In terms of the involvement of international actors, especially the EU, the country has been traditionally cooperative with the international community, although the establishment of official relations with the EU was complicated by
45
Author’s interview with former Vice Prime Minister for EU Affairs, Skopje, 25 December 2010.
the name dispute with Greece, elaborated below. In fact, Macedonia since the beginning of the 1990s has been open to international interventions – UN had a unique preventive mission, then in the second part of the UN Preventive Deployment force mandate they got the competences not to oversee the borders but to deal with inter-ethnic relations.46 The request for this mission came directly from the Macedonian authorities in light of the Yugoslav wars. Similarly, the EU’s engagement in Macedonia began by funding projects in the framework of the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) in 1992 mainly targeting refugees from the Yugoslav wars.47
In light of these forms of engagement, in the early 1990s Macedonia received attention from scholars of conflict prevention and management looking at the other international organisations, but not the EU (Ackermann, 2000). Koinova (2011) highlights that analysis is missing because the EU had little involvement in Macedonia at the time (p.810). In the same vein, Vachudova (2003) has questioned why the EU did not use political conditionality in the course of the 1990s since Macedonian governments were open to conditional Western assistance in this period (p.150). Stakeholders at the national level have explained this phenomenon against the background that many European representatives, especially the MEPs believed that the inter-ethnic relations in the country were completely amicable, although they would later be proven wrong.48
In fact during the early 1990s the establishment of relations with the European Community at the time was strained due to the objections of Greece to the constitutional name “Republic of Macedonia”. Both countries are engaged in UN mediated talks for finding a solution, however even these have not given results (For a factual background see Karajkov, 2008). At the Lisbon summit in June 1992 under Greek pressure the EU decided to withhold recognition of Macedonia. The Council conclusions expressed “readiness to recognise that republic within its existing borders according to their Declaration on 16 December 1991 under a name which does not include the term Macedonia” (Council, 1992). These events followed the positive opinion of the EU-appointed Badenter
46
Author’s interview with former Minister of interior and foreign affairs, Skopje, 22 February 2011.
47
The European Union and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/archives/ear/fyrom/main/mac-eu.htm. [Accessed 15 September 2010]
48
Author’s interview with former Vice Prime Minister for EU Affairs, Skopje 23 December 2010
Commission49 which was vested with a mandate to “rule by means of binding decisions upon request from valid Yugoslavian authorities”, on the basis of rights of minorities (Pellet, 1992). A consensual (albeit temporary) solution was found with the country joining the UN in 1993 under a provisional name “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. Formal diplomatic relations between Macedonia and the EU were not established until December 1995, after the signing of the Interim Accord between Macedonia and Greece in September of the same year.50 With the Interim Accord, Greece obliged itself not to veto Macedonia’s entry into regional and international organisations under the provisional reference, thus creating conditions for establishing full diplomatic relations with the EU.
In the latter half of the 1990s the EU-Macedonia relationship developed as part of the regional approach for the Western Balkans and also by its constructive role during the NATO intervention in Kosovo.51 The country was the first one in the region to sign an SAA in early 2001. However, the signing of the SAA coincided with the inter-ethnic conflict which lasted between February and August 2001. The EU in cooperation with NATO took a leading role in managing and containing the conflict and was even a guarantor and a co-signatory of it. In the post-2001 period, however, the OFA is considered as central to the EU relationship with Macedonia.52 Whereas the implementation of the Agreement was channelled through domestic institutions, the EU constantly provided external support and at times pressure for its implementation. 53 Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for CFSP was directly involved in the OFA negotiations which led to widely accepted maxim in the national political discourse that ‘the road to Brussels leads through Ohrid’ (Solana, 2004).
In addition to this form of political involvement, after the 2001 crisis, the first military peacekeeping mission in EU history Concordia was deployed in
49
An international arbitration Commission consisting of the chair Mr Robert Badinter, President of the French Constitutional Council, the Presidents of the German and Italian Constitutional Courts, the Belgian Court of Arbitration and the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal.
50
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Macedonia, “Relations between Republic of Macedonia and EU”, http://www.mfa.gov.mk [Accessed 16 June 2010] 51
For more see chapter 6 on EU conditionality and minority policies between 1997 and 2004.
52 Author’s interview with European Commission official, Brussels, 11 October 2010.
53
Author’s interview with former Vice Prime Minister for EU Affairs, Skopje 23 December 2010.
Macedonia followed by the EU police mission Proxima in April 2003. My interviewees underlined that “through the involvement on the ground, the EU gained a big stake in Macedonia’s future. In some way it made Macedonia important to the EU almost rather than the other way around.”54 This role was largely accepted by local elites as well. The president of Macedonia in a speech highlighted that “our ambition is full membership in the Union, and I would like to see this mission *…+, as a step in that direction. The more of the EU we have in Macedonia, the more of Macedonia there will be in the EU (Trajkovski, 2003).” Hence, Macedonia is an indicative example for studying the involvement of the EU in the Balkans, as a country which has been at the same time both a frontrunner in the EU accession process and a laggard with extensive EU involvement on the ground. In response, my interviewees have pointed that “Macedonia is a candidate for EU membership and is being monitored from the Council. Hence, there is a dilemma whether the EU is supporting the country or is intervening with elements of a soft protectorate.”55
The issue that further adds further complexity to the relationship between Macedonia and the EU is the continuation of dispute between Macedonia and Greece over the constitutional name of the country. This issue has been directly impeding Macedonia’s accession process since 2009 when the Commission recommended the start of the accession negotiations dependent upon finding a mutually acceptable solution for the name issue. In its 2009 report, the Commission underlines that “maintaining good neighbourly relations, including a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution to the name issue, under the auspices of the UN, remains essential” (EC, 2009b p.24). The recommendation for the negotiations has been confirmed every year since, but there is no progress on resolving this issue and therefore, negotiations have not commenced (For an analysis of the EU's role in the dispute see Mavromatidis, 2010). In the Enlargement Strategy of 2012, the Commission announced it “is ready to present without delay a proposal for a negotiating framework, which also takes into account the need to solve the name issue at an early stage of accession negotiations” (EC, 2012a p.25).
54
Author’s interview with think tank analyst, Brussels, 11 October 2010. 55
Author’s interview with former Ambassador to the EU, Tetovo, 22 December 2010.