At least abroad, the outgoing Chancellor is still celebrated. The visit of Angela Merkel is “a great honor”, assures Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic before their tour of the Western Balkans, which starts on Monday in Belgrade: “We will never forget how much she has helped us.” As a woman, “the one with a cool head solved the problems of Europe ”, the Belgrade newspaper“ Blic ”celebrates the visitor.
Merkel is sure to have received praise from her hosts on one of her last business trips. But the balance of their policy on the Western Balkans is modest in view of the effort involved. The process of EU enlargement has come to a standstill. Beijing, Moscow and Ankara have made use of the power vacuum created by the EU’s flagging interest in the region. The exhaustion in the EU long-term waiting loop goes hand in hand with the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies, press control and the undermining of the separation of powers. Instead of reconciliation, irreconcilable settlements and simmering tensions are trumps.
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Foreign direct investment is increasing. But there can hardly be any talk of an approximation of living conditions. At best, as an extended workbench for western corporations, the bled-out EU forecourt is in demand because of its inexpensive and still available labor. The development and prosperity gap is widening, and the emigration of skilled workers is increasing: instead of moving closer to the EU, the Western Balkans seem to be moving further and further away from it.
Merkel’s efforts can hardly be denied. She was the mother of the “Berlin Process”, which seeks to support the EU integration of the six candidates. It is true that the Balkan regents always used the Western Balkans conferences, which have been held annually since 2014, for propagandistically exploited PR photos with Merkel. But their “Balkan heritage” has noticeably yielded little income despite their diligent farming.
“Make a contract” was her helpless-looking message at the Western Balkans summit in Sofia last year. But the Merkel system of a policy of permanent dialogue and small steps that played for a limited period of time was to reach its limits in the region of the unforgotten wars.
Some of Merkel’s previous interlocutors have been targeted by the judiciary
It is more the EU funds than European values and more the longing of the voters for Europe than their own convictions that make business-minded politicians at least rhetorically determined to put them on the EU map. The deep fall of Croatia’s ex-prime minister Ivo Sanader, who ended up behind bars for corruption, has shown them the consequences of a consistent rapprochement with the EU: They often have no interest in the rule of law. In the Merkel era, Berlin always mimed the honest broker of an EU enlargement, but at crucial moments – just like other EU members – it lacked the necessary consistency: domestic political considerations were often more important than what was announced, but in the case of the own electorate very unpopular expansion target.
Berlin, for example, loudly laments Bulgaria’s blockade of North Macedonia’s accession marathon. But in June 2019 it was the CDU that, after the painstakingly forced renaming of the Macedonian country name, was the first to put the brakes on expansion, demanding more time – and Skopje denied the deserved reward for the demonstrated willingness to compromise: the best moment that the EU had blocked by Athens for years -To finally get the integration of the multiethnic state off the ground was a miss.
Some of Merkel’s previous interlocutors, such as the Croatian Sanader, the Macedonian ex-prime minister Nikola Gruevski or Kosovo’s ex-president Hashim Thaci, have now been targeted by the judiciary. The realpolitician can hardly be blamed for seeking an exchange with every official. Oppositionists, however, accused her of fraternising too closely with dignitaries who were knitted in an authoritarian manner. For example, Merkel had herself photographed as an election worker with Serbia’s Vucic before almost every poll – and praised him for his “reforms”.
Also in view of the constant populist rumble of their own intrigues, many residents of the backward region have always valued Merkel’s calm, matter-of-fact manner as a symbol of the normality they missed. But she, too, has achieved little in terms of enlargement: Her person is more likely to be remembered in Europe’s waiting room than her political legacy.
