Romanian Justice

Bulgaria is not the only Balkan country facing EU sanctions over the lagging pace of reform. The Diplomat Bucharest reports that in July the European Commission will issue a report over the state of the Romanian Justice system, and could recommend sanctions against the country. One of the sanctions that could be recommended is called the “safeguard clause” which would mean that other EU member states can ignore decisions made by the Romanian justice system.

The whole issue is a major egg in the face of the Romanian state. To avoid the implementation of the safeguard clause, Romania must create an integrity agency to monitor the wealth declarations of public figures. Romania created such an institution, called the National Agency for Integrity. The catch is, however, that the agency exists only on paper. Furthermore, Romania’s constitutional court has declared the agency to be unconstitutional and it could be dissolved altogether. Something has to give, even if it means that Romania must amend its constitution, because to do so otherwise sends a signal that Romania is unwilling to reform, effectively thumbing the state’s nose at the European Union.

This is unprecedented in the history of the European Union, and of all the countries that have entered the EU since 1973, only Romania and Bulgaria have faced this kind of scrutiny. Bulgaria appears to be taking the necessary steps to clean house in regards to corruption (see previous post) but Romania appears to be in no hurry to undergo reforms mandated by the club it worked so hard to join.

Further Down the Rabbit Hole

The scandal in Bulgaria continues, and the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security seems bent on getting to the bottom of this scandal that has rocked Bulgarian politics. The Sofia Echo today reports that the former Minister of the Interior, Roumen Petkov, may face criminal charges over the disclosure of the identity of an Interior Ministry operative. It would appear that Bulgarian politicians have been taking notes on recent American political history.

Prosecutor-General Boris Velchev spoke with Dnevnik Daily on the matter, but gave no certain answer as to whether there would be an indictment. He did state, however, that if it was necessary to lift the immunity of Petkov (who is still a member of the Bulgarian Parliament after his resignation from the Minister of the Interior position) then it would be done. “I would not hesitate to ask for that,” he said. In a plot twist worthy of a spy novel, The Sofia Echo reports that the new string of indictments could revolve around meetings with “controversial businessmen” (Bulgarian politico-speak for suspected mobsters who have not been convicted in a court of law) and the passing of classified information from the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Division to such “controversial businessmen.”

In another twist, it may be that reputed mobster Alexei Petrov was actually a secret agent of the Interior Ministry (!) and if that is the case then an indictment against Petkov will be certain. The news is byzantine and confusing, worthy of a cold war spy novel. It would seem a cleaning of the Ministry of the Interior will be underway, and while the scandal is breathtaking in just how corrupt the Bulgarian government is, its exposure gives hope to the possibility that further reforms to Bulgarian state institutions will be undertaken.

An Uncertain Election

Sunday’s elections in Serbia produced a victory for pro-Western parties led by Boris Tadic, though according to Deutsche Welle the fragmented nature of Serbian politics “could still produce a nationalist, anti-Western government.” It seems the Socialist Party, once the party of great Serbian humanitarians such as Slobodan Milosovic, are the big winners of this election, securing 20 seats in the Serbian parliament and effectively making themselves kingmaker. Essentially, the Socialists can decide to side with either the pro-Western forces of Tadic or side with The Radical Party, the natioanlist party led by Tomislav Nikolic. Whoever the Socialists side with will have a coalition majority in parliament.

Currently Boris Tadic is in negotiations with socialist leader Ivica Dacic over forming a coalition government, but Dacic remains uncommitted. Let us hope that the Socialist Party comes to its sense and does what is best for Serbians, and that is siding with the pro-Western party, and forming a pro-Western agenda that will economically intergrate Serbia with the rest of Europe. It is my opinion that only by bringing Serbia into the Western camp can the nation overcome poverty. The path of the nationalists is a step (or two) backwards into a darker age that will hurt Serbians and leave the region bereft of hope.

Bulgaria Faces Possible No Confidence Vote

Bulgarian politics this year has been a case of seeing just how far down the rabbit hole we can go. The ever widening scandal regarding the collusion of high government officials with organized crime figures shows no limit to its extent. Every day seems to bring new revelations as to how much the Bulgarian government is full of rot, and how far it needs to go to meet reforms required of it by the European Union. A recent editorial in The Economist¹ blithely stated that “It is easier to influence a country before than after it joins the club.” Bulgaria has become a case study of just how true this statement really is.

According to the Bulgarian News Network the Bulgarian government is heading towards a vote of no confidence from the European Union due to the scandal. These were the words of former Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, who is also the leader of the political party Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB). Kostov spoke at a DSB leadership meeting about the fact that the European Union has already frozen funding for Bulgaria on a number of programs, such as PHARE, ISPA, and SPARAD. According to Kostov, these funds have been frozen due to rampant corruption in Bulgaria. He also fired away at Bulgaria’s ruling coalition, stating that they are just trying to divert attention away from the “upcoming failure of Bulgaria’s EU membership.”

This raises an important question about the idea of reforming a nation after it joins the European Union club. Perhaps I am too much of an idealist and a Bulgariaphile, but I am under the impression that the efforts of the Bulgarian government to reform are genuine. The same aforementioned Economist article that cited widespread recalcitrance among new EU members also noted that the scandal in Bulgaria had forced the resignation of on the Minister of the Interior, Rumen Petkov. At least something is being done to clean house in the Bulgarian government. Of course sacking a minister is not the same as undertaking sometimes painful structural reform, but it is a start. It is certainly an improvement over the 1970s, when the Bulgarian security services were essentially international arms dealers and drug traffickers.

The important question is, how much leverage does Brussels really have once a country joins the European Union? The Economist seems to think that the answer to this question is “very little” but Bulgarian politicians such as Ivan Kostov seem to take Brussels just as seriously now as they did before joining the EU. Now, much of Kostov’s words may just be the politics of opposition, but the fact is Brussels still has purse strings, and Bulgaria would very much like to get its hands on EU funds, especially ones it has already been promised. A no confidence vote is very serious business. World opinion the past few weeks has shifted away from Bulgaria being this little hidden gem of a country to Bulgaria being like a little Russia- becoming less free and more mean- much like it was treated in the western media during the Cold War (though not without some justification). Bulgaria, in my opinion, is not backsliding, it is taking the corruption scandal and the possibility of a no confidence vote very seriously, both government and opposition alike.

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¹ Charlemagne, “Europe’s Marxist Dilemma” in The Economist (April 26, 2007); 72.

Serbians at the Ballot Box

EUobserver.com reports that today (Sunday) Serbians went to the ballot box in “decisive elections for the country’s EU future.” The election, like previous ones, pits pro-Western factions versus more right-wing nationalist parties. The three front-running parties are president Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (DS), the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica’s conservative Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). According to the EU Observer, polls have been indicating that the DS and SRS emerge neck and neck, but neither party will have an outright majority and thus the front-runner will have to form some sort of coalition government. Given the upheval in Serbian politics over the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by leading western powers, any coalition government will have difficulty running the Serbian state. The previous coalition collapsed over the Kosovo referendum, and all three parties have announced their unwillingness to work with one another in a coalition government. Stability, it would appear, still remains elusive in the western Balkans.

The European Union has been dangling the carrot in front of Serbian voters by shamelessly signing a pre-accession deal with Belgrade, despite the Serbian government’s unwillingness to cooperate fully with the UN War Crimes tribunal. Justice may also prove elusive in the western Balkans as some accused Serbian war criminals have still not been handed over to face ethnic cleansing charges in The Hague. It remains to be seen if the European Union, in its efforts to expand into the former Yugoslavia, will fully turn a blind eye to the crimes commited during the Bosnian civil war. The EU seemed willing to turn a blind eye to the recalcitrance of Eastern European nations to fully reform their institutions before joining the European club (Romania and Bulgaria especially), and I hope that the EU does not go so far as to let Serbian war criminals go free in order to entice Serbia to join the European Union.

Serbia has a long way to go before it can bring itself in line with mainstream European values. The Balkans continue to suffer from their ethnic diversity, diversity that brings with it virulent nationalism and racist hatred. Even more stable nations such as Romania and Bulgaria suffer from racist attitudes towards their ethnic minorities, Hungarians and Turks respectively. I think western observers from more wealthy nations fail to understand the force of nationalism in the Balkans. In rich countries resources (namely jobs) are far more plentiful and therefore there is relatively less competition. In the poorer nations of the Balkans competition is much more fierce, and ruling parties are often forced to provide favorable conditions for the ethnic majority to have privileged access to whatever jobs and resources are available. Add to this fact that these nations press for better conditions of their ethnicities in other countries (Hungary, for instance, is constantly pressuring the Romanian government over the status of Hungarians in Romania) and you have a volatile battlefield for politicians to navigate.

Western observers often fail to understand that Balkan stability will not be easy due to the fact that ethnic and state boundaries do not match each other. Many pundits are hesitant to admit that the stability of Western Europe that has lasted since the end of the Second World War was at least partly due to the fact that forced migrations finally brought state and ethnic boundaries together. At the end of the war, some 20 million Germans were forcibly moved from Eastern Europe to Germany- the largest forced migration in European history. If Western Europeans believe they have a system in place that the Balkan countries can emulate and find stability, they should think again. Western Europe does not have the patchwork of ethnic minorities that southeastern Europe has. If German politicians think they have slayed the nationalist beast in their country, they should think again.

Ethnic discord is on the rise in western Europe as well. All of the big nations of western Europe have seen a marked increase in the size of minority populations, and racist attitudes have followed. Italy has seen an increase in its Albanian population. Turks have flooded into Germany. Algerians have become the underclass of France. Spain’s Moroccan minority has swelled as well. None of these countries have found effective solutions to the problem of integrating ethnic minorities, why do they pretend that they have a solution for the troubled Balkan region?

Perhaps the answer lies in the economic benefits of EU expansion for the larger, more well established members. Certainly the European Union’s bureaucrats in Brussels cannot have altruistic motives towards Serbia if they are so willing to let war criminals continue to go free. While many westerners would see Serbia’s joining the European Union as a victory for western democratic values, there will be no victory for such values if ethical considerations such as justice for accused war criminals are conveniently swept aside.