Thread by @Andric1961

Angela Merkel and the Balkans. A (rather long) thread:

In July 2005, after she had been nominated as candidate for chancellor by her party, Angela Merkel made her very first trip abroad in this capacity – to Kosovo. 16 years later one of her very last official trips today and tomorrow leads her to Serbia and Albania.

After 2005, Mrs. Merkel visited various states in the Balkans again in 2011, 2015 and 2018. By looking at the fate of some of her interlocutors at the time, one understands how much – and at the same time how little – has happened in the region since.

One of Merkel’s interlocutors was killed, another one faces charges for war crimes. Others are out of politics, marginalized or forgotten. Two new states were born, one became member of the EU, three joined Nato.

Oliver Ivanovic, whom Angela Merkel met in 2005, was killed in 2018, probably by mafia structures affiliated with the Serbian state. Ibrahim Rugova, whom she also met, died in 2006, but his dream of an independent Kosova became reality. So did the de-facto partition of Kosova.

When Merkel came back to Kosova as a chancellor in 2011, her most important interlocutor was the then Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. He is now out of politics and might be out for good: Indicted for war crimes in 2020, he waits for the opening of his trial in the Hague.

In 2011, Merkel also visited Croatia. Ceoatia was about to join the EU, which it did in 2013. In now hopes to join the Eurozone in 2023. While most experts in Croatia support this step, they also say that this will not solve the structural problems of Croatia’s economy.

Serbia is far from joining the EU, and polls show that a majority or at least half of the people do not want to join anymore, depending on how the question is asked. In 2011, meeting between Merkel and Serbian President Boris Tadic went totally wrong.

In May of that year, war criminal Ratko Mladic was arrested in a village in Vojvodina and sent to the Tribunal in The Hague. Tadic made it clear that he expects Serbia to be rewarded with the status of a candidate country and a date for the opening of negotiations as a reward.

Merkel intervened. “Not so fast, young man”. By arresting Mladic, Serbia had fulfilled and old pre-condition on its path towards EU-integration, but not more than that. Merkel told a stone-faced Tadic Serbia first had to work on improving its relations with Kosovo.

Tadic was the most powerful politician of Serbia then, which seems hard to believe ten years later, with him being a marginal figure now. In 2011, Merkel claimed: “Europe is the solution” and talked about how the WB6 countries would one day be members of the Schengen-zone.

This day was far away then, and it is even further away today. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And who still believes in the so called membership-perspective for the countries of the Western Balkans? I forgot the answer to the 1st question and do not know an answer to the second.

When Merkel visited Serbia, Albania and Bosnia-Hercegovina in July 2015, she did so during the peak of the Euro-crisis. Some wondered why she did not cancel the trip at a time when the Eurozone seemed to be falling apart. Because she knows the Balkan is important, others answered

In Germany, EU-enlargement had not been popular before, but the Greek crisis additionally lowered the appetite for any new members in the population. Mr. Vucic at the time presented himself as some kind of anti-Tsipras, with pension cuts etc. Merkel praised him for that.

In 2018, ahead of a referendum about re-naming Macedonia to North Macedonia, Merkel visited Skopje in order to urge people to vote in favor of the change. The country today indeed is called North Macedonia, but the biggest hope connected to the name change remains unfulfilled:

In spite of having agreed to re-naming the state, North Macedonia still cannot negotiate about EU-membership. If the credibility of the „EU perspective for the Western Balkans” needed a last nail in the coffin, Bulgaria hammered it in with its veto against North Macedonia.

On the other hand, not all is bleak and black. The massive western military presence in Bosnia and Kosovo ended years ago, but both countries are still democracies, no bloodshed occurred. Look at Afghanistan to see what that means.

Three countries (Croatia, Albania, and North Macedonia) joined Nato during Merkel’s reign. Until Covid came around the corner in 2019, the economies grew and the GDP per capita in the region, unemployment rates went down.

However, many problems are still the same as in 2005. The conflict between Kosovo and Serbia is not even near to a solution, a Cyprus scenario seems possible. The debate about constitutional reform in Bosnian lingers on and on and on.

Some problems even became worse. All countries of the region suffer from detrimental demographic developments. Membership in the EU alone does not seem to be the solution, as the population in Croatia or Bulgaria, for example, decreases as well.

Much more on Merkel and the Balkans here: faz.net/aktuell/politi…

PS: pls excuse the typos.

Excuse me - FOUR countries joined Nato between 2005 and today. (Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia). Studpid mistake, I wrote the thread in haste. Thanks to @alrakaj