Xenophon Paper 2 pdf - ICBSS

The BSEC as an ante-room for the EU?
One dominant perception in Serbia is that the BSEC is an ante-room for EU membership,
the accession to the EU being the primary foreign policy goal of Serbia. Positive
experiences of regional cooperation such as that of Serbia with Bulgaria and Romania
made towards achieving White Schengen List standards have reinforced the importance
of the BSEC as an available diplomatic forum for pursuing diverse foreign policy interests.
Thus the BSEC represents one of the forms of regional cooperation that face virtually
no political opposition in the Serbian political system.
Importantly, Serbia perceives the BSEC as a form of cooperation being essentially
ensconced in project-based work; thus it will measure the success of the BSEC through
the relevance, quality and quantity of the joint projects pursued through it. One of the
crucial concerns for project-related cooperation for Serbia is the human dimension of
security, also emphasised through the last Belgian presidency of the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and within human security, particularly
the areas of fighting organised crime and terrorism as fundamentally regional phenomena.
Organised crime has taken a heavy toll on Serbian society, including being responsible
for the assassination of the first democratic Prime Minister of Serbia in 2003. Since then,
the Serbian security apparatus and society have learned to properly evaluate the threat
of organised crime, and have accumulated considerable methodological experience in
fighting it. Serbia is keen to share these experiences with the BSEC countries, but it is
particularly concerned to work with its BSEC partners who may be in need to jointly
address the emerging threats of organised crime, first and foremost through capacitybuilding
of the security apparatus.
Human security as a dominant concern
Security overall today has assumed the guise of human security, far greater in relevance
than the more traditional military types of security. One of the problems associated with
human security has to do with its potential to damage the democratic fabric of society,
through the creation of a subjective feeling of insecurity in members of the society. This
particular aspect of human security is sometimes labelled in theory as dominion of
franchise, namely the particular type of security that citizens believe stems from their
belonging to a society, be it defined through national, administrative (citizenship) or
other criteria. Democratic participation is largely conditioned by the ability of the
constituents to feel free as subjects, rather than as parts of faceless mechanisms of
decision-making that mediate the use of institutional power in society. Thus a relative
security from crime and terrorism constitutes the basis of a broader sense of protection
from arbitrary victimisation that encourages the free exercise of democratic processes.
120 UNFOLDING THE BLACK SEA ECONOMIC COOPERATION VIEWS FROM THE REGION