Can European Union build a real democracy without fulfilling its mosaic, as a multinational and diversity of cultures? National boundaries and the culture inside Europe still matters, at least for the Balkans. Because if in fulfilling of this European mosaics are used different criteria: one as favor and the other as exclusion, what will be the effect? Ghetto or moreover it will look like as a deformed conscious for a common European perspective and therefore it presents ghetto of its own perspective.
By Fazli Rrezja
The Balkans have both geographic and geopolitical significance. Geographically, it refers roughly to the region bounded by the Adriatic Sea, the southern Carpathian Mountains, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. Geopolitically and even geo-historically, the Balkans have accumulated numerous and often contradictory connotations, sometimes patronizing, sometimes wistful, but often disparaging.
A young beggar in the main street of Kosovo's capital, on a rainy february day/photo by Fazli Rrezja
The Balkans has been described as the major crossroads between Europe and the Middle East and as a battle region between the major empires. The region has been depicted as a rich conglomerate of cultures and religions and as an ethnic and religious conflict zone. In recent years it has been viewed as both a critical security zone and as an unstable European periphery. Moreover, the Balkans belonged to an internal zone of brutal borders between European Nations that never allowed small nations to become homogenized, to create a single space of modernity to become united and as such to become reintegrated into the world’s economic and political scene. It could be said tat the failure of the political, economic and cultural integration has allowed down the main streams of European modernization in the Balkans and still the European trend is the same toward the Balkans, but in different shapes.
Recently International Crisis Group has requested from European Union to review its position toward the countries in western Balkan. Taking into consideration one of the most sensitive segments of the relation for citizens of this region and the ignorance that is done to them by European Union countries in alleviation of visa procedures for this region countries.European Union and its member states should in particular to expand their commitment, including resources, to the Western Balkans generally.
Generous education assistance program and visa liberalisations are needed, as is assistance for rural development. The EU must not end up spending more on its own post-status mission costs in Kosovo than it does on pre-accession structural funds for the new country.The group has come up with two important issues: European Union acting in contemptuous way toward the western Balkan, has forgotten that its future is vitally interrelated with the future of this region and while ghettoizing Balkan, in fact has ghettoized its democratic perspective.Also while co tempting the citizens of Balkan region, EU has shown that it’s not ready to buildup a strategy of its representation and the integration interest is a political fact of dominant ideas and some of the certain countries’ partial interests.
Balkan is seen as a political experiments territory yet, and not as part of democratic processes, some of which are taking place in some countries.European Union has dispersed the rhetoric that European Democracy is very heterogenic, inside a constituted democracy exists different democracies with functional principles and features, so also the build up conscious should be called European democracy, but it will take time for some countries of European union to understand that the political pragmatism should be based in moral value of the democracy and that the integration processes can not occur if there is not a will to accept the diversity of different cultures.
After the consolidation of modern nation- states, the historical contingency, variability and diversity of European space and its borders was modified and changed by well-defined territorial sovereignty. In fact, political borders, the borders of sovereign nation-states were deeply involved in our construction of national identity, and especially in the formation of the new exclusive form of membership-citizenship.If EU continuous to treat the countries of Balkan as not a part of Europe and continuous to keep the doors of integrations shut, how can it keep its moral right to give lectures for democracy? European perspective for Balkan countries is used in rhetoric phrases, regarding to this aspect, it means, firstly, fulfillment of criteria and then dialogue, but in all integration processes the dialogue is known as its essence. If mishandled, the crisis may even lead to closure, protection, recession and the disintegration of the euro - and the balkanization of Europe into mutually suspicious and hostile camps.
The end of an era of easy movement from country to country embodied by cheap flights, a single currency and growing interpenetration of each other's economies is now in prospect. Historians may come to say that Europeans never knew they had it so well, but then they threw it away.Among the founding six member states, Brussels and European integration have come to be seen as the enemy of real Europe and the friend of Islamic immigration, high unemployment, reduced social protection, economic restructuring and 'vulture, locust capitalism'.
In Britain, paradoxically, Brussels is seen as the architect of grand social schemes, inflexible labor markets, regulation, economic weakness and reduction of political sovereignty.In the wake of the violent conflicts that marked the recent history of the Western Balkans region, the EU considers it a priority to promote the development of peace, stability, prosperity and freedom in the South Eastern European countries of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Albania.
The framework for the EU's approach is the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), which is designed to encourage and support domestic reform processes. In the long run, SAP offers these countries the prospect of full integration into the EU's structures, provided that certain political and economic conditions are met , but Europeans have to think straight, to talk honestly and recognize their commonality. If they continue to resort to creating false enemies and false choices, there is no doubt that the European project will fail and with it the prosperity and peace we take for granted.
Six years after the fall of the Milosevic regime, the Western Balkans are a relatively stable region, the danger of war is no longer imminent, and the countries of the region have proven stable enough not to be thrown into chaos by political turmoil that often used to be as a spark for inter ethnic conflicts. Moreover, the European Union committed itself to integrating the countries of the region at the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003.Despite the achievements to date, the stability of the region still rests on weak feet. Reform processes are hindered by the legacy of the past: immense structural challenges, constitutional problems, open status issues, a dire economic situation and political instability.
Unprecedented amounts of reconstruction and development aid pouredinto the region could not lead to the desired results because of the chronic political instability and doubts about the future.Almost six years after the fall of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade, the Western Balkansare a relatively stable region with no military conflicts, no ongoing ethnic cleansing, here elections are free, if not always fair. In Thessaloniki in June 2003, the European Union committed itself to integrating the countries from the region. But what does this commitment really mean? The dream of European integration has not yet proved powerful enough as a force for transforming the societies of the Balkans, especially if we agree that the basic indicator of success is the progress of each country on the road to the EU. Of course, the EU itself faces a significant dilemma as it has the capacity to absorb only reasonably functioning and legitimate states. This means that some countries of European Union need more time to understand that the political moral values of the democracy and to be conscious that the integration processes can not occur if there is not a will to accept the diversity of different cultures.
Among the most discouraging findings is that the European generation of the Balkans, young men and women under 30 who share the values of Europe most keenly and who vote for pro-European parties most regularly, are those who experience the greatest difficulties in visiting the EU. while the Schengen wall is one of the obstacles that separates the Balkans from Europe, citizens of Kosova, will keep on wandering in front of foreign offices in order to get a Visa, Italian Office will propose a two days visa for education that lasts at least six months, German office will keep delaying a visa for family union, French office, considering its country as a center of culture will also put lot of obstacles to get visa, even for academic people.Regarding to citizenship as a “foreigner” from these part of “Europe” doesn’t mean that you are beyond the pale of the law, but it means to have a specific kind of legal and political identity that include certain rights and obligations while prevailing others.
Today in some European countries we see the softening of those legal restrictions, but, however neither the principles of jus sanguinis nor those of jus soli are consistent and plausible enough to justify the theory and practice of democratic citizenshipEuropean Union has ghettoized its common initiative for integration. While co tempting the citizens of Western Balkan with nonsense formalities requests to academics, people of media and business and to a ordinary citizens, Union has used poor rhetoric for democracy and at the same time their position toward this region tend to be the exclusion toward European integrations. There is not and cannot be a democracy or an autonomous society, without autonomous citizens – that is citizens endowed with individual liberty and individual responsibility. That liberty is another value of democracy. Democracy rests on the freedom of its citizens, and citizens’ rest on their confidence of being free and the courage to be free on the democracy of their polis.Of course the solution for integration is not quick and easy one for the Balkans and that ultimately it is up also to the people of the region to win their own future. But the international community and the European Union in particular has a historical responsibility to face and a decisive role to play in winning the bright future for this region.
The first obstacle on the Balkans is that the status quo has outlived its usefulness and through it creates more complex issues regarding to the Balkan integration issues.The fate of European identity as a whole is being played out in ex Yugoslavia and more generally in the Balkans. Either Europe will recognize in the Balkan situation not a monstrosity grafted to its breast, or of communism, but rather an image and effect of itsown history and will undertake to confront it and resolve it and thus to put itself into question and transform itself. Only then will Europe probably begin to become possible again, or else it will refuse to come face to face with itself and will continuo to treat the problem an exterior obstacle. Or moreover it will do a good step revealing the European truth that lies behind the scenes as French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy posed a question at weekly meeting of EU foreign ministers, “Is this the right moment, when everyone knows that the EU doesn't have the solutions to the challenges posed by the current enlargement, neither institutionally nor financially?”
There is an urgent need to solve the outstanding status and constitutional issues in the Balkans and to move the region as a whole from the stage of protectorates and weak states to the stage of EU accession. At the same time it is believed that EU possesses the mechanisms and the requisite political skill to face up to the challenge which the Western Balkan region will present over the next years.
Europe Union has responsibility to prevent the Western Balkans from turning into the black hole of Europe or its own European ghetto. If in fulfilling of European Union mosaic are used different criteria: one as favor and the other as exclusion, what will be the effect for the western Balkan‘s future? European ghetto, periphery part of Europe or moreover it will be considered as a deformed conscious of its own common European perspective.
--------------------------------------------------
References:
-Bugajski, Janusz “Facing the Future: The Balkans to the Year 2010, (2001), University of Pittsburgh, ZEI Discussion Papers: 2001, C 86, http://aei.pitt.edu/211/
-Miftari, Vehbi "Europian Ghetto" Kosovar Daily "Bota Sot",p 5,december1,2005.
-Savic,Obrad,Balkan and the Question of European Self Responsibility, Soderton University College 2006, Sweden, Kijac Reader “Media and the normative concept of Europe”
-“Kosovo: The Challenge of Transition” 2006, International Crisis Group, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1243&l=1
-Savic, Obrad ”Figures of the stranger: Citizen as a Foreigner, Parallax, 2005, Kijac Reader “Media and the normative concept of Europe”
-Euro news &Policy Positions, Contexte, 2006, http://www.euractiv.com/fr/elargissement/relations-ue-europe-sud/article-130584My problem with Europe, June 5, 2005
- The Observer,
-The Balkans in Europe’s Future, handbook by International Commissionon the Balkans, 2004
-The Balkans in Europe’s Future, handbook by International Commissionon the Balkans, 2004
-Sheyla Banhabib, “Who are “We?: Dilemmas of Citizenship in Contemporary Europe”, The claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton University Press, 2002, p.237. Kijac Reader,
-“Media and the normative concept of Europe”Zygmund Bauman”Europe-An Unfinished Adventure”, chapter 4
-“Towards a world hospitable to Europe”, Kijac Reader Jour 624. 2004.Etienne Balibar, We, the People of Europe : Reflections on Transnational Citizenship, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004, p.6. Kijac Reader “Media and the normative concept of Europe”
-“Moment Of Truth: Macedonia, The EU Budget And The Destabilisation Of The Balkans” European Stability Initiative. Berlin, 2005 ttp://www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=156&document_ID=73
1 comment:
njeri hallall se shume te fort e paske bo aa
Post a Comment