Cutting or Tightening the Gordian Knot

Background Speech
Judy Batt
Regional Stability in the Western Balkans
Stabilisation of the region has come a long way in the last few years.
The past year has seen further positive developments in the integration
of the region into Euro-Atlantic structures. Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina
have at last joined the PfP, and signed SAAs. The Stability
Pact has been superseded by the “locally-owned” Regional Cooperation
Council, which has now set up headquarters in Sarajevo.
Nevertheless, despite these developments, there is a persistent sense of
fragility and precariousness around the region’s stability, which became
more tangible in the last year. This was due mainly – but not only – to
the complex, bitterly contested and ultimately very messy outcome of
the Kosovo status process.
The basic underlying challenge to regional stabilisation remains weak,
and what we might call “unfinished” states: states that cannot yet be taken
for granted as “given”. What do I mean by this?
EU annual progress reports regularly point to the lack of administrative
capacities, the human and financial resources to deliver adequately what
European citizens expect of their states: personal security, economic
growth and employment, education and health services, pensions and
care for the elderly. State institutions are very costly in terms of their
demands on state budgets, but they don’t seem to do too much beyond
securing their own existence. In fact, the state is often regarded by citizens
as an obstacle to be bypassed as far as possible, rather than as the
“enabler” of productive effort. Political elites are mistrusted, widely regarded
as corrupt and self-serving. Democratic elections take place –
indeed almost too often it sometimes seems – but the sense of public
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