www.vuk.org on Fri, 21 May 1999 17:20:07 +0100


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Syndicate: <nettime> EU green paper on Balkan developmen


ho,
I have recieved a document entitled "A System for Post-War South-East
Europe" (Plan for Reconstruction, Opennes, Developement and
Integration), also called the green paper.
It was compiled at the Centre for European Policy Studies at Brussels on
May 3rd 99 (4th revision), and is basically regarded as an important
strategic study for a post-milosevic balkans (from the EU angle
obviously).

With respect to listserv limitations I am quoting the Summary here, and
would like to point you at:
http://www.vuk.org/test/green.doc for PC and
http://www.vuk.org/test/green.mcw for the mac
where you can pick up the whole 30 pages document (just over 110Kb).

bingo
vuk

                                           +

Summary

The war in Kosovo may become the final dreadful catharsis of the Balkan
tragedy. The end of the second world war led to reconciliation and the
institutions of the new European order (from Council of Europe to the
EEC etc.). So now, after the latest Balkan war, definitive foundations
for the inclusion of the region into the European civil order have to be
conceived and negotiated. The design of these foundations should build
on the fact that several states of the Balkan region or the former
Yugoslavia are already on the road towards accession to the European
Union. While many of the policies of the EU are or can be extended to
neighbouring countries, the EU cannot simply open all its political
institutions immediately to numerous more small states, especially those
without tested experience in meeting European political norms.

Therefore a new political solution needs to be devised, to motivate the
countries of the former Yugoslavia and Albania to converge on modern
European norms, and to perceive, in relation to the EU, their own
inclusion rather than exclusion. For this purpose new categories of EU
membership are advocated, to which all states or regions of South-East
Europe could aspire quite soon. The progressive inclusion of these
states or regions in the policies and institutions of the EU is sketched
out. The present EU enlargement negotiations would in no way be
retarded, but elements of the ìpre-accessionî strategies would be
extended to the former Yugoslavia and Albania so as to reduce the
differentiation between them and the present accession candidates. The
cost of a strategic initiative for these ì5î states (Albania, Bosnia,
Croatia, FYR Macedonia and FR Yugoslavia), on a similar scale to the
cost of policies envisaged in Agenda 2000 for the accession candidates,
would in normal circumstances be moderate (about 5 billion euro per
annum), even supposing that all countries including FR Yugoslavia became
eligible, since the region is small in economic terms. This would be
well within the margin of available budgetary resources of the EU,
following the European Councilís Berlin agreement of Agenda 2000.
However exceptional post-war reconstruction costs will raise the total
bill substantially, calling for the combined resources of the
international financial institutions as well as the EU.

NATO has been performing an indispensable task, deploying military force
to try to stop the crimes against humanity. But as the military action
ends the civilian order will have to be built up, and here the European
Union must  assume its responsibilities.  Indeed the European Council
adopted guidelines in this sense at its meeting on 14th April. The
present paper offers a fresh set of ideas for a comprehensive strategic
initiative by the EU, putting together economic, monetary, political,
security and institutional components of a long-term system for post-war
South-East Europe, which should see the region become fully integrated
into the modern European order.

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