14
Examination of witnesses
Sian Macleod and Ian Cliff.
Q1 The Chair: Good morning, and welcome to Sian MacLeod and Ian Cliff. Thank you very much indeed for coming. This session will focus on politics and security in the Western Balkans. This is the first evidence session in our very short inquiry on the Western Balkans. This is a public session and is being streamed live on the Parliament website. A transcript will be sent to you so that you can make sure that it is in accordance with what you said, or think you said, and you can put forward corrections if necessary. I remind members of the committee to declare any interests when first speaking.
If you could give us a brief introduction to yourselves when you answer the first question, that would be very helpful.
What are the recent events that have led to the recent escalation and tensions in Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina? Was this predictable or preventable, and are we witnessing a new dynamic recently?
Sian MacLeod: Good morning, and thank you very much for the invitation to meet you. Until very recently, I was Ambassador in Belgrade and before that our Ambassador to the OSCE. I have been a diplomat for 37 years and have just left the Diplomatic Service.
I strongly welcome the committee’s continued interest in the Western Balkans. Before I comment specifically, I stress that I have only recently left Belgrade and the Diplomatic Service. Although I hope I can add some insight to what you are doing, I am particularly conscious that I have a very able and diligent successor now in Belgrade, and I hope you will understand if I stay within the areas of my experience and competence and not stray too far into uninformed opinions that could cause him or other Ambassadors in the region any difficulties.
I will not comment in detail on recent events, but I will say briefly as an observation that in these situations in the region there are underlying constants that will be very familiar to many members of the committee. You also have fluctuating dynamics which reflect the personalities involved, their relationships, their perceptions and their personal judgments, as well as external factors and some internal political ones. The other point I would add is that, as ever in this region, sadly one of the constants is that a habit for inflammatory rhetoric carries constant risks of miscalculation which can lead to escalation, flare-up and tension. Ian may want to add more.
Ian Cliff: I was Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina from 2001 to 2005 and then Ambassador to Kosovo from 2011 to 2015. More recently, I had a role as one of the two research analysts in the Foreign Office looking at the whole Western Balkans region, but I have now retired from that. Like Sian, I also did a stint as Ambassador to the OSCE in Vienna. I have the same considerations as Sian but I am a bit longer in the tooth, so people do not remember me as well, and so perhaps I can say just a little more.
I know that the committee does not want too much detail, but I will say a word or two about the events in Serbia and Kosovo that led to two very serious outbreaks of violence this year—the two worst that there have been since the independence of Kosovo in 2008—and then a word or two about Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The recent disputes on Serbia-Kosovo go back to what appears a rather obscure issue about vehicle number plates. But what they were really about is sovereignty, and particularly Kosovo’s sovereignty over its four northern municipalities, which adjoin Serbia and which are 90% or more inhabited by Kosovo Serbs, not by Kosovo Albanians, who of course make up the majority in Kosovo. The disputes are also linked to Kosovo’s failure to set up an association of Serb-majority municipalities. That was an undertaking made in 2013, in the dialogue facilitated by the EU between Serbia and Kosovo in the Brussels agreement, which would have created an association of the four northern municipalities I have just mentioned and six other Kosovo Serb-majority municipalities in the south of Kosovo. Basically, Kosovo has not introduced this association because virtually all Kosovo Albanians have concluded that it would create an entity akin to the Republika Srpska in Bosnia, which constantly challenges the authority of the central state.
The recent violence arose when the present Government of Kosovo introduced a deadline by which Kosovo Serbs had to adopt Republic of Kosovo number plates for their cars. This issue was going on when I was in Kosovo. This led to demonstrations by the Kosovo Serbs, egged on by Serbia, and in the end the head of the police in the north of Kosovo, a Kosovo Serb, said he would not implement the number plate measures and was sacked. The response of the Kosovo Serbs was to resign en masse from all the Kosovo institutions. The 10 Kosovo Serb MPs in the Kosovo Parliament all resigned. They all belonged to a party called Srpska Lista, which is controlled from Belgrade. Crucially, the four mayors in these four northern municipalities all resigned.
The Kosovo Government then said they would follow Kosovo laws to the letter and hold fresh elections for new mayors. The Kosovo Serbs, again with encouragement from Belgrade and Srpska Lista, said that they would boycott these elections. However, Prime Minister Kurti, who has a rather literal approach to things sometimes, ploughed on, despite some requests from the international community not to do so, and held the elections. The only people who voted were a handful of Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Bosniaks who live in the north—everyone else boycotted. That resulted in the election of totally unrepresentative Kosovo Albanian mayors in these four northern municipalities.
When they tried to enter their offices, there were demonstrations by the Kosovo Serbs, no doubt encouraged from Belgrade, which turned violent. In one incident in May, 93 peacekeepers from KFOR, the NATO force, were injured, which is quite an extraordinary event in Kosovo's history since 2008. After that, there were attempts by the EU, which facilitates the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, to try to calm things down, but there was really no progress. A pathway to normalisation was drawn up, which again addressed this question of the association of Serb-majority municipalities and some things that are important to Kosovo, such as missing persons from the war, Serbian barriers to Kosovo exports, and so on. But that still did not make a lot of progress.
Then, out of the blue, in September, there was an even more serious incident when the Kosovo police went to investigate two lorries without number plates that were parked on a bridge in a place called Banjska in northern Kosovo. They were set upon by a large armed group, of 30 or maybe more, of what you might call paramilitaries—the Kosovo Government call them terrorists—armed with the most extraordinary heavy weapons, and it seems with armoured personnel carriers with fake KFOR plates. As a result, there were several exchanges of fire; one Kosovo policeman was killed and two more were injured. Three of the paramilitaries were killed and the rest took refuge in the nearby Banjska Serbian Orthodox monastery. The Kosovo police managed to re-establish control in the end.
You may wish to describe these as terrorist acts—indeed, they were condemned by the international community—but in Serbia, President Vučić declared a day of mourning for the three dead paramilitaries and reinforced his army on the Kosovo-Serbia border and put it on high alert. That led to the deployment of 600 extra British troops to KFOR—400 happened to be there in Kosovo on an exercise, and 200 were from the over-the-horizon presence, the strategic reserve force, which we look after, as well as 100 extra Romanians. President Vučić was told by the US, the UK and Germany to pull his troops back from the border, which he sort of did.
Another extraordinary development was that a man called Milan Radojčić, who was the vice-president of the Srpska Lista party among the Kosovo Serbs, controlled from Belgrade, and a kind of Mr Big businessman-cum-criminal with a finger in every pie in the north of Kosovo, announced that he had been responsible for this assault and that Belgrade had known nothing about it. An investigation is going on, but obviously tension is very high.
On Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is much simpler. Basically, the recent tensions, which have not involved any serious violence, have stemmed from long-standing pressure from the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina for something akin to secession. The president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, has, with Russian support, challenged the legitimacy of the latest High Representative of the international community. The Republika Srpska therefore introduced two laws: one saying that decisions by the state court, the top-level court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, did not apply in the Republika Srpska, and the other saying that decisions by the High Representative would not be published in the Republika Srpska gazette, which meant that they would be invalid there. Those laws were overturned using the Bonn powers by the High Representative but Dodik signed them into force anyway. He has now been brought before the High Court—the state-level court, which he says he does not recognise—and charged with failing to comply with instructions by the High Representative. There have been protests about this, and about 100 people went to the inter-entity boundary between Republika Srpska and the Federation and chanted, “The border exists”, and so on. The situation is not as acute as that in Serbia-Kosovo but nevertheless it is extremely worrying.
The Chair: Thank you, that is a very good introduction. I realise that it was a complex question and there are complex strands to this.
Ian Cliff: I tried to keep it as short as I could, but I know I went on a bit.
Q2 Baroness Sugg: Thank you for that fascinating introduction. You have covered this a little, but can you say a bit more about the threat of non-state actors? I appreciate that sometimes it can be difficult to draw a line between those. What would you say the level of threat is posed by violent non-state actors, and how has that evolved over time?
Ian Cliff: I do not think there is a huge problem. There was a problem at the height of the trend of Muslims from Europe going to join ISIS, or Daesh. Quite a lot of Albanians from Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia went, and there were quite a lot of Bosniaks, not just from Bosnia but from the Sandžak area of Serbia. But that has all receded.
On the other side, there is the idea of non-state actors who are Serb or Slav nationalists— Sian, you may have a better feel for this than I do. In the end, there are these extremist groups but generally they are controlled by the Government of wherever they are—usually Serbia. The only thing is that, if it turned out that Radojčić really was responsible for the paramilitary attack at Banjska and had no support from Belgrade—which I find improbable—then we would be going into a new dynamic with a non-state actor. However, I do not think that is the case.
Sian MacLeod: I agree with a lot of what Ian said. I would add that I think Radojčić is sanctioned by the UK.
Ian Cliff: Yes, he is.
Sian MacLeod: On the question of non-state, or apparently non-state, actors involved in northern Kosovo, one thing I learned in my four years in the Western Balkans is that things are not always as simple as they might seem at first. There are very many layers of complexity with anything that happens in the Western Balkans. That is my general comment.
Of the individuals and groups involved, there are definitely those who have contacts with the Government or with parts of the authorities in Serbia, but it would be a matter of debate as to how far they are under direct control. For example, Ian mentioned earlier the incident where KFOR peacekeepers were injured—some of that was during my time. Those were serving military personnel from Italy and Hungary, and it was manifestly not in Serbia’s interests for anybody to be injuring KFOR peacekeepers. So I think there are questions about how far any of these organisations or individuals are directly under control. But that is a matter for debate.
Q3 Lord Soames of Fletching: It has been my experience that, when you have a ghastly global disaster such as with Hamas and Israel, in which the whole world’s diplomatic effort is deeply invested, people whose interests are not necessarily ours tend to step in and exert quite often their existing malign influence. What do you think Russia will take advantage of? It seems to be making trouble everywhere in the region, and it may well take this moment to tick up its activity while the world’s attention is elsewhere.
Sian MacLeod: I did not mention this at the beginning but I have done two postings in Russia. I will try not to talk for too long though.
Russia’s interests and strategy in the Western Balkans generally is to exploit the region’s challenges and divisions, and it will take advantage of anything it can take advantage of. It is a mistake to jump to the conclusion that anything that happens in the Western Balkans is Russia’s fault—that is not the case. The region has many challenges of its own, but the Kremlin is generally happy to exploit them.
I think it aims to keep the region slightly off balance, and to slow or obstruct its progress to a more settled and prosperous future with close ties with its western European neighbours. It does that in a number of ways. I am not there at the moment, so I do not know how Russia sees the current situation, but certainly it is always looking for opportunities to exploit challenges. Clearly, it does this in a number of ways, whether that is working through individuals or groups or just through making difficult situations even more complicated.
The Chair: Is that recognisable, or is it just supposition?
Sian MacLeod: Sometimes it is recognisable and sometimes it is assessment, rather than supposition. Ian may want to comment more specifically on Bosnia, where Russia is able to have a more formally unhelpful role. On Serbia and Kosovo, it is a slightly different issue; Serbia looks to Russia, as it does to China, for support in the UN Security Council on its position on Kosovo.
You see a lot through the media; quite a lot of coverage in the Serbian media in the past has been particularly favourable to Russia. We will come on to the EU later, but the massive support that the EU gives to the region is very under-recognised in Serbia, and if you ask many Serbians, they will say that they get more help from Russia or China than they get from the EU, which of course is not the case. That is a long way of saying it, but that is a mixture of my assessment and some fairly substantive facts.
Ian Cliff: One thing that used to be very visible when I was in Kosovo—I am not sure whether it is still there—is that, when you crossed the bridge in the divided city of Mitrovica from Mitrovica South, with a Kosovo Albanian majority, to Mitrovica North, with a Kosovo Serb majority, the first thing you saw was a huge picture of Mr Putin. Of course, Russia puts itself forward as a friend, in particular of the wider Serb community around the region. I very much agree with what Sian said. Russia’s interest is more in just being disruptive and making life difficult for NATO and the EU rather than in pursuing any deep objective of its own.
On Bosnia, as Sian said, Russia has a more formal opportunity to make trouble. I think I mentioned that President Dodik is taking the line that the International High Representative’s appointment was illegitimate. The High Representative is appointed by the Peace Implementation Council of Dayton, which includes Russia, but Russia does not have a veto. Christian Schmidt was appointed legitimately by the Peace Implementation Council, which includes the UK. It is true that, in the past, the appointment of quite a few High Representatives has been welcomed when the UN has been debating Bosnia, but that is not always the case. However, the argument put forward by Russia, which has now been taken up by Dodik, is that the appointment of the High Representative has to be approved by the Security Council, where of course Russia has a veto. We have pushed that argument away, but Russia can still make difficulties. The mandate of the EU peacekeeping force in Bosnia is from the Security Council and will come up for renewal next month, and I certainly do not know whether Russia will choose to use its veto to stop it. There was a big worry last year that it might do so, but it was persuaded not to. Russia has plenty of scope for just making trouble.
Sian MacLeod: I do not think that any state in the Western Balkan region wants to be beholden to Russia. Russia’s perception of its own interests is not the same as the interests of each of the Balkan states. Although Serbia is widely seen as having a closer relationship with Moscow, it is not a straightforward one. Almost in a Tito-esque way, it is balanced with its relationships with the United States, the European Union, China, Turkey, and so on.
Q4 Baroness Morris of Bolton: Thank you very much for your interesting observations so far. I have an interest to declare—a very obscure one but an interest none the less. I am chairman of the Centre for Islamic Finance at the University of Bolton, and I was instrumental in getting together our master’s programme with the University of Sarajevo.
Do you think that the recent instability will affect the important progress made towards resolution of the legacy issues such as the prosecution of war crimes and achieving justice for victims of conflict-related sexual violence?
Sian MacLeod: I will not comment specifically on the latest events, but it is a fact that progress on these very sensitive issues is painfully slow, regardless of any particular events. I note that we continue to work closely and support the work of Chief Prosecutor Brammertz in all that he and his team at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals continue to do to try to facilitate co-operation and progress across the whole region. Clearly, this is still an obstacle to the region’s development, prosperity and normalisation.
Ian Cliff: In the case of Bosnia, there might be a problem because most of the war criminal and sexual violence in conflict cases are now being dealt with locally, not by the Residual Mechanism. If the Republika Srpska argument that the decisions of the state court of Bosnia-Herzegovina do not apply to Republika Srpska were to gain any traction, that would present a problem because most of the war crimes cases in Bosnia-Herzegovina are tried at the state level. However, setting that aside, I do not really think it will make a huge difference. You have the Specialist Chambers of the Kosovo Court sitting in The Hague, which are dealing with a number of very prominent figures from the Kosovo Liberation Army, but they will not be affected by these events.
As Sian says, the whole thing is just painfully slow throughout the region. For example, in Kosovo, they had the first conviction for wartime rape only last year, and as far as I know there has been only that one conviction. You will know better than I do that there are social issues related to the stigma associated with women in particular who are the victims of wartime rape. That subject was a big theme when I was Ambassador in Kosovo and William Hague was the Foreign Secretary, and it remains a key priority for us.
Q5 Baroness Coussins: When some of us visited Kosovo a few years ago to gather evidence as part of a previous inquiry into the Western Balkans, one of the most acute concerns expressed to us on conflict-related sexual violence was that all the evidence currently collected and stored in EULEX[1] would be lost and not acted on. There was a huge appeal to us to try to promote the transfer of all that documentation to a UN source, where the groups we spoke to thought there might be more chance of further investigation and prosecution, rather than what they assumed would just be a continuation of complete impunity for conflict-related sexual violence. Can you update us on what has happened to all that evidence that was in EULEX?
Ian Cliff: I honestly do not know, but I would be extremely surprised if it had just been binned. It will still exist. There is quite an active committee working on conflict-related sexual violence in Kosovo, which was set up with some support from the British Government by a previous president of Kosovo, President Jahjaga. That committee has made sure that people feel as comfortable as they can be about giving evidence. I am afraid that I do not know what has happened to the EULEX material, but I would be very surprised if it had just been flushed away.
Sian MacLeod: I cannot answer that at all, other than to say that the transfer of evidence and documentation between states in the region remains a regularly raised issue and an ongoing concern. It is not moving fast.
The Chair: Let us move on to the role of the UK, the EU and NATO.
Q6 Baroness Coussins: Can you tell us a bit more about the extent to which leaving the EU has affected UK policy and influence in the region and the role that we should play? It struck me during the visit I just referred to that the UK was being looked to on a number of things that were not particularly dependent on our membership of the EU. Obviously, some things will be affected by withdrawing from the EU, but the priorities in the region that remain the same are to do with our soft power. People mentioned the restoration of the World Service in Serbia, for example, and the way in which the UK was looked to for the provision of specialist technical support, particularly for the judiciary, on issues of sexual violence and people trafficking, given our global track record of leadership on preventing and dealing with sexual violence in conflict. Can you comment on those issues?
Sian MacLeod: I arrived in Belgrade in September 2019, just as we were reducing our engagement in EU meetings and processes. It is a varied picture across the region. There are probably too many issues to cover around the EU’s role in the region; it plays a tremendously important role in the region. It has huge financial resources to support the region and political influence and leverage through its accession process, although that is imperfect—perhaps we will talk about that later. We continue to share our aims for the region and our values with the EU, so it is very important that we carry on working with it.
There are specific instances where we are maybe not in the room so often. I was the Ambassador in Serbia, and the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo—the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue—is EU-led, by Miroslav Lajčák. We continue to support that and stay very close to what is happening through our membership of the Quint, a very important grouping for us in the region of the US, France, Germany, Italy and the UK. We work very closely with the EU as well.
Ian may want to say more about the implications for Bosnia and Operation Althea[2]. I do not think our policies have changed on the whole, although Bosnia and Althea may be one area where they have. We have pursued a policy of engagement with Albania on migration in particular, which is outside my area of experience.
There has been little policy change. Perhaps we have a greater ability to consider and express our own position, but of course we are not in the room persuading the EU on what it should say at any particular moment. Our role should continue to be an honest friend across the region that works closely with the EU and other like-minded partners. We are seen as a significant international actor.
Perhaps I should stop there. If that has answered your question more or less, perhaps we can come back to the role of the EU separately.
Ian Cliff: I agree with that very much. I do not think that our policy has changed but, as Sian said, we are not always in the room and we risk getting overlooked. You notice this in the local media; it always used to talk about the EU and the United States, and then Britain was very often the third country to be mentioned, followed by Germany. Now we quite often do not get mentioned at all. For example, on Saturday, Lajčák organised a visit in the wake of these Banjska incidents to Serbia and Kosovo. He took with him Gabriel Escobar, the US Special Representative, and representatives from Germany, France and Italy, but nobody from the UK. We have to make an effort to stress our role in the Quint—I hope everyone knows what the Quint is—to make up for the fact that we are not in the EU.
Sometimes our messaging is a bit difficult. We are constantly saying to the countries in the region that we think they should make reforms and, if they want to, join the EU—but actually we have left it. It is not always an easy message to articulate.
There is some resentment in the Western Balkan countries about our departure from the EU, simply because within the EU we were a key advocate, along with Germany, for a sensible approach to enlargement—though not willy-nilly enlargement. They always felt that we were on the side of those countries and that, if they made the right progress, we would support their progress towards the EU. Now that we are not there, it is very much left to the Germans on their own. That is also a factor.
Sian mentioned EUFOR, or Althea, the EU-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia, which was established when I was there. The first commander was General Leakey, who was later famous as Black Rod. We helped set that up, but we then produced the really weird argument that we had to leave EUFOR and could not ask to remain as a third country, like Turkey or Switzerland, because somehow this would give the EU leverage over us somewhere else—that if we were a demandeur, that would give the EU leverage to be difficult over some other aspect of Brexit. I think that was nonsense. The reality is that we would have been welcome to stay in EUFOR. It has diminished our role a bit in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Otherwise, we are very much in favour of EU enlargement for Bosnia-Herzegovina, but it has to be a single, functioning state if it is to join the EU.
The Chair: Continuing with the UK’s engagement, Lord Robertson has a question.
Q7 Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: I declare an interest as chair of the Ohrid Group—friends of North Macedonia—and I have a lot of connections with the areas we are considering.
You touched on the British approach, and we note what you said about EUFOR and the completely crazy decision not to be a third country. The Integrated Review Refresh talks of our commitment to “step up engagement with … the Western Balkans … to boost their prosperity, security and resilience to Russian interference”. Last week, Lord Ahmad said in the House of Lords that “the Western Balkans matters to His Majesty’s Government. Its security is critical to our security … Any return to conflict could spread across the region, with serious political and humanitarian consequences”. How has that renewed commitment to the Balkans manifested itself?
Sian MacLeod: It is extremely welcome. It is not the first time that Ministers have said it, and it is very good that they consistently recognise the importance of the Western Balkans. When this committee last did an inquiry, it delivered a very strong message about the importance of continuing political engagement with the Western Balkans.
The reality is that the Western Balkans will always have to compete with other foreign policy priorities, so the challenge is to make sure that the focus is not lost as other priorities come along. It is probably fair to say that, particularly with the distractions we have had around Brexit and so on, we have given less attention than we might otherwise have done to the Western Balkans, but I hope that will change.
We have good Heads of Mission in the region and a very distinguished envoy[3]. They have excellent access, but we also need a certain amount of attention from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and a good, committed Europe Minister who understands the issues and enjoys engaging with the region.
To play a strong role in the region, particularly in a country such as Serbia, which is very focused on developing its infrastructure and modernising, being present in the room, with a strong economic presence, is also important. I worked with the previous Serbian Ambassador in London to try to increase our economic relationship, as Germany and Italy, for example, are much more present economically than us. That has also been the case for political visibility in the past few years.
However, I very much welcome the Government’s commitment. The present Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister have had some engagement with the Western Balkans region recently, and I hope that it will continue.
Ian Cliff: Going back a bit, it was very important for the UK, as we left the EU, to host the Western Balkans summit of the Berlin process in London in 2018, where we made very strong commitments on future support for the Western Balkan countries. The Government would say that our deployment of 600 troops to KFOR is a demonstration of our commitment to the region and that bit of the updated IR to which Lord Robertson referred. Although I was critical of our withdrawal from EUFOR, we have an adviser—possibly more than one—in the Bosnian Ministry of Defence who has been appointed. That is one of the key ways of countering Russian influence, so we are probably doing our bit on the security side.
Several people have mentioned the BBC. One should never forget the credibility that the BBC gives us worldwide. It is very good that the BBC Serbian service has been revived. It is only on the web but that is better than nothing. It would be good if there was a similar Albanian service, because it is a way to counter disinformation, not just from Russia but local forms of disinformation and the growing influence of China as well. We could focus on that area a bit more; media freedom is a key priority for the UK in the region.
Q8 Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: In Lord Ahmad’s reply to the debate last week, he talked about the Republika Srpska National Assembly. Do we allow them to call it the national assembly?
Ian Cliff: We always have—the narodna skupština. That is part of Dayton. It is an entity Parliament, of course. We do not call the one in the Federation, the other entity, a national assembly because it is not national but Bosniak and Croat. But yes, we have always gone along with that phraseology.
The Chair: We are running out of time, I am afraid. Lord Stirrup and Lord Anderson, can you ask your questions together?
Q9 Lord Stirrup: I turn to the EU, its policy and the policy of its major members in the region, bearing in mind that the focus of this short inquiry is what has changed since the committee wrote its report in 2018. In 2018, one witness quoted Chris Patten as saying that “The problem with all the Balkans”—he was talking about their relationship with the EU—”is that they pretend to do what we ask them and we pretend to believe them”. Another witness described the accession process as a “box ticking exercise with no long-lasting impact”. Some witnesses said the EU’s approach to the region had prioritised “stability over democratic values”. As we know, in 2018, under French pressure, the EU changed its enlargement methodology to slow it down considerably. Another witness to the inquiry said, “what on earth do you do with those countries when the remedy that we have been promoting for the last 20 years, stabilisation through integration, appears to have reached a dead end?”. What has changed?
Lord Anderson of Swansea: The aspiration of a number of Western Balkan countries in relation to the EU is clear, but given the prevalence of nationalism, is the practical work of preparing for the EU there? From the EU side, given the speech of Charles Michel that the first accessions should be by 2030, is that realistic or will it founder in the European Parliament?
Sian MacLeod: To answer Lord Stirrup first, I have written my own list of what has changed. We have had Brexit, the Foreign Office and DfID merger—from a parochial point of view—and the reduction in overseas development assistance. We have had the invasion of Ukraine, North Macedonia joining NATO, and North Macedonia and Albania taking a step on their way towards accession. We have had BBC Serbian starting and exceeding its targets. It is doing very well. Incidentally, if you went into the BBC office during the pandemic, you noticed that most people were going to the BBC when they wanted facts—when they wanted to know about Covid and vaccinations. There was a difficult pandemic across the region but a pretty impressive vaccine programme in Serbia, which was shared across the region. The other thing I would throw in, although we will not have time to go into it, is the Open Balkan Initiative—a local initiative to start finding solutions to their own problems, but not a universal one.[4] That is what has changed, unless Ian thinks I have missed something.
There is ambivalence towards the EU. Some of the polls in the last year or so have shown support for it, in Serbia specifically, going below 50%, which is not great. There is frustration across the region with the speed of the accession process. As you mentioned, the process has changed. I cannot speak for EU member states, but from their point of view it is up to those accession states to make faster progress and demonstrate that they are taking reform seriously.
Misperceptions are also a factor; I mentioned distortions in the media landscape, which affect people’s attitudes to the EU. If you do not have the public support for the EU pushing the Governments to reform more quickly, that also has an effect. That is probably most of my points on the EU—I have answered Lord Anderson’s point on the speed.
Lord Stirrup: Is there a sea change in attitude within the EU, listening to what Ursula von der Leyen has been saying, for example?
Sian MacLeod: As I say, I cannot speak for the EU. The processes have changed. I believe that some EU member states have been concerned about the speed and commitment to reforms. For example, in Serbia, quite a lot of progress can be shown in some of the chapters that are being negotiated, but some of what the EU would refer to as the fundamental issues—the human rights-related stuff such as the media, and so on—has been less convincing.
On the final point on the aspiration nationally, there are dilemmas. With our own interventions, if we are working through our British government funds, and so on, you can often show more progress if you work with the grain of government. It is important to listen to Governments on their aspirations and what they are interested in, but we also need to support media freedom. There are some balances and dilemmas to consider there.
Ian Cliff: Sian has given a pretty comprehensive answer. One thing that needs to be kept in mind that has not changed is that five EU member states still do not recognise Kosovo. That makes the whole process of enlargement for both Serbia and Kosovo more complicated, and to a certain extent it hobbles the role of the EU. At the moment, people in Kosovo will endlessly point out to you that the EU High Representative[5] for the first time is from Spain, which is a non-recogniser, and the Special Representative in charge of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue is from Slovakia, which is another non-recogniser. But otherwise, Sian has highlighted all the key points.
There are always complications. As a research analyst, I suddenly found myself asked to write papers on why Bulgaria quite suddenly jumped out and made huge difficulties for the process of North Macedonia, even under the new French-inspired system, starting its negotiations. Basically, Bulgaria says that the Macedonian language is a branch of Bulgarian and is not separate. There are these surprise things that jump out at the EU.
I will take a punt at it and say that 2030 is optimistic but doable. Montenegro used to be the front-runner. It has had a lot of political upheavals, but it is not impossible. Do not forget that Croatia joined back in 2013—that was the last enlargement. All these countries look at the Croatian example to a certain extent, because that country was, first, part of the former Yugoslavia, and, secondly, very much at the heart of the wars of the 1990s.
Sian MacLeod: It is absolutely possible if there is the political will. If people want it, they can do it.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I am afraid that we do not have time for Lord Campbell's question but perhaps we could ask you to write something.
Q10 Lord Campbell of Pittenweem: Could our witnesses concentrate on NATO? It has been mentioned only once in passing. North Macedonia has been absorbed into NATO. What are the aspirations for membership of NATO among other countries, and to what extent are they still live?
Ian Cliff: Kosovo, more than almost any other country in the region, would like to join NATO. Again, that is complicated by the fact that four of the five non-recognisers in the EU that I mentioned are in NATO. Of course, the whole situation with the Kosovo Serbs also needs to be resolved. But there is a huge will in Kosovo to join NATO.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina it is very complicated. Although in my time the Bosnian Serbs were quite clear that they wanted to join NATO, all the secessionist talk and the problems that have arisen since have made Republika Srpska ambiguous, to say the least, about whether it wants to see Bosnia-Herzegovina go into NATO.
I do not think we should diminish NATO. It is absolutely crucial to the region. We talked about it in the context of KFOR. Because we are not in the EU, we have to make the most of our membership of NATO, and indeed the OSCE.
Sian MacLeod: Serbia has no aspiration to join NATO. It has declared itself politically neutral, but it does quite a lot of practical co-operation with NATO and with NATO member states, including us—it has joined us on peacekeeping deployment.
Finally, we are in NATO, and NATO states are major players within the region. We have talked about Russia and China and the risks they may pose, but the US and Turkey are NATO states, as are the major EU partners, so it is important.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem: I am sorry, Chair. I did not abuse you but I abused myself into asking the question. I apologise.
The Chair: I am quite used to abuse, do not worry.
Thank you very much indeed. I am sorry that we were rushing. As you said, it is complicated; that could apply to practically every question and answer that you gave. This is a very difficult task to do in a very short time. We are very grateful to you for your contributions and I am sorry to rush you.
I remind you that a transcript will be sent to you for your review. Thank you so much for sparing the time to be with us today.
Sian MacLeod: Thank you.
Ian Cliff: Thank you.
