Balkan Summit Urged to Tackle Bilateral Disputes

Civil society groups at the Vienna Balkan summit have given several concrete recommendations for governments on how to resolve bilateral disputes and speed up EU integration.

The set of recommendations was presented to the summit by the European Fund for the Balkans, EFB, and the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, BiEPAG.

Their policy brief, called "Removing obstacles to EU accession:  Bilateral disputes in the Western Balkans", recommends that countries from the region make the resolution of bilateral disputes a priority by signing a declaration not to use such issues to block other countries' accession negotiations and by subjecting their relations to annual reviews.

The policy paper envisages a new mediation procedure for when bilateral talks do not bear fruit and installing a framework among the countries to learn from the region's best practices.

It also urges the EU to step up its own involvement in the resolution of outstanding disputes in the region by appointing a special EU coordinator for bilateral disputes.

This, the policy paper says, would "demonstrate the EU's commitment to addressing these issues" and ensure "a coherent engagement in ongoing resolution processes."

One piece of advice for the EU is to tackle potentially problematic disputes early on in the EU accession process before they turn into major obstacles by using conditionality and the joint membership perspective as a driving force towards a compromise.

When disputes involve an EU member state, as in the Greece-Macedonia "name" dispute, or between Croatia and Serbia over the treatment of minorities, the civil society groups advise addressing the issues through the European Council Presidency or through referral to...