 Okay. Good afternoon everybody. You're all very welcome indeed to this afternoon's talk. My name is John O'Brennan from Maneuth University. I specialize in enlargement policy and I'm delighted to be able to chair this session and to welcome back to Dublin and back to the Institute Erwan 4A. Just before we begin and before I introduce our guest speaker just a note to switch off your mobile phones or put them to silent. We have got about an hour and that includes time for questions and answers. The initial address is on the record and the Q&A to follow is under Chatham House Rules. So with that an introduction Erwan I think needs little introduction at a Dublin event. His career spanned four decades or so within the EU institutions where he served with great distinction as EU Special Representative and Head of Delegation within the EU External Service. Very significantly in regard to today's talk in Macedonia where he spent the last five years or so of his career, his special interest in and writes regularly about the really interesting developments in Macedonia. He's also served as the first Head of Delegation in South Africa in 1994 as the first Head of EC Delegations in Mexico and Cuba in 1989 and currently also works as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels and he's written a number of recent excellent pieces particularly his piece on January which reflects on EU enlargement policy where we are, where we might be and the really significant challenges that the EU faces in the Western Balkans. So with that I'm very very happy to turn over to Erwan. Thank you, thank you very much and thank you to all of you for coming to the IIEA today and I appreciate this invitation to speak on a topic which is not often on top of the agenda of people's minds and less of the EU leaders but it's an important topic nevertheless. The Western Balkans is a region where we're not used to good news. Usually the news is dominated by whatever it comes by inter-ethnic tensions often fueled by the nationalist rhetoric that is more reminiscent of the 1990s. There are often parliamentary boycotts etc so generally it's not good news so when good news happens it's certainly something to celebrate and there's no doubt that the agreement reached between Greece and Macedonia on the resolution of the name dispute which had divided the countries, neighbouring countries for over 27 years basically since the independence of Macedonia in 1992 was warly received by everybody because it means that this agreement whereby Macedonia changes its name to the Republic of North Macedonia will be able to pursue its foreign policy objectives which had been blocked by Greece over all those years. So the accession to NATO is already well underway, the accession protocol has been ratified already by the Greek parliament and is in the process of ratification by 29 other member countries of NATO so Macedonia already has its seat at the table although on a provisional basis. Accession to the EU is unfortunately not as easy and even if the country fulfills all the reforms that are required that have been set out very clearly in various EU documents it is by no means certain that the green light will be given for opening accession negotiations at the next European Council in June. So this is of course of concern because it underlines that even though there has been a very strong emphasis by the European Union on the maintaining the European perspective for the Western Balkans very often we see a delaying process there's no doubt that the mood in the EU on enlargement is not that great. There is a lot of ambivalence among EU member states on the pace of reform, on the pace of the enlargement process itself and also we have seen that the enlargement debate has at times been hijacked by those who consider that it's going to mean much more immigration into the European Union etc. As regards the Western Balkans there's no doubt that the European Union has taken the region for granted for many years they felt that because there was a European perspective the reforms were underway the the region would take care of itself but very unfortunately very late in the day the EU realized that all was not well in the Western Balkans there was an upsurge of many many conflicts and political crises in 2017 in particular which brought the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union address in September 2017 to say that we must maintain a credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans. So this was followed by a very very welcome document issued by the European Commission February 2018 the so-called strategy paper which set out in very clear language all that was wrong in the Western Balkans and set out a very very detailed program of action it also contained a very strong and in my view long overdue message addressed to the EU member states and I quote it emphasizes that enhanced enlargement was so important underlining that merit-based prospect of EU membership for the Western Balkans is in the Union's very own political security and economic interests so we all had great hopes that 2018 would make a big difference in terms of the EU's re-engagement with the region but sadly events have shown that this did not happen there was the summit in Sofia the first summit official summit of EU Western Balkan countries hosted by the president presidency in Sofia in May the first summit since 2003 since the Thessaloniki summit of 2003 it marked time it did not make any major decisions basically reaffirmed the European perspective for the Western Balkans but nothing more this was followed by the European Council in June where it was expected that there would be a positive decision for the opening of negotiations with Macedonia and Albania particularly since Macedonia had just two weeks before on the 16th of June signed the agreement with Greece in the expectation that there would be a that this would be rewarded by the European Council this did not happen there was a clear very strong deep divisions within the EU member states which emerged between those who favored continued enlargement and those led in particular by President Macron who made very clear that for him enlargement is only possible after the EU has sorted out its own internal problems in other words deepening versus enlargement debate which had come up in the past before and which unfortunately in this particular case has been very strongly advocated once again will 2019 offer any new better perspectives well this is unfortunately not guaranteed we have a new institutional cycle the European Parliament elections where the latest polls show that there will certainly be a rise of the populist parties the more established parties will narrow their majorities meaning the Social Democrats and the European People's Party so what to expect of that probably even more skepticism on issues relating to enlargement I have to say that the European People's Party which is the largest grouping at the moment which should be a strong advocate for enlargement has played a negative role in my view in the western Balkans because it has supported and protected leaders who have very clearly violated a lot of the fundamental values the reforms even when some of those leaders such as the former Prime Minister of Macedonia were under investigations for criminal activities and yet the EPP continue to support them in fact the EPP didn't even officially welcome the agreement signed between Greece and Macedonia because in its membership there is the new democracy party which of course expressed a lot of antipathy to that agreement but it's just to show you that in my view this is unfortunate and it shows that the difficulties are finding consensus within the European Parliament on enlargement there will of course be a new president of the Commission that will take up office in November a new high representative and a new president of the European Council and also we have seen the latest Euro barometer of last year where for the first time a support for enlargement among those polled was a slightly negative 46 percent against at 44 percent in favor of continued enlargement so in the public the mood is also ambivalent but meanwhile while this is going on the socio-economic climate in the Balkan region is extremely alarming if you look at one of the most recent western world bank report it indicates that the economies of the western Balkans will need to grow at the annual rates of at least six percent if they are to match the EU average by the end of the of 2030s 2030 there is economic growth it's an averaging about 3.5 percent last year which is a credible one but unfortunately it's not job creating so there's a lot of structural problems a lot of unemployment in some countries it's over 25 percent Bosnia Herzegovina and of those over 50 percent are youth unemployment and and then the world bank also had a very revealing statistic in addition to the fact that poverty levels are 20 percent 23 percent overall 60 percent of women in the western Balkans are unemployed so it shows the huge economic socio-economic issues that are prevalent there this is compounded by the political problems if you look at the newspapers you may have seen in the last week that there has been demonstrations parliamentary boycotts in Albania in Bosnia in Serbia in Macedonia also even though there's a new government there so the the political climate is still very very fragile the institutions the checks and balances that we take for granted are still very weak in in many of these countries political dialogue is not something which is automatic it's basically the winner takes all i'm not saying this is particular to the western Balkans we have it also in other countries but in the western Balkans this approach to politics has a much more serious impact because of the weak institutions so then we have of course a lot of bilateral disputes that are still ongoing i mentioned the the press agreement which is a very positive development between Greece and Macedonia you have the Serbia Kosovo dialogue which was initiated by Catherine Ashton the former high representative and continued by the current high representative but it has not gone anywhere unfortunately and Kosovo which was extremely disappointed that it did not get the visa liberalization that had been promised by the european union in desperation the imposed last year 100 tariffs on all the goods coming from Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina and this has raised a lot of difficulties for the Serbia Kosovo dialogue in in this particular context of this particular dispute there has been also the suggestion mooted by the respective presidents from Kosovo and Serbia about a border correction or land swap in other words the northern part of Kosovo north of Mitrovica which has about roughly 60 000 population majority Serbian would be exchanged for the southern part of Serbia roughly 50 55 000 majority Albanian in the precival valley this border correction of border swap has been on the table now for several months it has been roundly rejected by all the other political parties in Kosovo and in Serbia as well as by civil society saying that it goes totally against all that the international community has stood for this sort of mono-ethnic approach the EU has been quite ambivalent the only person who really spoke out very strongly against this was was chancellor Merkel who said that border corrections in the context of the western Balkans is a very serious and dangerous precedent and of course we all know that it could open up the the proverbial Pandora's box because there are other countries who would like their borders corrected Bosnia and Herzegovina linked with Serbia etc so it's a very very dangerous issue and it still has not yet been rejected out out of hand so I my feeling on border disputes because there the EU has been very clear it said that it will not import any border disputes in other words any country that has not resolved its its bilateral problems or disputes with its neighbors will not be allowed into the European Union of course it's understandable so as not to have another Cyprus but I don't think that the region even the Greek Macedonia example notwithstanding I don't think that they can do this on their own there needs to be some sort of mechanism and what I had proposed is that after the breakup of Yugoslavia there was the Badantair Commission which addressed many many of the issues post Yugoslavia and that perhaps there should be some sort of similar approach in dealing with all the bilateral disputes that are still ongoing so in the next months we have a number of important deadlines I mentioned the European Parliament elections on the 9th of May there's the Sibiu summit which is supposed to be a summit where the new strategic goals post-Brexit will be adopted let's hope that will be the case there was a suggestion that the western Balkans would be allowed to attend this meeting but now this is not yet from my understanding confirmed in June we have the European Council which is supposed to take important decisions which were postponed from last year and I think here the European Union will have a critical choice either it follows the commitment towards enlargement gives the green light for Macedonia and Albania if they have fulfilled all the criteria in terms of Macedonia this certainly in my view is the case Albania there's still a number of issues regarding the judicial reforms but nevertheless quite a lot of work has been done or the EU follows the Macron approach which is another postponement the danger of that there are many dangers first of all demotivation in the western Balkans and also other actors as Juncker himself very clearly said in his last State of the Union address in September 2018 if the EU is not united in the western Balkans others will shape developments and we all know and we have seen the very very aggressive approach of Russia in the last years in the western Balkans its involvement alleged involvement in the attempted coup in Montenegro and also its interference in the discussions and negotiations on the name issue name negotiations where which resulted in Athens expelling two Russian diplomats something which was unheard of in Greece because of their always very close relationship with with Moscow and of course it's it's interesting because 70 roughly of trade from the western Balkans goes to the EU so the economic interest is not there but it's very much the strategic political interest of Russia to have a very strong role strong influence in the western Balkans China is another important actor which has invested heavily in the region with the exception of Kosovo all the western Balkan countries are embedded in this so-called one belt one road initiative which has meant a lot of infrastructure financed by Greece but under loans which are tying the western Balkans for many years to come for example Montenegro 39% of its external debt is debt owed to China the comparable figure for the others is in Macedonia 20% Bosnia-Herzegovina 14% Serbia 12% and the third important other actor is Turkey of course which has its other influences which it has brought to bear in the region so this is the the danger in my view of the Macron approach if this is followed and if it is followed it will reemphasize the critical importance of the so-called Berlin process I think you're all aware of the initiative from Chancellor Merkel in July 2014 where she launched this process of coming closer to the western Balkans as a way of commemorating the 100 years since the first world war she hosted the first meeting 2014 the next one was in Vienna 2015 after that Paris 2016 Trieste 2017 London 2018 unfortunately on the very day when Boris Johnson decided to resign so he had all these heads of state but he didn't appear and now in next July it would be in Poznan hosted by Poland and this process had been important in a sense because it has strengthened the connectivity agenda strengthening the energy connectivity transport connectivity between the different countries because that is still lacking in in many respects so Berlin process will remain important so my hope for this coming year and for the EU's re-engagement is that there must be a credibility restored in the EU's enlargement agenda in the policy towards the western Balkans I'm focusing on the western Balkans which together constitute 18 million people it's a drop in the ocean for the European Union I would hope that this year we'll see the start of accession negotiations with Macedonia Albania I'm not so sure that this will happen for Albania because there's still a lot of prejudices regarding Albania but we have to see the important thing is that encouragement is given the candidate status for Bosnia and Herzegovina would be an important encouragement for them to continue in the process of reforms but beyond that I do believe that there needs to be a change of strategy from the European Union in how it deals with the western Balkans it should not confine its debates and dialogue with the elite with the political establishment who are so deeply entrenched and this unfortunately perpetuates the Balkan strongman syndrome as we see in Serbia with President Vucic and also it does not give sufficient space to civil society which in many of these countries fill the gap left by the lack of checks and balances it's civil society that can ensure much greater accountability by the governments and I feel that there needs to be from the EU a much greater focus on the civil society participation and finally the EU also needs to focus much more on the societal issues the deep long-standing problems linked to education to promote this multi-ethnic education multicultural environment on reconciliation which is a major problem in in the region when you consider that in the old Yugoslavia people knew each other I mean the military service the soldiers from Slovenia would be posted to Macedonia vice versa the younger so the parents of the current young generation understood their neighbors the young generation today don't know their neighbors in some they have to get visas to go from one country to another so there needs to be much greater focus on the younger generation how to to create this atmosphere of reconciliation throughout the region and I think the EU has a critical role to play in ensuring that this happens it's after all Europe's nearest neighborhood and on that hopeful note I end my presentation thank you