Humanitarian Affairs Review

What can Business bring to Balkan Reconstruction?

La Maison de l'Europe, Brussels, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2000

Emma Bonino Speaking Notes

The timeliness of this conference with respect to the events currently taking place in Serbia, which are destined to influence the immediate future in the whole Balkan region, makes our task particularly difficult.

Rather than venturing any predictions, I prefer to restrict myself to one or two observations, not, however, without recalling that for over ten years I have claimed (and I have not been alone in this) that Milosevic and his regime could not contribute to the solution of any of the problems in the Balkans because they were an integral part (if not the root cause) of all the main problems in the region.

One thing is clear. If Serbia - as everything would seem to suggest - were to be governed by a democratically elected executive that respected the Rule of Law and international rights, there would be no more "crises with no way-out": neither in Kosovo, nor in Montenegro, nor in Vojvodina. The tensions would certainly not come to an end overnight. But if the main political forces present in each of these territories acted in a responsible, transparent manner, if they were willing to rethink their respective ethnic and political Utopias - the evil plans for reconquest and the irredentist plans pursued through the use of violence - then the international community (and above all the European Union) would finally be able to devote itself to laying the foundations of the political and economic reconstruction of the Balkan area.

Because there is another thing that has seemed clear to me ever since I took part, as the Commissioner responsible for humanitarian aid, in the international conferences called to reconstruct one area or another of the Balkans.

At the centre of the Stability Pact that we Europeans launched last year, with many good intentions and huge financial resources, there has up to now been a "black hole" that corresponds to the borders of Serbia, which has prevented the Pact from producing the results hoped for. We were all aware of one simple truth, which we preferred to ignore, in the hope that events would alter the situation: it was difficult, probably impossible, to trigger off any process of integration and/or a virtuous circle of democracy, lawfulness and development in a region like the Balkans, at the heart of which stood a regime that produced nothing in the way of democracy, lawfulness, or development, but on the contrary exported violence, lawlessness, and poverty.

We politicians were aware of all this, and it was perceived even more clearly by the sensitive antennae of the business community. Which has continued to remain at a due distance. On the other hand, what projects capable of bringing development at a regional level - beginning with infrastructures such as roads, railways, and telecommunications - could be initiated leaving out Serbia?

In the Balkans - it must be admitted - the European Union has so far made more use of the instrument of assistance based on hand-outs (both necessary and opportune, of course) than of interventions capable of empowering our partners, of giving them the means and the know-how to set up a state based on democracy and justice and to create a market economy.

In this impasse that has prevailed for over a decade, what has flourished, on the other hand, is an anti-state culture and criminal forms of economy based on trafficking of every kind: drugs, arms, smuggled goods, and a trade in human beings destined to fuel illegal immigration or prostitution. In short, while the integration advocated by our "Stability Plan" has so far failed to take off (and not through any fault of Mr. Hombach), what has developed with the speed and pervasiveness of a malignant tumour is the activity of the various mafias - and this activity is integrated, perfectly in tune with the dynamics of globalisation - which operate in the Balkan area and within the borders of the European Union.

The phenomenon goes well beyond the confines of the "black hole" constituted by Serbia. This is not the most suitable place to deliver summary sentences, but we all know that the malignant tumour I am referring to, far from being fought as it should be, enjoys powerful complicity in almost all the Balkan countries, to differing extents and at different levels. There are situations, which we are all aware of, where the anti-State is stronger and better-organised that the state that should be fighting it.

I do not say this out of cheap moralism, but because this is the reality that the European Union must eventually come to terms with. And it will do so better if, with the help of the events in progress, it undertakes not only the necessary relaunch of the Pact of Stability, but also the definition of a clear political and institutional prospect for the whole Balkan area: the recognition of the right of all the peoples of the region, if and when the necessary conditions exist, to join our community.

Only when this prospect is made concrete, and when reconstruction appears to be possible, only then, I believe, will we be able to ask businesses and investors to assume the reasonable risk of taking part in the renaissance of this part of Europe.