The last time Serbian and European leaders really got together, they seethed at each other. So why is the EU dusting off its plans to cuddle up to Belgrade? And why do I think it is a good idea?

I remember that last meeting in October, when, bunkered down in a conference centre in Luxembourg, Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s prime minister, proclaimed his country’s heartfelt desire to hang on to the province of Kosovo – whatever the wishes of the EU or US.

Olli Rehn, the EU’s enlargement Commissioner, said Serbia had done nowhere near enough to track down Gen Ratko Mladic, the man blamed for Europe’s worst massacre since the second world war – the killing of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.

The air was thick with recrimination. Rehn made clear that unless Serbia did much more on handing over Mladic, there was no chance that talks would resume on deepening Belgrade’s ties with Brussels,  negotiations supposed to open the way for Serbia to join the EU.

Now, however, Rehn is giving off much more positive signals, making clear that, if Serbia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday go well, the talks could pick up where they left off and make up for lost time.

The reason for the shift is that the EU and the western world are worried about the fate of Kosovo and the future of Serbia itself. These are important questions: at issue is just about the most unstable corner of Europe, which over the decades has notched up an unenviable record in exporting immigrants, crime and wars to the rest of the continent.

Moreover, the Kosovo crisis, which saw Nato go to war against Serbia in 1999, remains unresolved. The territory is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians and run by the United Nations yet remains part of Serbia.

Last year Britain, France and the US seemed to think that the solution was a diktat: a UN Security Council decision, over the heads of the Serbs, to give Kosovo a sort of internationally administered “independence”. They now understand no such resolution will be easy to achieve. Moscow made clear only this week that it will not sign up to any Kosovo deal that does not have the backing of Belgrade.

Hence the desire to do more to win Serbia round. The US, the UK and the Netherlands have already allowed Serbia to join Nato’s Partnership for Peace – much less important than the negotiations with the EU but symbolic nonetheless.

As for the EU, the idea would be to interpret the election of a new, euro-friendly Serb government as a step towards Mr Mladic’s arrest – particularly if the new administration makes the right noises about detaining him.

That would pave the way for a formal EU foreign ministers decision in February to open negotiations with the Serbs, so cushioning the blow of the imminent report on Kosovo’s future status by Martti Ahtisaari, former Finnish president and international problem-fixer extraordinaire. Talks with the EU might make the task of convincing Serbia to accept Kosovo’s independence that little bit less impossible.

Otherwise, the likelihood is that Serbia will become still more estranged from the EU. Without engagement with Europe, the country’s prospects are bleak. It could become a new, embittered Belarus in the heart of Europe.

Those who want to see Mladic face justice are bound to denounce any decision to downplay the Srebrenica file as a cynical exercise in realpolitik. But almost eight years after the Kosovo war, a dose of realpolitik is probably just what the region needs.

January 18th, 2007 in Enlargement, Foreign policy | Permalink