Excerpt from the book: Political neutrality or the European Union
In Serbia, years ago, such an image was created about the European Union that it looked more like an idealized community, a real little paradise on earth, than a real political creation with its good and bad sides. It was only with the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008 that the news that the European Union was also facing serious problems began to appear in our main media, albeit shyly. It was slowly becoming apparent that perhaps not everything is ideal in the European Union either. Announcements that the European Union is also dealing with difficulties and problems did not cause any dilemma among the parliamentary parties, except for the Democratic Party of Serbia, but, on the contrary, the enthusiasm for the European Union increased, which developed into real Eurofanaticism. The Democratic Party, while leading the Government, went public with the slogan, which contradicts basic reason, that the European Union has no alternative. With the coming to power of the Serbian Progressive Party, such Eurofanatic politics only continued.
Probably no one in the European Union itself, except for its biased and interested officials, can understand how it is possible that Eurofanaticism is spreading in Serbia, from which the European Union is stealing part of its territory, while the whole European Union is shaken by a wave of Euroscepticism. But here another question arises: how and why did Euroscepticism arise in the European Union and how did it start to spread more and more?
The first cause of the emergence of Euroscepticism is connected with the outbreak of the great financial crisis in 2008. With the crisis, it turned out that things are not going well in the economy of the European Union, which was a cohesive fabric among the member states. Many countries of the European Union lived much better and spent incomparably more than what they earned. Sooner or later, at some point the real bill had to come due. Thus, first of all, Greece was gripped by such a severe crisis that serious strikes and demonstrations have alternated there for years. Then a serious crisis knocked on Spain's door, where unemployment reached an almost incredible 27 percent.
Many European governments have fallen due to their inability to adequately respond to the challenges of the crisis. The Union was particularly inconvenienced by Iceland, which ended the accession negotiations. In our public, the termination of negotiations and the abandonment of European integration by Iceland has been largely silent. In any case, there were no serious debates about this precedent in the history of the European Union. The argument that Iceland is small and therefore should not be taken seriously is in itself frivolous. Previously, it was said that the example of Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, should not be dealt with, because Norway is again rich, which also speaks of the superficiality of Eurofanatic argumentation.
But if Iceland is small and Norway is rich, so they should not be taken into account, then what can be said about the announcement of Great Britain that it will call a referendum on leaving the European Union? Will Serbia ignore that announcement? Britain is a nuclear power, a permanent member of the Security Council and a country with special importance for the European economy and politics. Why does Britain want to leave the European Union and what consequences will this have for the future and survival of the European Union?
Certainly no one doubts Britain's ability to judge its interests well. Based on the announcement of the referendum on leaving the European Union, it can be concluded that Britain has estimated that things in the European Union will move in such a direction that it requires its departure. Theoretically speaking, perhaps it is really justified for Britain to leave the European Union, and at the same time it is good for Serbia to join it. But, before considering this theoretical possibility, one must investigate what is so bad about the European Union that Britain wants to leave it, and whether this is a warning for Serbia to doubt the rightness of joining the European Union. Especially since Britain certainly did not allow itself to be in a subordinate position in relation to Brussels, if it was not already in a privileged position. And not that Serbia is not in a privileged position in relation to the European Union, but Brussels is blackmailing it most directly to pay the entrance fee for entering the EU by handing over part of its territory.
If we were to follow more carefully the arguments for which Britain announces its exit from the European Union, we could conclude that the Union is not an organization that has a bright, reliable and guaranteed future. That is, it can be seen that Britain sees the possibility of the collapse of the Union rather than its progress. In the British public, there is a lively debate whether it is good to leave the European Union or to stay in it, unlike in Serbia, where in the media, apart from glorifying the European Union, any different opinion is unwelcome and banished. Basically two types of arguments appear as the main reasons why Britain should leave the EU. Some are related to the economy, and others are of a political nature.
First of all, it is interesting that almost identical arguments are repeated in the British debate for survival in the EU as in Serbia for its entry. Thus, advocates of the European Union in Britain claim that leaving the EU would mean "isolation", "that we must not argue with the EU", "that we cannot do it alone", "that foreign investments will flee from us", "that we are better off in EU". One of the loudest supporters of staying in the European Union is former Prime Minister Tony Blair. We see, therefore, that these arguments are almost identical to those that have only been heard in Serbia for years. Also, as in Serbia, there are representatives of big capital, who openly claim that there is no better idea than the European Union.
On the other hand, in the ruling Conservative Party, around one hundred MPs are extremely Eurosceptic and demand that a referendum on leaving the European Union be called as soon as possible. The relationship with the European Union has become a pre-election issue in Britain. The Conservative Party started with an initiative on "returning jurisdiction from Brussels", "defending sovereignty" and "protecting British interests". Then, in 2011, a special Law on the EU was adopted, which provides for all types of referendums, except for exiting the EU. However, there was an increasingly strong theme in the public about the inevitability of passing a law on the referendum on Britain's exit from the EU. In the end, Prime Minister David Cameron had to commit to calling a referendum in 2017, if he won an election in the meantime.
The British public is fundamentally very skeptical of the European Union, and very little support for the EU generally hovers around 20 percent. Several daily newspapers are strongly Eurosceptic and publish harsh criticisms of the European Union.
The main argument for leaving the Union is the return of sovereignty. According to constitutional theory and historical heritage, the British Parliament is sovereign. However, a good part of the regulations that apply on the island were adopted in Brussels, not in Westminster. Britain sometimes cannot influence them, especially bearing in mind that the Lisbon Treaty expands the range of cases in which decisions can be made by majority, that is, by overvoting. This means that Brussels can adopt regulations that are opposed by some EU members, if the majority of other members are in favor of them. Those regulations are above the national regulations and the state is obliged to apply them. By leaving the Union, Britain would regain its sovereignty.
In the case of Serbia, the European Union imposes incomparably more obligations, because the EU asks Serbia in advance to renounce sovereignty over a part of its territory in favor of Albanian separatists. Therefore, according to the dictates of Brussels, Serbia would hand over part of its territory, and for the rest of Serbia, limited sovereignty would be introduced by the European Union.
Another important argument for Britain leaving the European Union relates to the fact that too many powers have been transferred from nation states to the EU. Namely, the European Union implies the transfer of part of the state's competences to Brussels structures. London now wants to return some of the powers it previously transferred to Brussels. The British government is announcing discussions within the Union about this, seeking support from other countries. The current British European policy is "Less Europe", which means that Brussels should have less powers vis-à-vis the states. In contrast, from the British point of view, the EU is increasingly becoming a centralized "Eurofederation", which suppresses national and state elements and concentrates power in Brussels. By leaving the EU, Britain would regain all the competences, all the power it had as a country before joining the Union.
Contrary to this argument, the Serbian authorities seem to be eager to hand over all competences to Brussels as soon as possible. The authorities, as well as all parliamentary parties except the Democratic Party of Serbia, talk about joining the EU as the greatest possible boon that will befall the country. There is no mention that Serbia could formulate its national policy, which would soberly assess how it is possible for Serbia to hand over its competences, i.e. its power, to the Brussels institutions and bureaucracy, which are not themselves democratically elected.
Of the arguments put forward by the British public, the one that is particularly important is that the European Union is an undemocratic creation and that the work of its organs is not democratically controlled. It is about the fact that, apart from the European deputies, the election of other EU bodies is not related to direct elections. The President of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy) and the High Representative of the EU (Catherine Ashton) were selected at a dinner of European leaders on November 19, 2009. The president of the EU Commission and the commissioners are similarly elected, without direct elections, and they are confirmed by the European Parliament, and the large administrative apparatus of the Commission is at their disposal. The only ones who are directly elected by the people for European positions are the members of the European Parliament. However, since Brussels is too far from the common man, the turnout in the elections for the European Parliament is decreasing (in the last year in 2009, the average turnout was 43 percent, in Britain only 34,3 percent). is the problem of the "democratic deficit of the EU", i.e. the deficit of its legitimacy.
Serbia seems, unfortunately, to be tired of democracy, which enables public freedoms, but also imposes obligations. A part of our public simply cannot wait for us to transfer as many powers as possible to Brussels and for foreigners to take over the management of our country instead of us. The question is how much we care about democracy in Serbia itself, if we are ready to let almost everything, starting with where Serbia's borders are, be decided in Brussels instead of in Serbia.
The next argument concerns the question of whether the people have the right to vote on the European Union. Like the previous argument for leaving the European Union, this one also refers to the issue of democracy itself. Supporters of leaving the European Union in Britain believe that the people have the right to decide whether they want to be part of the EU or not, according to the highest democratic principles. Britain became a member of the European Community by a decision of the British Parliament (European Act) during the conservative government of Edward Heath in 1973, but, after the change of power, the Labor government of Harold Wilson organized a referendum in 1975, in order to check and confirm the decision of the previous government to join the European Union community.
Supporters of the referendum on Britain's exit from the EU say today that almost forty years have passed since then and that the people have the right to say whether they want to remain in the Union or not. In her book published in 2002 (Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World), former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered that the EU is fundamentally unreformable and that it is "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a program whose the inevitable fate of failure", and therefore advocated that the British renegotiate the terms of its membership, or leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Agreement trade.
In Serbia, on which the European Union imposes conditions that it has not imposed on any other country, among other things to normalize relations and establish good-neighborly cooperation with the separatist authorities in Pristina, there is no mention of organizing a referendum on whether Serbia should continue European integration under such conditions. The government does not even want a serious debate about what the blackmails coming from Brussels mean for Serbia, but every new request from the European Union is declared a diplomatic victory for Serbia.
In the campaign to leave the European Union in Britain, the argument that they are overwhelmed by Brussels regulations is also stated. The argument is that Brussels makes too many regulations, most of which are unnecessary. Many of them are meaningless. Although it is difficult to determine the number of pages, it is estimated that the corpus of EU legal regulations has around 80.000 to 100.000 pages and is continuously growing from year to year. These regulations fundamentally change the legal order of individual countries, and the countries themselves cannot always influence their adoption. By inertia, the Brussels bureaucracy tends to regulate what should not be regulated, even in the area of the common market. The EU has become a "bureaucratic monster", according to those Eurosceptic British politicians who are in favor of leaving the EU.
The authorities in Serbia do not have a clear idea of what regulations we as a country should adopt if we want to become a member of the European Union, nor in what way will this affect the legal order of the country and the lives of the citizens of Serbia. They only know that everything that Brussels asks for should be accepted without question. The government cultivates a spirit of subordination, an obedient attitude towards EU officials and officials. It is as if Serbia does not have any procedures for the rule of law and democracy, as if a completely new state is being created today.
Among the economic arguments for leaving the European Union, the prevailing view is that the European Union costs Britain too much. Eurosceptics believe that Britain gives more money to the EU budget than it withdraws from that budget. Out of the 40 years it has been a member, Britain has given more than it has received for 39 years. Britain is particularly sensitive to the fact that almost half of the EU budget is spent on agricultural subsidies, from which France benefits the most. About 5 percent of the population lives on agriculture in the EU, and it generates only 1,6 percent of the European Union's GDP. Also, opponents of integration regularly point out the unreasonable spending of EU money, not only on the cumbersome Brussels administration or propaganda, but also on various senseless projects. In addition, the EU has not been able to adopt the final account of the annual budget since 1994, because the Court of Auditors of the EU refuses to sign off on the report because it is usually missing a few billion euros whose whereabouts are unknown.
British Eurosceptics believe that there are other and better trade options than membership of the European Union. Today, free trade is becoming a general norm, so the open market of the EU no longer provides exclusive privileges as it once did, especially not in the era of the Eurocrisis. More than 90 percent of Britain's economy has no ties to the EU, and must function according to EU rules. Britain imports more from the EU than it exports, so it has a deficit. Britain's exports to the EU fell from 54 percent in 2006 to 46 percent in 2012, which means that Britain is also focusing on other export markets. Markets further afield from Europe, such as the BRICs, are growing, and Britain has doubled exports to these markets over the past five years. Outside the EU, Britain would be freer to trade, as it would not be bound by Brussels norms. It could conclude bilateral trade agreements with most countries. Greater trade with other countries would also mean stronger political relations. The Eurocrisis has shown that it was a deliberate and smart move in the long run to preserve the British national currency.
Unlike the British debate on the economic calculation of how much membership in the European Union costs, in Serbia the government took a dogmatic position that the only thing that matters is to join the European Union as soon as possible. The public is being deliberately misled that Serbia has economic benefits from the Stabilization and Association Agreement, although the facts show that the country has a direct loss of hundreds of millions of euros from this agreement. It is certain that Serbia will suffer greater and greater economic damage on the European road, which will call into question the very survival of the Serbian economy, and ultimately Serbia itself.
What can be drawn as a conclusion from the arguments given in Britain for leaving the European Union? First of all, these are arguments in principle that can basically be valid for every member state of the European Union, as well as for states that want to join the EU. It is of the utmost importance that these principled arguments have become relevant for such an important country as Britain. If they win in Britain, then the question of the survival of the European Union immediately opens up. The very discussion in Britain indicates that the golden age of the European Union is over and that a new page is being opened in inter-European relations.
Similar arguments are presented by former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, insisting that democracy is threatened by the supranational creation of Brussels and considering that nation states are the right framework for a democratic order. Klaus's main indications of the deficit of the EU, when it comes to political and economic freedoms, can be seen from a part of his address to the European Parliament on February 19, 2009: "Today's decision-making system in the Union is not the same as the classic parliamentary democracy tested and proven in history. In the usual parliamentary system, there is a part that supports the government and a part that belongs to the opposition, which is not the case in the European Parliament. Here, only one alternative is implemented, and whoever thinks about the other is considered an opponent of European integration. In our part of Europe, until recently we lived in a political system in which any alternative was inadmissible and in which therefore no parliamentary opposition existed. We have gained bitter experience that where there is no opposition, freedom disappears. Political alternatives should therefore exist. And not only that. The relationship between a citizen of this or that member state and a representative of the Union is not a standard relationship between a voter and a politician who represents him. In addition, the distance (and not only in the geographical sense) between citizens and representatives of the Union is essentially greater than it is within individual member states. This is denoted by various terms democratic deficit, loss of democratic responsibility, decision-making not by the elected but by the chosen, bureaucratization of decision-making and the like (…) It is also closely related to the issue of prosperity. It should be openly said that today's economic system of the Union is a system of suppressed market and continuous strengthening of the central management of the economy. Although history has clearly proven to us several times that no path leads in this direction, we are going in that direction again." (Vaclav Klaus, Europe and the EU: The Politician's View and the Economist's View, Belgrade, Official Gazette, 2010, p. 220- 225)
In other words, the European Union as a supranational creation becomes the real opposite of the national state, but also the real opposite of democracy as we know it within the framework of the national state. This conflict between the supranational creation and democracy becomes even more visible and strongly deepens with the economic crisis. Economic measures of radical austerity are being imposed from Brussels and Berlin on many countries, even though the citizens of those countries are against these measures. The most important decisions affecting the lives of millions of people are taken against the basic principles of democracy. From this confrontation between the interests of the European Union, as a supranational creation, and the interests of national states, a deep gap is created, which inevitably calls into question the survival of the European Union in its current form.
It is clear that there are countries like Germany for which the survival of the European Union is in their economic and state interest. But there are also countries that are not interested in remaining in the European Union. When one adds to these interests the fundamental deficit of democracy that prevails in a supranational creation such as the European Union, then it is realistic to expect further tearing of this creation at the seams. Certainly, the biggest challenge for the future and survival of the European Union in its current form is the announcement of the referendum on Britain's exit.
If the relations between Serbia and the European Union did not have those difficult obstacles and bad experiences that we talked about earlier, Serbia would again have plenty of reasons to reconsider those relations. Since Serbia received the Feasibility Study in 2005 and signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement in 2008, major changes have taken place, both in the EU itself and in our mutual relations. During that period in the EU, the project of the "European Constitution" (Treaty on the Constitution of Europe) was rejected in two national referendums (France and the Netherlands), the Union carried out a large expansion of 13 member states with generally bad consequences for its internal development and fell into a difficult financial situation. crisis, recession and unemployment, from which there is no way out even today. On the other hand, in February 2008, Serbia faced the unilateral secession of Kosovo and, in parallel with that, a general decline in economic activity, long-term recession and mass unemployment, the collapse of the judicial system and the omnipresent dominance of the executive power.
Throughout this period, the main trade, investment, security and political partner of Serbia was the EU. Almost everything that took place in Serbia, which came under the term "reform", was carried out under the tutelage of the EU. The general framework of those relations was the Stabilization and Association Agreement and various accompanying instruments.
Today, it can be confidently concluded that this arrangement brought more harm than good to Serbia, even if we did not take into account the greatest damage to the state interests of Serbia, which is, of course, the attempt to seize Kosovo and Metohija. Going by the chapters of this Agreement, I will mention only the most serious bad consequences of its application to Serbia.
In the area of the so-called of the political dialogue, Serbia is obliged to adapt its foreign, security and defense policies to the corresponding EU policies. On the other hand, there is nothing more murky and unclear in the overall EU policy than this area. Its foreign policy, security and defense activities move between the strategic interests of certain strong member states, on the one hand, and the actions of the NATO pact, on the other. According to an agreement between the EU and NATO from 2002, the EU can act in global crisis situations when NATO expresses its lack of interest in acting on its own. Here, therefore, it is not a matter of synchronizing the actions of two parties, but of the same strategy with different participants, one of which has the upper hand. If Serbia declared military neutrality in December 2007, then the state's actions according to the principles of this part of the Agreement (SAA) are in direct contradiction to the proclaimed security and defense strategy of Serbia. It is clear that Serbia's cooperation with the EU in the indicated areas would only draw Serbia into NATO. On top of that, bearing in mind that each of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that was admitted to the EU previously became a member of the NATO alliance, it is difficult to assume that Serbia could avoid that obligation, i.e. that unwritten condition.
According to the SAA, Serbia is obliged to develop regional cooperation, i.e. good neighborly relations. This would not be a burden for our country, quite the contrary, if this circle of neighboring countries in the European Union did not include Kosovo, which was recognized by 23 EU member states and recognized by EU institutions. Thus, in the case of Serbia, this harmless condition from the Agreement turns into an EU ultimatum for Serbia to develop good-neighborly relations with part of its territory. This process has recently been underway in the form of the First Agreement on the Normalization of Relations between Belgrade and Pristina and its accompanying Implementation Plan. The fact that these documents are directly anti-constitutional and illegal, and that the request to examine their constitutionality and legality has been standing untouched before the Constitutional Court of Serbia for seven months, does not excite any official of either Serbia or the European Union. For the sake of fulfilling its goal, for Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo, the Union will smoothly pass over the most blatant violation of the Constitution and several laws, although at the same time it will continue to act as a strict judge in matters of the development of the rule of law in Serbia.
In the trade sphere, the provisions of the SAA on foreign trade liberalization cause serious material damage to Serbia. It is understood, not because Serbia should be closed with strict customs and other protection measures, but quite the opposite, because it should be opened to all markets where it can perform with its products. Serbia's export potential (agriculture, food industry, construction, electricity) is such that it would have to orientate itself on other markets, and its trade policy is increasingly dependent on the EU (about 54 percent of total imports and exports). from the SAA, if a free trade zone between Serbia and the EU were to be established in a short period of time, this dependence would increase even more. Serbia has already abolished almost all import tariffs for industrial products from the EU, and by the beginning of 2014, it should complete the same with agricultural products. If that happens, the apparent trade equality, the completely liberalized import of all products from the EU, including agricultural products, will turn into complete trade inequality. Serbia will be flooded with cheap agricultural goods from the EU, otherwise extremely well subsidized in accordance with the agricultural policy there, and our agricultural production will completely collapse. This will also destroy our biggest export opportunity for other markets. On the other hand, as shown by the past five years since Serbia implemented the Transitional Trade Agreement as part of the SAA, the funds from the pre-accession aid instruments that Serbia receives from the EU (which, by the way, are not even applied to the development of agriculture) are not sufficient even for the material compensation of customs losses in the budget due to sharply reduced import duties.
In short, the planned dynamic from the SAA, according to which the foreign trade liberalization of Serbia takes place in parallel with its economic strengthening, has not been realized since Serbia applied the SAA (its trade part) and therefore it is easy to conclude that this model of trade cooperation between Serbia and the EU has completely failed and that it should be replaced with a new one.
The next problem for Serbia arising from the implementation of the SAA is the necessity for our country to change its legislation in accordance with that of the EU. Excessive changes in legislation in the last five years is the point at which the European Commission standardly praises Serbia in its annual progress reports. (Incidentally, this was the only place of praise until this year's report, in which the EC did not spare praise at the expense of progress in the so-called normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo.) In the past period, Serbia did not adapt its legislation to the Union to the extent that would reflect the real accession and the real needs of internal reform, it already did so as if it were already a member state of the EU. Thus, instead of adapting the legislation, which, as the experiences of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe show, is a completely appropriate way for the accession process, Serbia harmonized the legislation as if it was about to join the Union or, on the other hand, was already a member. As a result, we got hundreds of laws that cannot be applied in reality, since it is very far from that of the Union. As time passed, this work became more and more futile in light of the fact that, for objective reasons, the perspective of membership for Serbia was moving into the distant and uncertain future. Viewed from this angle, the Commission's lavish praise for this pile of legislation is not only frivolous but also hypocritical.
Finally, as the fifth example of bad results in the relations between Serbia and the EU arising from the implementation of the SAA, I will mention the judicial reform in Serbia. This is an issue that is not only stated in the Agreement as key to the functioning of other forms of cooperation (free movement of workers, capital investment and business settlement, provision of services, free competition, etc.), but is highlighted as a priority in the initiation of accession negotiations within chapters 23 and 24 dedicated to human rights, the fight against corruption and organized crime. The European Union was not innocent in the judicial reform of 2008 and 2009, which today, according to general opinion, had disastrous effects for the Serbian judiciary. Namely, she first wholeheartedly praised and supported that reform, as can be seen from the report of the Commission on Serbia's progress from 2009, and after the first insights into the failures, she continued to provide discreet assistance to the Ministry of Justice, without looking back at the criticism and proposals of the legal profession in Serbia. It was only in mid-2010 that the Commission started criticizing it, when it was already too late to stop the decline of the Serbian judiciary. Therefore, today's support for the new Justice Reform Strategy is not very important, since it is clear that the Union only superficially and politically dealt with that issue at a time when the reform already had to be carried out.
These examples show that Serbia has to get rid of such EU services arising from the SAA as soon as possible. In other words, the time has come to replace this model of comprehensive relations between Serbia and the EU, which supposedly should lead Serbia to full membership, with another and different approach. The one that will lead to mutual benefit in our mutual relations.
More in the book: Vojislav Koštunica: Political neutrality or the European Union, Slobodan Jovanović Fund, Belgrade, 2013.
