis of Democracy
in the Western Balkans, Authoritarianism and EU Stabilitocracy”.
BiEPAG is a group of policy analysts and researchers, established as a joint initiative of the European Fund for the Balkans and the Centre for Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz. Its goal is to support the integration of the Western Balkans into the EU.
“There is no single turning point for the entire region, but the downward spiral began a decade ago,
and accelerated with the economic crisis in 2008 and multiple crises within the EU that distracted the union from enlargement,” the report reads.
“Yet, formally, the countries have all progressed
on their paths to EU membership, and the EU has remained rather silent on these developments,
even when confronted with concrete evidence.” It singles out the wiretapping scandal in Macedonia, where illegally recorded conversations revealed top officials’ involvement in corruption, and the overnight demolition of buildings in Belgrade’s Savamala district to make way for the new Belgrade Waterfront development.
Partly as a result of this silence, BiEPAG writes that democratic institutions are “mere tools for political elites”. This flaw has been taken advantage of by autocrats, many of whom were supported and hailed as reformers by the West in their early rise to power. Those include Milorad Dodik as the hope against nationalist politicians in Republika Srpska, Nikola Gruevski as an economic reformer and pragmatist in Macedonia, and Montenegrin politician Milo Djukanovic, who broke with the dictator Slobodan Milosevic “at the right time”. Serbian Prime
Minister Aleksandar Vucic, as the moderate former Serbian nationalist who decisively moved towards the EU and democracy, is another example. He has consolidated his position through repeated elections, and was elected president of Serbia on April 2. Protests against his victory in the presidential election in the first round have continued this week under the slogan “Protest against dictatorship”,
a reference to President-elect Vucic’s growing dominance over Serbian politics, which many inside