The Balkans: the Columns of Hercules of Democratic Culture?

Last update: 2025-01-21 15:54:05

After being in the 1990s the theatre of numerous conflicts with an ethnic-religious background, the Balkans are steadily becoming integrated into the rest of the continent. Specifically for this reason, the ‘Balkan question’ and the creation of an institutional framework that is capable of accommodating a religiously plural reality marked by the presence of Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim communities is becoming an increasingly juridical question for European institutions. Slovenia and Croatia are already in the European Union, other parts of what was Yugoslavia are addressing the process of drawing near to it, the European Convention of Human Rights has witnessed the adherence of the whole of the Balkans, and the Commission of Venice, an instrument for the promotion of democracy through law, has contributed to the institutional renewal of practically all the legal systems involved. If, therefore, the Balkans are largely European in terms of culture and geography, they are also gradually becoming so in terms of juridical integration. However, the destinies of the pan-continental institutions and those of the Balkans are intersecting at an especially sensitive moment.

 

The Attractiveness of Europe

Modern Europe is certainly a success. It is a success from a juridical and political point of view. The creation of a new space of peace, prosperity, freedom and security which has few precedents is specifically the reason for the attractiveness that European integration has for so many countries, including those of the Balkans.

Only a few elements are needed to outline the phenomenon of the European Union: countries that had fought each other for centuries, being respectively victors and losers at the end of the Second World War, voluntarily created a common market, shared coal and steel and acted together in the field of research into atomic power. If we want to understand the political significance of this, we must observe that all of a sudden these countries extirpated the reasons for conflict, the resources for carrying it out and the most lethal instruments of destruction, identifying institutions capable of offering a supranational, unitary and shared framework of reference to these areas. In even more general terms, we may state that in order to avoid further wars various European countries chose not to live separate existences but to cooperate.

Wealth and prosperity were more than sufficient reasons to begin again after a war that had ruined the continent; supranational cooperation was instead a crucial insight that was necessary after the nationalist drifts. Overall, the result was a reconciled continent in which were established the premisses for stable democratic systems.

A last point that is absolutely noteworthy is the character of this initiative. To achieve its success, reliance was placed upon the will of each of its members. The European Union developed during its various stages by staking everything on the wish of national juridical agents to implement choices made within the European setting. Indeed, the European institutions were at first structurally and then largely incapable of implementing their decisions and to tell the truth they have never had the democratic legitimation needed to justify coercive powers comparable to those of the individual states.[1] The states have almost miraculously adapted to them, and rather well.

 

War has become so unthinkable in the territories of the Union that military service is no longer obligatory in the vast majority of states of thE Union. One of the principal reasons for the Union – the connection between the economy and peace – has therefore disappeared in today’s generations

If peace and prosperity have been entrusted to the process ofstate European integration, another question concerns respect for human rights and the democratic guarantees assured by each European country.[2] This profile has been monitored by the institutions of the Council of Europe, a separate organism which by now has almost fifty states among its members (twenty in addition to those who belong to the European Union) and has its foundations in the European Convention of Human Rights. However, the European Union has constantly asked the states that are about to enter to adhere to standards of democracy and rights as a pre-condition for joining the Union.[3] It has done this both because democratic states are usually stable states which have prospects of realistic growth and because it has become culturally unacceptable to be linked to countries that are not satisfactory in terms of standards as regards politics and rights. Indeed, the government of these states, once they have joined the European union, sit beside their partners to decide the policies of the Union.

The club of the European countries has thus, overall, taken on the characteristics of an inclusive and democratic environment that respects human rights and prosperity. This is an environment – as some have well pointed out – that sprung at the outset from the insights of figures who were moved by ideals deeply immersed in Christian culture and capable of transforming a large part of a continent in ruins which had experienced all kinds of conflict into a ‘civil force’.[4]

 

From Success to Decline?

These very successful processes have demonstrated some signs of stall, as regards the Balkans as well. The reasons for this are both structural and external. I want to point to some of them – and these relate respectively to the European Union, on the one hand, and to the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights, on the other – in the belief that this explains at least in part European disaffection towards these instruments. As regards the European Union, the prospects for prosperity and progress have weakened. If the largest market in the world is weak in terms of international competition, then all of its economic operators are at risk precisely because internal frontiers do not exist. This is a strong reason for disaffection towards the Union. The connection between prosperity, progress and peace, furthermore, has become obfuscated by its very success:[5] war has become so unthinkable in the territories of the Union[6] that military service is no longer obligatory in the vast majority of states of the Union. One of the principal reasons for the Union – the connection between the economy and peace – has therefore disappeared in today’s generations. This is another reason for the disaffection.

 

 

Europe can re-learn from the Balkans the nexus that exists between institutions and an ideal that seems a consolidated fact – peace, given that in this region war has dug furrows between nations which still have a memory of them that is very vivid

​​​​​​​As regards the culture of war, two aspects should be made clear. First of all, war has become unthinkable not only as an option but also as regards how political phenomena are understood. In the 1950s the members of the European Community abandoned the idea of a unified military instrument, placing the EU outside military and even diplomatic instruments. This block also meant a blocking of the capacity of the Union to play a role on the international chessboard in order to defend the values of which it was the spokesman as well.[7] The Union was, so to speak, the ‘great absent actor’ in Balkan questions, confining itself to receiving within it political processes when they had produced a certain result but without having a deep influence on them as they developed.

Secondly, the Union meant that Europe forgot about war but only along national boundaries. Although war is no longer waged, the states can break down internally: Northern Ireland and the Basque countries demonstrate that the Union is not a barrier against fracture lines but acts only to guarantee the lines that run along national boundaries: the remaining conflicts are not affected. Nor is the culture of rights which is specific to the Council of Europe able to resolve these last in an effective way.

Indeed, it is specifically in relation to the Council of Europe that a profound problem is raised. The ability to integrate States through law, making them become democratic, tripped up specifically in relation to the Balkans. After the difficult Dayton accords, and despite the contribution of the Commission of Venice with its emphasis on constitutional guarantees, Bosnia was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights because in the rotation of institutional roles between different ethnic groups some of these are excluded.[8]

This is not a secondary detail. The sentence of the court means a condemnation of the instruments for achieving peace in the Balkans for reasons linked to democracy and rights. Naturally enough, the European Court of Human Rights in itself does not place institutions in a state of crisis because its sentences do not interfere directly with national constitutions. However, such a decision is able to place in a state of crisis both the process of European integration in the areas involved (can Bosnia say that it is a country that is in line with European juridical culture, with a view to joining the Union, on the basis of this sentence?) and political relations between parts of the Balkans and the rest of Europe. Above all, this sentence fully brings out the problematic character of a fundamental relationship on which contemporary Europe has been built: the nexus between peace, democracy and rights. The narrative that the court offered implicitly states that peace has been achieved but cost too much in terms of rights.

 

The Challenge of the Balkans

The Union was, so to speak, the ‘great absent actor’ in Balkan questions, confining itself to receiving within it political processes when they had produced a certain result but without having a deep influence on them as they developed

If what has been said hitherto is at least partly true, then it is not simply Europe that challenges the Balkans – it is the Balkans that above all challenges Europe. Europe can re-learn from the Balkans the nexus that exists between institutions and an ideal that seems a consolidated fact – peace – given that in this region war has dug furrows between nations which still have a memory of them that is very vivid.[9] In addition the Balkans challenge the idea of democracy and of rights, forcing the question to be posed of whether these are a concern that a legal system can afford when it is at peace or whether they are the instruments to obtain them (these are subjects which many people probably believe to have been superseded with the end of the Cold War). The European Court of Human Rights in a certain sense assumes that only democracy can secure peace and that the idea of democracy is unique. The European Union, vice versa, accepts within it only democratic countries in order to promote peace but it is not really able to interact in order to bring it forth. The Balkans, therefore, increasingly seem to acquire the profile of being the columns of Hercules of European democratic culture.[10]

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