Thirteen years ago, in 1988, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was in its last years, the reformed Communists in Slovenia promoted a simple slogan: Europe Now! (Evropa Zdaj!). We are Europe, not the Balkans! they said. Only in Europe can Slovenian political interests be advanced, not in the Yugoslavia of Milosevic!
Europe Now! won the day: its main promoter, Milan Kucan, is even today 13 years later the President of Slovenia. By disassociating themselves from Yugoslavia, Slovenes declared they wanted to join Europe. This was, in their minds, everything that Yugoslavia was not.
To be pro-European meant to be anti-Yugoslav and anti-Balkans. Little did it matter that Europe was not exactly promoting isolationism, ethnic nationalism and separation from others, all of which was part of the Slovenian National Programme. Even less important was the fact that Yugoslavia had styled itself as a semi-confederation of fairly independent nations, nation states, which since 1974 had been recognized as living under the same roof. Slovenian nationalism was pro-European, and Europe finally embraced it, not least because it was anti-Yugoslav that is, anti-Milosevic.
A year later, I witnessed the first public actions by the newly emerged Croatian opposition to Yugoslavia and communism. The first political parties and other semi-political groups all used the European flag (then with only 12 stars) to emphasise how European they were.
Historical mistakes?
The actual winner of the first Croatian elections, Franjo Tudjman, was much less in love with Europe. But even he argued that Croatia was now being treated as a Balkan country, whereas she really belonged in Central Europe where she had been under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All his attempts at foreign policy were aimed at correcting this historical mistake.
As for the Croats themselves, they saw themselves as saving Europe from their eastern (not-exactly-European) neighbours: Muslim-dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina and Milosevic-led Serbia.
During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a similar argument was promoted by Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). Bosnia-Herzegovina, they argued, was basically a European country. Its Muslims were Slavs, not Turks or Arabs. They really belonged to Europe. Montenegro reacted the same way after 1998, when Milo Djukanovic became its president. Links with Italy and Croatia improved, while those with Serbia were almost totally severed.
To all post-Yugoslavs (with the exception of Serbia under Milosevic), to be European meant to be different from the Balkans. The Balkans was a zone of insecurity and poverty; Europe was a safe haven both militarily and economically.
The notion of Europe was almost a mirror-image of the Balkans. It scarcely registered that Greece, for example, had managed to be part of the Balkans and Europe at the same time. No reconciliation of the two was attempted. And to be perfectly honest, it is unlikely that one would have been possible, either. With its strict rules and pre-conditions even for associate membership, Europe became unlikely to tolerate a new Greece.
An either/or choice
The new candidates (including the countries of post-Yugoslavia) are now faced with an almost either/or choice: they can either forget about their distinguishing features (including their past, and many of the symbols of their statehood), or they should forget about Europe.
Even if they do forget about Europe, Europe is hardly likely to forget about them. As we discovered when NATO intervened in Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999, Europe was determined to protect common values (whatever that meant) in their own backyard. These common values were not just to be protected but to be introduced where they were not shared by the local population.
With the fall of Milosevic, however, the notion of Europe has changed. Firstly, the Serbs are now not anti-European. The new Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, a German-educated philosopher, and Mr Kostunica (now the Yugoslav President), bore flags of European countries and institutions while leading anti-Milosevic protests in Winter 1996/1997. A decade later, but equally passionately, Slovenias cry of Europe Now was heard in Belgrade. Belgrade is the world, they chanted, (or Belgrade is sacred, as the Serbo-Croat word svet means both world and sacred).
Mr Milosevics regime branded them (and especially Mr Djindjic) as servants of the West. This was a dangerous accusation in a country that had so recently been at war with NATO. And indeed, although originally opposed to the NATO intervention, the present leaders in Belgrade have moved quickly to reconnect their broken ties with the West, and especially with Europe. To them, as to many Serbs today, to be in Europe means to end Milosevics policy of isolation. It means the same as it once did to the Slovenes, the Croats and Bosniaks to break away from communism, from its own past and from the Balkans, if not geographically, then certainly in a political and symbolic sense.
Selling the idea of Europe
But now that there is no Balkans to be its mirror-image what is Europe? Can it still be defined as the non-Balkans? Can it still be defined as a non- or anti-Milosevic institution? Shouldnt it now be defined by what it is in the region, rather than by what it is not?
Now that Milosevic has gone, Europe is going to have to sell itself better to post-Yugoslavs. Europe is indeed a necessity; it is something that one must accept in order not to be isolated and pushed to the margins of political and economic development. But the more developed and more distanced the former Yugoslavs are from the Milosevic period, the less enthusiastic they become about Europe.
Slovenia is a good example. In the country that was the first to declare Europe Now, the latest polls show that only 39.8% believe that it would be useful for Slovenia to become a member of the EU. The figure has gone down from 47.1% in January of this year this shows the connection to the changes in Belgrade two months earlier. At the same time, the share of those who believe that it would not be useful for Slovenia to join the EU increased from 29.4% to 37.2%. For the first time ever, less than 50% of Slovenes says they would vote in favour of joining the EU 48.3%, compared with 53.8% two months before.
The same pattern is emerging in Croatia. A recent poll in the leading Croatian daily paper, Vecernji List, shows that 67.8% are in favour, as against 88.2% in March 1998, 81,6% in July 1999, and 82.2% in November 2000 (the month after the fall of Milosevic). While in 1991 and 1992, Europe was seen as a potential saviour in the face of an all-out war with Serbia, with the end of Milosevic, Croatian fears of Belgrade have almost vanished. Cultural, political and economic reasons all favour a new rapprochement between Belgrade and Zagreb.
The Croats are, of course, sensitive that this new partnership should in no way endanger Croatian independence. But would joining the European Union advance this independence? Croatian public opinion is still nationalistic. It is concerned that its currency, military and legal systems are all under threat from Europe (especially in relation to pressure from the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague). Just as Slovenes are unwilling to allow foreigners to buy property in their tiny republic, so Croats are afraid that joining Europe would open the doors to foreigners (including the Serbs) to buy property in Dalmatia and Istria. Is that really what we fought for? they ask.
In addition, both Slovenia and Croatia and others in former Yugoslavia, fear that their tiny republics would be neglected and ignored once they were part of a large and complex European decision-making process. Croats would be less than two per cent of the EU population, and Slovenes only one percent, or less.
They once feared that their influence over Yugoslav politics was small, despite being twenty per cent (Croats) and eight per cent (Slovenes) of the population, and having the right to veto almost all decisions. Why would they now accept European-wide democracy in an increasingly state-orientated institution? This is a nation that started a war with its own state, because it felt unequal. Why would it now be satisfied with becoming an almost invisible minority in a much more complex multi-national structure, such as the European Union?
A promised land?
There are other reasons too less political but no less important for the growing scepticism about Europe. The citizens of the former communist states of Eastern Europe had a very limited experience of the realities of living in the West. Many of them sincerely believed that the West was a promised land. They regarded Hollywood films and soaps such as Dynasty as almost documentary.
The West (Europe) meant wealth, living well, being free to do (almost) anything one wants. The Berlin wall created a false image of the Other on both sides of the divide. The memoirs of those Western soldiers who finally met up with their Russian colleagues in peace-missions were full of surprise at what they found. They are humane, nice, even funny, write Canadian generals of their Russian counterparts. Not at all like those Russians from James Bond films! What a surprise!
However, on the other side of the divide, there was often disappointment, too. I speak here from personal experience. In 1994, when I arrived in Manchester from Zagreb, I was totally unprepared for the sight of a homeless person on the street. Homelessness in the West? It cant be true. What do you mean, he/she does not have a home? Not even during the war in Croatia had I seen a homeless person on the streets! Trains derailed? Never happened back home! People dying of tuberculosis in high schools, and of meningitis in student dormitories? These things happened only in the literature of a century ago! The first available appointment with a doctor is in three weeks? Foot and mouth that cant be stopped? What do you mean, it cant be stopped? We stopped planes attacking us, didnt we? And so on
Suspicious of the Other
Whenever I go back to Zagreb, I find myself in the role of an unpaid and self-appointed ambassador of the EU (more specifically, Britain!). I like Britain (Europe) very much for its libraries, fairness, and even (one can hardly believe) for its climate, too. But I feel that my Zagreb friends trust me less and less. Not only because they have never been prepared to understand the world beyond the border, or because they are suspicious of the unknown Other.
They do, indeed, say they would like to live in Europe, one way or another. But they also point out that they could not survive without their nice sea and food, and drinking coffee for hours. They play better football than England - now even the Slovenes have made it, due to immigrants from Bosnia and Serbia. They also feel that they can work in Europe if they want to: about 1.7 million former Yugoslavs were Gastarbeiter in various European countries (mostly Germany), long before the break-up of Yugoslavia, when their native country was not only a member of the EU but a communist federation.
Many of them came home to die, exhausted, disappointed and bitter. Those who returned from Canada, Australia or Argentina did so more often than not as fanaticised nationalists, not democrats. Living abroad and in Europe made just as many people anti-European, as living in Yugoslavia made many anti-Yugoslav. It made them dream of another, better, world somewhere else, over there, on the far side of the divide. But once they got over there, they did not find the ideal world they had been looking for. So why would they feel that they had to join European Union after all? When the danger from the East had passed (as they now feel it has), there has to be another reason to do so.
It is becoming more difficult to sell Europe in a political sense, too. I tried to explain British devolution to an Albanian friend of mine from Kosovo last Summer. What do you mean they have a parliament now? We (that is, Kosovo) have had one since 1945. And when Milosevic closed it down, we protested we even went to war! And you tell me that Scotland has only just got its own parliament! So what?
Or, as a Slovene friend asked me recently: OK, with that new Parliament in Scotland, do they have the right of self-determination? In other words: can they declare independence? Not an unexpected question from a Slovene: Slovenia used the constitutional provision on the right of self-determination, and declared independence, despite worldwide opposition and the tanks on their streets. It was the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 that ultimately legitimised the will of the Slovenes to create their own state, independent of Yugoslavia. Does Scotland have the same right? Probably, yes but it is now the Slovene who needs convincing of the credentials of British democracy, not the other way round.
