“The dispute on the license permissions and the ID cards between the two countries is a classical example of the tension, which has been flaring up between Serbia and Kosovo over the years. But it should be noted that there has always been a pragmatic solution because there is very little that Serbia can do without paying a high price in terms of security. So it is very likely that there will be a last- minute deal or some kind of silent tacit agreement, which would make it work.”

The above was the prediction of Professor Florian Bieber, Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, in an interview with Albanian Daily News on August 26, 2022, a day before the announcement of the accord between Kosovo and Serbia according to which Serbia agreed to abolish entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders and Kosovo agreed to not introduce them for Serbian ID holders.

According to Mr. Bieber, Serbia cannot join the EU without resolving the issue of the recognition of Kosovo.    

Further the Professor touched upon the situation in the Western Balkans where there are high tensions, but it is not seen the risk of full scale war, the failure to establish a functional democracy in Albania, the causes of the delayed EU integration process of the WB countries. In addition he is suspicious of the ‘Open Balkans’ seeing no motivation in this initiative and, according to him, it has little to do with genuine reform and rather it is probably a vanity project of Serb President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Edi Rama.  

In a comment on Russia’s interference in the Balkans, the Professor considered it restrained at the moment because despite of being engaged in activities of espionage, nevertheless its maneuvering space is curtailed due to the sanctions and the isolation that that country is experiencing since the beginning of its aggression against Ukraine. “So Russia is having many greater difficulties in extending its regional space in the Balkans than it had before its attack against Ukraine in February,” said Professor Florian Bieber, Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, in the following interview:

Albanian Daily News: Western Balkans seems not to be quiet, Professor, with reconciliation becoming a hard task as most of the regional countries are involved in open questions with some questioning the sovereignty of some countries. In the meantime, the fever of nationalism is rising in certain countries and the sentiment of ‘great’ nations is boiling. Does the region risk shifting towards military confrontations? 

Professor Florian Bieber: There is certainly a risk of increased tension in the Balkans. As you rightly mentioned the rise of nationalism and the failure of dealing with the legacies of the wars of the 1990s remain a heavy burden in the region in many ways. A lot has to do with the fact that the idea of transforming the region has been the prospect of the EU integration for 20 years and that has not been delivered. The absence of any tangible membership for the countries has, of course, encouraged those who seek to gain votes and profile for other means rather than the EU integration.

I do not think that we should worry about military confrontation at the moment. There is quite good security architecture in most of the region with NATO membership as well as an EU-NATO presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, which means that the only country being outside NATO’s security architecture is Serbia. Certainly, it constitutes a problem but also reduces the risk of military confrontation in the region. More worrisome is the political tensions used by politicians in times of electoral campaigns and we see it in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo. They play to the national sentiment, keeping the region back. I think it is also important that the increase of tensions is not full scale war, but rather more limited confrontations and clashes. Nevertheless one thing that has been striking is that there is much nationalist talk but armed people are not seen. So that does suggest that violence will not be a threat unless it is initiated by states, and there does not seem to be any incentive or space for doing that at the moment.       

- Why is Albania failing to establish a functioning democracy, to restrain devastating corruption and improve the life of the poorest people in Europe who are massively leaving the country?

-The difficulty of establishing a functional democracy in a country like Albania is in many ways an experience which we see elsewhere in the region. In that sense Albania is not unique. It shows the difficulty of that process. And the irony, of course, is that there is very little substantial difference between the political parties in Albania. There is no difference regarding the economic policy or other key issues where one cannot distinguish the parties. In the meantime, the hostility and polarization among them has very little to do with substance but more with personality as well as with the will to control and be in power. We have seen this kind of alteration of de facto one- party rule in Albania in terms of whoever is in power uses the state resources to remain in charge and not really accept a pluralist political environment. And that is what we are seeing once more. In many ways it is closely related to the fact that the same political parties are dominating the political landscape of Albania since the end of communism. In addition, in many cases, there are the same people and this makes this kind of U- start very difficult.

However, we have seen upstarts in other countries. We have seen new political parties emerging like in Croatia with anti-corruption and anti- graft platform, Green Movement, Mozemo Movement (We can!). There is a space emerging across the region, which, certainly, would also be encouraging for Albania. However, it is going to be difficult especially because the established parties are good at capturing the civil society, activists and others by co-opting them in their structures when they are in power.       

- At least formally there is a step forward regarding the accession process in the Western Balkans with Albania and North Macedonia opening the talks with the EU. But there is still skepticism both in Brussels and respective capitals of the above countries and generally in the region. In the meantime, PM Edi Rama has recently expressed expectations that Albania will join the Union after a decade. But his hope was cloaked with the suspicion ‘if the EU remains as it is now’. In your view, Professor, who is to be ‘blamed’ about this stagnation in the EU integration process of the WB and secondly, has Mr. Rama’s suspicion on the EU’s future any basis?      

- The stagnation of the EU integration process of the countries of the region is both caused by the EU itself or in fact when one talks of the EU one should be precise and note that it is the member states, which often hold a negative and delaying role. After all, the long wait for Albania and North Macedonia to start talks has little to do with the Commission but has a lot to do as for example in the case of North Macedonia with Greece, and subsequently France affecting Albania and North Macedonia and then  Bulgaria affecting both countries again. So there is this kind of general lack of priority and active obstruction by some member states. That is the EU side of the story. But, of course, it is very convenient for leaders in the region like PM Rama to blame the EU or its member states for the lack of progress and he has been very flowerful and colorful in his language to describe the feelings of the EU. But that blame, of course, is cast very easily. But at the same time there are substantial problems in the countries of the region in terms of actually carrying out the reforms seriously. So the fact that it takes so long and it is so hard to convince the member state to continue or start the negotiations has something to do with the countries themselves and their governments.

So, certainly the beginning of the accession talks will make it harder for the governments to shift the blame to the EU, or to hide behind the individual member states’ policies. But the risk is that governments in the region very often, as well as in the EU, both sides pretend that they want the countries to join. But they are both not that eager to do what it takes, which includes painful steps in the countries themselves by the governments as well as in the EU. In that sense I fear that there is a lack of political commitments to do what it takes on both sides, and that causes the delaying tactic, which has made this process so drawn out and in many ways meaningless.   

- In the meantime the initiators of the ‘Open Balkans’ project insist on its benefits for regional cooperation despite the fact that three countries have not joined it. On the other hand, supporters of the ‘Berlin Process’ eye this German initiative as the springboard to EU integration. Two questions Professor: do you think the ‘Open Balkans’ is delivering, and secondly, which is the future of the ‘Berlin Process’?

- It is certainly important to have greater regional cooperation and integration and it is as it has always been pillar of EU integration ever since the launch of the Stability Pact in the early 2000. Now what makes many suspicious of the ‘Open Balkans’ is, first of all, the way which it has been pushed by both Serbian President Vucic and Albanian Prime Minister Rama, which gives, in a certain way, the concern that there is not really motivation for this process, that it has little to do with genuine reform and it is probably a vanity project of those two leaders. It also seems a bit surprising considering that many of the ideas of the package of the ‘Open Balkans’ initiative seem to have been round before that and have even been put into institutional form and it was just a matter of being implemented. So in a certain way the ‘Open Balkans’ seems to be a new packaging for something which was there before. So this is our rightly cause to be suspicious even though the idea overall is positive. Certainly, any kind of regional cooperation cannot work if it does not include all the countries. That is the first floor of that initiative, and the second one is that it cannot be a sort of replacement for the EU integration even if the region would engage in open trade and freedom of movement; that could not really dramatically shift the economic development of the region. Also it does not deal with the challenges of the reconciliation and questions of open bilateral issues which really need to be addressed. In a way it risks being the placebo process which might not be delivering like the others.  

In the meantime the Berlin Process was another good initiative, which has run out of steam and if it is again to take off first of all it requires a full follow up, namely just not annual summits but also follow up of commitments by governments. For example, in the second Summit held in Vienna years ago, the countries of the region committed themselves to resolve their bilateral disputes and to report on that issue. But there has not been a follow up regarding this. This has been the problem with the Berlin Process that each country that hosted a summit had its own by-projects but did not care about the previous commitments. This needs to be changed and to deal with some more important questions which the EU integration cannot deal with.

- It has often been spoken of a 'frozen conflict' between Kosovo and Serbia as the EU tries to 'defreeze' it. Given the current tense situation has the EU failed in its good will mission, and against this background should the US get involved more actively as the reconciliation is far away and the Ukrainian war unfolds?  

- When it comes to the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, I think we have seen very clearly that the EU approach led by Miroslav Lajcak has not yielded any results and it is unlikely to do so. And this is for a simple reason. The talks at this point do not move forward because both sides - Kosovo and Serbia - know that at the end of the process there should be a package settlement which addresses the question of the final status: Serbian recognition of Kosovo de facto or de jure. This is going to be an important negotiation entailing certain compromises and agreements on open questions. But because this is the clear end-point, it creates a difficulty to make compromises on any other issues at this point, which turns the resolution to the open disputes between the two countries extremely difficult. Of course, this is not helped by the language of both sides and the hostile views that they have on one another.

Certainly, Serbia has not become more willing to work with Kosovo over the last 10 years; rather it has become more hostile, engaging in hate speech, engaging in active obstruction of the state of Kosovo. All of these elements, which one hoped that the Brussels agreement signed nearly a decade ago would address or signal a change, have not really materialized. All of this suggests that Serbia is not really willing to make a step de facto, at least, or even de jure, towards the recognition of Kosovo. This makes any real solution very difficult because, really, this has to come at the end of this process. But at the moment Serbia does not seem to have any incentive or any interest in doing that because Serbian President Vucic does not really want to join the European Union, which is the main reward. Serbia cannot join the EU without resolving this issue. So there is little incentive for the Serbian side and its president and makes a resolution extremely challenging at this point. 

- I will be straightforward Professor: What will happen after September 1 between Kosovo and Belgrade after the expected implementation of decisions on license plates and reciprocity of ID cards by Pristina?      

-The dispute on the license permissions and the ID cards between the two countries is a classical example of the tension, which has been flaring up between Serbia and Kosovo over the years. But it should be noted that there has always been a pragmatic solution because there is very little that Serbia can do without paying a high price in terms of security. So it is very likely that there will be a last- minute deal or some kind of silent tacit agreement, which would make it work, although the current government of Kosovo has been more demanding and less willing to make compromises with Serbia than the previous ones have. It could argue for all quite reasons. But I do not expect any serious escalation. Nevertheless, of course, it is hard to predict exactly how this conflict will be resolved.      

 - The warning goes on regarding the endeavor of Russia to interfere in the WB using the strategic relationship with Serbia. This warning has gotten more alarming as the Ukrainian war goes on, and there are reports of different forms used by Moscow. Incidentally, a few days ago two Russians and a Ukrainian were arrested while taking pictures of a military plant in Gramsh, southern Albania. Preliminary official claims say that they are involved in espionage. Do you see such an event as part of Russia’s interference in the region?  

-It is clear that Russia has been engaged in the region and has been a disruptive factor. Russia has tried to derail the compromise over the name between Greece and North Macedonia, and failed. It has often been involved in destabilizing activities in Montenegro and other countries. It has built alliances with ethno-nationalist leaders like in Bosnia; it has built good ties with Serbia under Vucic. So it has been interested in creating obstacles for the EU and NATO integration of the region. But it has always been doing it with the lowest level of investments and small footprint. It is very important to notice that there are leaders in the region working with Russia; they do it for pragmatism or have their own agenda, but they are not necessarily Russian pawns. Overall I can say that Russia’s success has been limited in the region. It can be said that it has been there but has been limited in terms of success. That does not mean that there are no examples of espionage or other types of disinformation campaigns. They certainly exist. In many ways I consider Russia restrained at the moment because despite of being engaged in activities of espionage, nevertheless its maneuvering space is curtailed due to the sanctions and the isolation that that country is experiencing since the beginning of its aggression against Ukraine. So Russia is having many greater difficulties in extending its regional space in the Balkans than it has before its attack against Ukraine in February.    

- The last three years have been characterized by a rising tension in many parts of the world climaxing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and as a matter of fact, the war is ongoing in the European Continent, the first since WWII. In addition the relationship between the US and China has developed hostile elements of a Cold War. Everything has gotten tense after the breakup of the pandemic. Is, by any chance, the deadly plague the contributor to such a situation or time and circumstances have been ripe for a global change in the world order?     

- Well, I do not think that the overall global tensions are the direct result of the pandemic or its end has its own dynamics, which could shape international relations. Rather the tensions between the US and Russia have been building up in the years before they were instrumentalized by the Trump presidency during the pandemic and they also have prevailed enough to the end of the Trump presidency. I think this is something which is not of a short term result but rather a longer strategic tension, which is likely to shape the international system in the years to come.

And this is something very important for the Western Balkans to see how to manage the Chinese influence. Again here one has to be careful not overstating the importance of the economic interests, which have been politically motivated although rather restrained. But, at the same time, it is certain that political influence comes with economic investment. Of course, China has its international agenda at world scale regarding countries which support it on key issues whether by abstaining from condemnation on human rights abuses or in connection with its agenda when it comes to Hong Kong or Taiwan. So, certainly, there is the risk of an increase of tension between the West EU and the US, on one side, and China, on the other, taking its toll around the world. We see it much more pronounced in Africa, or in Southern Asia.

But it also has the risk of having an effect on the Western Balkans. However, I consider that to be an important challenge in the years to come even beyond the conflict which we see now between Russia and the West. In that sense Russia is a much weaker player in the international system and has been further weakened in many ways. On the other hand, it is certainly important to be kept in mind the outcome of the war in Ukraine which has major repercussions for China's perception of the West and also the limits of questions of Taiwan or other issues between the West and China on which they are at odds with one another.