VALORACIÓN DE LA SINTOMATOLOGÍA PSICO-SOCIAL

The fieldwork and the interviews as methods of collecting data were accompanied by archival research of both formal and unofficial EU and national documents.24 According to May (1997), “documents *...+ can tell us a great deal about the way in which events were constructed at the time, the reasons employed, as well as providing materials upon which to base further research investigations” (p.157). Official EU documents and reports were used as a starting point of this research in order to analyse what were the conditions stipulated by the EU. Such documents include documents from the institutions of the EU, primarily the European Commission and the Council of the EU. From the Council’s documents, the study utilises the Decisions on the Accession Partnerships, as the only formal documents adopted by the Council of the EU and published in the Official Journal of the EU, representing highest form of conditionality imposed by the EU upon the candidate countries.

On the European Commission’s side, the thesis looks extensively into the regular Commission Progress Reports as the yearly assessment of a particular country. “These documents are the only official and transparent public statements of the Commission’s assessments of the progress of the candidate countries over time” (Hughes et al., 2005 p.85). The research examines the Commission’s understanding and assessment of minority policies under the heading of Minority Rights and protection of minorities in the political criteria section as well as the chapter 23: Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, after its introduction in 2005. The Progress Reports provided in detail monitoring of various conditions and “provided the basis for enlargement decisions by other EU executive institutions” (Pridham, 2007 p.453). The importance of the Progress Reports as an essential reference source of conditionality was confirmed to me during my interviews, both at the EU and national level. For Croatia, the study also uses the Screening Reports as well as the Reports on the fulfilment of the accession negotiations benchmarks prepared in the course of the negotiations. Furthermore, the study relies on unofficial documents published for guidance in

the accession process, which in many cases are much more detailed than the official progress reports. These include the reports published by the experts of SIGMA-OECD25 on the accession process, which deal with the preparedness of the countries for the accession negotiations (For more information see Hughes et al., 2005 p.74). Although unofficial, the SIGMA reports represent the basis for the preparation of the Progress Reports, especially in the areas covered by this study. Since minority rights as a specific policy area are not directly regulated by EU law, when relevant, the research utilises the reports and opinions of the international organisations such as the CoE, the OSCE and the OSCE HCNM. Most of these reports and documents contain an assessment of the minority protection situation over a long period and are therefore very useful for setting the context and its analysis over time. Among these external documents, the Reports of the Advisory Committee on the implementation of the FCNM are of increasing importance. This Convention “by virtue of its binding character is considered as a breakthrough in minority protection” (Liebich, 2002, 125). Consequently, its ratification was extensively used by the EU as a reference point in the previous enlargement. Furthermore, both countries are signatories to the Convention and prepare regular reports, thereby providing sufficient information for analysis. My interlocutors singled out the reporting documents for the FCNM as a reference point for the development of minority policies, which were commonly used in the EU assessments as well. The objective of the research is not to untangle the influence of these different organisations, but rather examine how the EU has used the reports of these organisations in its conditionality, with a specific focus on the FCNM for the purposes of studying the consistency of conditionality.

At the national level, the study extensively relies on strategic documents for EU integration, such as the National Plans for the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), the Action Plans for the Accession Partnerships and the NPAAs. In addition, when available, the research uses the national contributions to the Progress Reports, which the countries prepare on a yearly basis in advance to the regular Progress Reports prepared by the European Commission. These national reports contain formal information on the measures implemented in the previous year in all areas related to the accession process, including national minority rights. Since the majority of these documents are

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Sigma is a joint initiative of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), principally financed by the EU. www.sigmaweb.org.

updated on a yearly basis, they provide a continuous insight into the formal response to conditionality and also allow for the possibility to track the developments over time. The national documents and information from the candidate countries were analysed in their original form and language and checked against the English translations cited, contributing to the originality of the study and eliminating major misunderstandings.

Besides government documents, the study also utilises CSOs documents prepared in the context of EU accession. In accession countries, CSOs are monitoring development of minority policies and the EU accession process and prepare reports and briefs on the progress, which are used in the study. Civil society documents regularly provide a critical reflection upon the formal government response contained in the official documents, thereby creating a more nuanced view of the context. Furthermore, most of the CSOs interviewed for this thesis were regularly invited by the European Commission to submit contributions in the preparations of the Progress Reports and are therefore actors both in the devising and monitoring of EU conditionality. In addition, as was underlined by my interlocutors, when CSOs in these countries can’t influence the national government for certain policies they express their concerns to the European Commission, which in many cases takes them on board and sets them as conditions in the domestic context.26 Hence, “it is increasingly acknowledged that NGOs play an important role in pressing states to act in conformity with minority rights provisions” (Letschert, 2005 p.405). Lastly, the CSOs also provide shadow reports for the fulfilment of the FCNM, thereby providing information on the implementation of specific legislative provisions.

Even though the study relies on a variety of documents from all the EU and national institutions, including international organisations and CSOs, it still recognizes the executive bias of the negotiations and accession process in general. Research has “highlighted an ‘executive bias’ inherent in the whole accession process, because of the structure of negotiations and the fact that EU actors mostly saw the process of adopting EU norms as an administrative exercise” (Grabbe, 2006 p.207-208). The focus on the executive has further been criticised from the perspective that it poses obstacles to the democratic consolidation in the conditions of post-communism. In order to partly overcome this criticism, the interlocutors for this study have included members of

Parliament (MPs), as well as CSO representatives. Still, the majority of the interviewees have either a link with or belong to the executive, because of their competence and direct involvement in the EU accession process.

The problems encountered in the data collection were primarily linked to the availability of some of the identified interviewees, which were in most cases overcome. When the interviewee was not available most-likely substitutes were identified and contacted. In Croatia, the fieldwork took place during the negotiations for chapter 23 on judiciary and fundamental rights incorporating many of the issues under discussion in this thesis. Hence, some of the interviewees were at times wary of discussing some of the issues openly and felt “obliged” to portray a positive image of the EU. Lastly, accessing official negotiating documents useful for the thesis was at times difficult due to sensitivity of these issues in the accession negotiations in Croatia. These were nevertheless made public after the conclusion of the negotiations in June 2011 and therefore are used in the thesis.