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Agon Maliqi raises three legitimate issues in
response to
my post welcoming Kosovo’s negotiating platform:
1) Domestic costs of prolonging this indefinitely not taken into
account;
2) Can we rely on EU accession as a carrot considering EU crisis?
3) Will there be leaders with political capital to pull it off?
He concludes that waiting seems the higher risk.
I don’t agree. Of course there are domestic pressures, but the
proper role of leadership is to manage those, not to cave to them. I
don’t think a flag at the UN or in Belgrade is what most citizens in
Kosovo are thinking about: their primary concern is jobs. When you
start counting your GDP growth at 3%, you are not doing so badly,
but the economy has slowed significantly:
Maybe a bit more attention to that and less to the sovereignty
question is in order.
Nor is there any sign that giving up a piece of Kosovo’s territory
to Serbia, which is what the President has been proposing as a
short-cut to an agreement, will be accepted either by the Parliament
or the citizens. Kosovo’s best negotiating strategy is to make its
red lines clear–that the Platform does–and wait until Serbia is
hungry enough to talk.
I understand those who doubt the future attraction of the EU, but
what better choice do either Serbia or Kosovo have? Euroskepticism
in my experience (which is now many decades long) is tightly
correlated with the business cycle. Kosovo’s near-term goal is
getting a Schengen visa waiver, this year. Ensuring that is far more
important right now than signing on the dotted line with Serbia.
Once we are passed whatever the Brits are going to do to themselves,
as well as the ridiculous trade war Trump has conducted with China,
my guess is the recovery will resume. Everyone, including those who
live in Kosovo, will cheer. No one can ever guarantee that the
political door to the EU will open, even if Kosovo gets busy and
qualifies in 10 years or so. But most of the benefits of EU
membership accrue by qualification, not membership. The money a
candidate gets during the process is also pretty good.
As for political leadership, I have been critical of President
Thaci’s pursuit of a people and land swap, which would demonstrate
that both Kosovo and Serbia are incapable of treating their
minorities equally under the law. Thaci would do much better to sit
back and wait for President Vucic to come to him, which should
happen sooner rather than later if he hopes to get anything for
whatever they agree. Neither is listening to me at the moment, but
their bromance isn’t going well:
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