16
Examination of witnesses
Christopher Levick, Dr Tena Prelec and Maja Raicevic.
Q20 The Chair: Thank you all very much for coming to the committee’s third evidence session in its short inquiry on the Western Balkans. Today, we will focus on governance and human rights. This is a public session and is being streamed live on the Parliament website. A transcript will be taken which we will send to you so that you can make any corrections if you need to. I ask Members who have any interests pertinent to the inquiry to please declare them.
In the interests of time, it would be helpful if the witnesses introduced themselves briefly before answering the first question. The opening question is fairly broad; do not feel you have to go on for ages because we will pick up some of the points later. There is no need for every witness to answer every question, so please do not feel you need to if you do not have something to add. It is a rush to get through it all because there is always so much to say. Again, thank you so much for coming; we really appreciate it.
I will start with a general question. The western Balkans is a complex and diverse area. Can you set out some of the key challenges to human rights and democracy generally in the western Balkans? We will pick up some of the points you make later.
Dr Tena Prelec: Thank you for this opportunity. I am an assistant professor at the University of Rijeka in Croatia and a research associate at the London School of Economics.
As you rightly said, the Balkans are a very diverse set of countries. By and large, we see a situation that is in limbo. That is the fault of the local leaders in not breaking out of clientelism and state capture, which are some of the issues we will discuss today, but it is not only an internal matter. There has definitely been a weakening of the pull of EU enlargement over recent years. We know that the countries of the Western Balkans have been in the waiting room for EU enlargement for a very long time. Crucially, there has been inconsistent messaging on behalf of the European Union and other western partners, including the UK, regarding progress on enlargement. Very often, real progress has not been met with recognition and rewards, and this has entailed more and more disappointment among the countries of the Western Balkans and their populations.
Support for the EU and western collaboration is still there. Public opinion polls show that there is still majority support for EU enlargement. However, when you look at the more fine-grained issues, the support is largely transactional—it is more about the economic benefits they can get rather than enthusiasm about a transformational push looking to embrace a community of values.
This is especially stark in a key country of the region, Serbia, where support for EU enlargement is at its lowest. It is at about 50%; sometimes it is below that. In the context of the weakening appeal of the West, we have intensifying geopolitical competition too: countries such as Russia and China have been enjoying a higher appeal, especially in Serbia. They have been using methods, including so-called strategic corruption and other methods in their toolbox, to garner support among local leaders and populations.
It is also important to understand that this is not only an external malign influence; a key role is being played by local gatekeepers who welcome and amplify this influence. The limbo in the Balkans is often exploited by local leaders because it is in their interests to keep the status quo. Although they talk about representing one narrative to the West, saying that they want to join the European Union, that they are the beacons of stability in the region and that western partners should bank on them as the right leaders for their countries, when you look at the political economy and the many issues of the clientelism that is so entrenched, you see that it is in the interests of several local leaders to keep the status quo.
That is enough of the negative stuff; there are a few bright spots to highlight too. At the same time, we know that there is high awareness among the public that corruption is a problem, and a willingness to do something about it. This is not unlike what we see in Ukraine, for instance, where there is a lot of enthusiasm to crack down on corruption. These synergies in these regions should be leveraged in view of the EU enlargement process. For instance, there is huge public support for the green transition. A survey we conducted with the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group found that seven in 10 citizens in the Western Balkans are clearly in favour of investment in renewables.
Furthermore, alternatives to these local “stabilitocrats”—local leaders who want to keep the status quo—are appearing. We have seen a lot of situations, especially in urban centres at the local level, where there is hope for a different model and, crucially, more pluralism. I will stop here for the time being and return to some of these points later.
The Chair: Maja, do you have anything to add to that?
Maja Raicevic: I also wish to thank you for organising this inquiry and inviting me. I am director of the Women’s Rights Center in Montenegro, which is a women’s CSO engaged in women’s rights, monitoring and advocacy, informed by our legal aid and other forms of direct support that we provide to women on a daily basis.
I fully agree with Tena’s analysis, but I will also share some concerns regarding women’s rights in the Western Balkans. The process of the integration period, with the consistent advocacy of women’s CSOs, brought us some gains. These mainly concern the normative framework, which has been significantly improved and somewhat harmonised with international standards. However, the application of these standards is still not sufficient, and the political context does not enable our efforts, due to democratic backsliding, shrinking space for civil society and quite strong and well‑financed anti-gender movements in the region.
Some of our greatest concerns in the region remain. They are related to gender-based violence, evidenced by higher femicide rates, declining access to justice and social and economic rights for women, increased hate speech, digital violence and threats against female politicians and human rights defenders—followed by a very weak institutional response.
An example of hate speech against women which shows that nationalism and misogyny go hand in hand is a recently published book by the convicted war criminal Vojislav Šešelj, containing hateful content about female politicians in Montenegro. Such events, paired with political instability and very patriarchal leadership in the region, are often supported by religious leaders. They erode the foundations of human rights and create a hostile environment that affects the freedom of expression and engagement of women in public life. It is no surprise that women remain underrepresented at all levels of government, indicating little or no improvement in women’s participation in high-level decision-making processes, evidenced by the fact that there are no women heads in the Western Balkans states and only one woman Prime Minister.
My next concern is the narrowing of the work of civil society organisations in the Western Balkans, of which there are many examples. In the Republika Srpska, amendments to the criminal code have been adopted that criminalise insult and slander. That will seriously affect the work of both journalists and critically oriented activists. In addition, the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina recently adopted a law on freedom of access to information, which contains a long list of exceptions, or possible restrictions, on access to information held by public authorities. The announced law on a special register and transparency of the work of NGOs in the Republika Srpska intends to label human rights activities as political work and prohibit the work of CSOs and their possibility of engaging in and contributing to dialogue on law and public policies in the sphere of women’s rights and human rights in general.
The political context in Serbia has deeply affected women’s rights in the whole region. There is a lot of populist propaganda in the regional media that also affects the Montenegro context. It is packed with nationalism and glorification of war crimes and criminals, it does not align with the Government’s declarative commitment to EU membership and it erodes democratic actions.
The worsening of the situation between Kosovo and Serbia is diminishing decades of peacebuilding work by women’s civil society organisations and activists. A recent statement by Kosovar women from Mitrovica said that they are tired of fighting for the normalisation of the situation only to witness such regress as a lack of inclusion in political dialogue and, often, safety checks due to their activism.
The situation in North Macedonia and Montenegro is no exception. There are a lot of newly appearing anti-gender activists and leaders who manage to thwart gender-equality initiatives, including educational reforms and policy adoption in North Macedonia, while in Montenegro the huge political and societal influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church undermines Montenegro’s multicultural and secular identity as well as the democratic values of tolerance and diversity. History has taught us that in such a context the rights of women and minorities are usually the first to deteriorate.
I will finish on a more positive note. There are still very strong civil society leaders in the region, and international support for women’s CSO networks, one of which my organisation belongs to. It is a regional network that is very active in the process of EU integration. So far, we have had huge support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, which has enabled us to follow the process of EU integration and visit Brussels and its institutions to advocate for better recognition of women’s rights in the process of EU accession. A good initiative would be to support community-based organisations that may not always be able to support the huge administrative procedures required by donors but are simply movement builders that are very active in human rights and the green agenda, as Tena mentioned.
The Chair: Chris, do you want to add anything on this question?
Christopher Levick: Thank you for the invitation. I am the regional director for Europe and Central Asia at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. In that role I lead eight very talented teams across that region, including five based in countries of the western Balkans.
As colleagues have suggested, there are lots of similarities between the Western Balkans countries, but each has its unique context and politics that affect the democracies and rights in those countries. It is also worth noting that democracy is still fairly new in these countries; it is pretty fresh and has not had time to flourish. As colleagues noted, the backsliding we see is worrying in many of those countries. We also see the consequences of the transition from planned economies to the free market, which are still very real in many of these societies. From what we have seen in a lot of our work, that results in various intractable governance challenges that negatively impact how people experience democracy and how they support it and operate within it.
I will name just three to start with. The first is the rule of law and good governance challenges, including corruption, issues with the judiciary, a culture of impunity, lack of accountability and issues like that. Secondly, we see structural inequalities. Maja talked a lot about the exclusion of women, but we can expand that to the Roma communities, LGBT+ communities, young people, people with disabilities, and various other marginalised groups. Thirdly, political polarisation is a massive issue that is on the rise. We see many examples where there is a lack of dialogue or strategic policy focus within political dialogue, and issues like that. And overarching all of those, we see a rise in Euroscepticism and continued ethno-nationalist discourse throughout the region. That creates many challenges not just for governance but for organisations such as ours and others that seek to understand those political dynamics and incentives and interact with them to drive positive democratic changes.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that. Please make sure you are a bit more concise; otherwise, we will not get through all the questions. I realise that the first one is always difficult.
Q21 Baroness Coussins: Thank you for coming today. I would like to return to the themes of corruption and state capture that Tena mentioned in her opening remarks—they are strong features across the region. That was certainly what we found in our earlier inquiry five years ago. It appears to us that there has not been that much progress, and that corruption and state capture produce not only organised crime but a lot of other effects, such as compromising the independence of the judiciary, government, and business.
If the Western Balkans states that aspire to EU membership are to stand any chance of getting out of the waiting room, as you put it, and into membership, they will have to tick a lot of anti-corruption boxes to demonstrate that they are ready. Have any Western Balkan states been doing more and better than others to tackle corruption and state capture, whether at an individual or institutional level? What have those measures been, how have they managed to pull it off and what can be done to encourage wider compliance with anti-corruption measures across the region and in other states that have not quite caught up with what might be optimistically called best practice so far?
Dr Tena Prelec: Broadly, across the region there have at least been technical improvements: legal changes and advances of a technical nature that are no doubt present. We can identify a few macrodynamics that have brought significant changes. One is in Albania, where there has been deep vetting of judges and new prosecutorial bodies. This decade-long endeavour—if I am not mistaken—is starting to bear fruit. Recently, there have been some arrests of high-profile politicians and so forth, so it is not impossible, especially when there is synergy among local leadership and a push from the outside. In this case it came most clearly from the US along with the EU and UK.
However, I warn against taking politicians in the Balkans at face value that they are completely free of corruption when they make the right noises. I know this muddies the water a little, but it is extremely important to give signals to the population—and reform-oriented constituencies within the population—that the UK and its partners are on the right side of the anti-corruption battle. This means not only sanctioning and arresting has-been politicians but calling it as it is when somebody in power and part of the ruling elite is involved in corruption. This is just a warning—something we need to be aware of. Even when it seems that things are progressing well, we need to be aware not to reinforce local structures that might present as anti-corruption but are in fact shrinking civil society, as Maja rightly mentioned. That is a big problem.
Individual sanctions are another good measure put in place by the UK and partners, because of the message they send. Sanctioning high-profile politicians who have been involved in crime, corruption, and human rights abuses sends a message that they are not suitable to stay in power for a long time. So-called silent sanctions have also been happening recently, and the private sector has been part of this endeavour. These are very important because, for instance, several European banks have accompanied state sanctions against individuals by stopping their ability to open bank accounts, which directly cracks down on their ability to deal with illicit financial flows. These are some examples that could be taken further.
We should not think that progress towards integrity and transparency is linear and can be achieved overnight. There is no country in the world that is free from corruption. But there are three pillars the UK should pursue in the Western Balkans and other regions: independence of the institutions dealing with anti-corruption; fostering the pluralism of the political spectrum that I mentioned earlier; and the freedom of civil society, academia and other critical voices to provide the checks and balances needed to foster this culture of transparency and integrity.
Q22 Lord Campbell of Pittenweem: We have been talking eternally about the Western Balkans. To some extent, my question was mirrored in the 2018 report. At that stage, there was a significant presence of organised crime groups here in the United Kingdom. Has that continued to be the case? If so, what sort of impact has it had in the United Kingdom? Should we be doing rather more about it than we do at the moment?
Christopher Levick: Yes, we see the impact of this in the UK and it is pretty central. It can be seen pretty centrally in government priorities and policies at the moment, particularly around migration, security, illicit narcotic trades and things like that. But we also see another challenge to democratic values in a lot of these processes and how they are caused. It is helpful to go into that in a bit more depth. They are partly caused by an increased blurring of the lines between the instruments of the state, political parties and their interests, and commercial interests. Often, they are blurred with organised crime as well.
I believe that inaction around these issues will further entrench those challenges and deepen the impact they can have both in the Western Balkans and other countries, including the UK. They are allowed to happen because we see continuing limits on transparency and weak functions of accountability in state institutions and elsewhere. Ultimately, as I said in my introduction, there are challenges in how people experience democracy and receive services from the state. Crime and corruption have now permeated the state, which fuels a spiral or cyclical effect with issues such as petty corruption and other things that limit service delivery.
The other part of your question was about inaction. I will give a couple of examples of where action has been effective in combating some of these issues. We have been investing and partnering with the State Audit Office in North Macedonia, which has been doing some auditing work on long-term mining licences. It has seen much less tax revenue than has evidently been mined under those licences. As a result of the performance audit and the oversight it was able to provide, millions were returned to the state budget and reinvested in public services. Investing in institutional effectiveness is part of the solution to combating these issues.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem: May I ask a brief supplementary? Taking you back to the issue of action here in the United Kingdom, have you any advice for those who have that responsibility? What sort of action should we be taking? Is it sufficient at the moment?
Christopher Levick: I will not comment on issues in the United Kingdom, but I can say that we have invested in issues such as increasing transparency and accountability and the functioning of institutions. Despite all the actions we have taken in the United Kingdom to stop things such as migration, if we do not tackle the causes of that in the countries from which people are coming from, it is only going to impact that cyclical effect. That investment is a two-sided coin.
The Chair: Maja, do you want to add anything to that?
Maja Raicevic: In Montenegro and the Western Balkans region, without strong civil society there is no accountability of public institutions, because most of the initiatives related to transparency, the work of public administration, corruption and all the other problems that have been mentioned were tackled by strong civil society organisations. That is why support from abroad of civil society organisations is really important. Sometimes it is difficult to work in the very hostile environment I mentioned. The recent increase in hate speech in the digital sphere, which attacks activists dealing with corruption and organised crime, is seriously undermining the work of civil society and the democratisation of our countries.
Q23 Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: To declare my interests, I chair the Ohrid Group, which offers help to North Macedonia. Incidentally, I was at the Thessaloniki summit in 2003, where all the promises were made about the European Union. I used to be deputy chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
Having said that, the 2018 report of this Committee made the accusation that the international community had basically prioritised stability over democracy. We have not been very good at the stability bit, or about the democracy bit.
The tensions in Bosnia-Herzegovina are now becoming critical and dangerous. There are now a lot of calls for increased military engagement in that area, similar to what we had during the days of UNPROFOR, IFOR and SFOR. What do you think of that? Now that Britain is outside the European Union and therefore the constraints of unanimity, which in many ways has held back policy on the Western Balkans, can the United Kingdom do something about these rising tensions in the region?
Christopher Levick: Thank you for the question and for the work you do in the region; it is very valued. I agree that we have seen a tendency towards “stabilitocracies”, as people have put it. Perhaps we have invested in and supported people who might not be natural partners in our values because they have shown an ability to deliver and drive progress on certain issues. Short-term stability has been prioritised over investing in democratic values. We have addressed many of the underlying causes of the issues you talked about, by which I mean investing in issues such as inclusion, transparency, accountability and all the things I talked about previously.
Increasingly, we are overtly seeing from the international community a move towards securitisation rather than stabilisation. We see that within the funding instruments and in various donor strategies, including the UK’s. That links to things happening in Ukraine and elsewhere and the appetite of donors to invest in the long term around these issues.
Many other issues are linked to that. You mentioned Bosnia, which is a perfect example of where we see more overt security issues coming through. As I said, that really impacts the donor strategies and what they invest in, particularly in the short term. We are keen to see longer-term investments in underlying causes.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: Dr Prelec, you might want to say something about the questions I asked, especially about the UK’s role now that we are outside the EU.
Dr Tena Prelec: I agree very much with Chris’s assessment of working on the long-term issues. I preface my answer by saying that I am not an expert in security, and Bosnia-Herzegovina is not my key country in the Western Balkans, but I will give you my view on it since you asked about security.
It is true that people in Bosnia-Herzegovina feel insecure and that something might happen, so I do not want to downplay any security issues. They are there and unfortunately have been for a long time, and I am not sure that playing up those fears is a constructive way to go about things. That said, in case an assessment is made that an increased UK presence should be there, it is very important that the UK follows up on the commitments made, especially now that it is outside the EU. As far as I know, several commitments by the UK were not followed up. Unfortunately, the role of “global Britain” no longer seems to be playing out well in the Balkans. In Kosovo too it seems that the UK has been sidelined from some of the main focus of the dialogue.
As we said, the region is complex, so we need a fact-based assessment that depends on collaboration with the great higher education you have here, academia, researchers, civil society, and so on. At the same time, to be effective, it needs to be a commitment that follows up on the promise made, and to come in collaboration with partners such as the US and the EU.
I will also mention some areas in which the UK is doing a great job in the region. Initiatives that include a wide range of stakeholders at the local level are really successful. For example, two FCDO-funded projects by the British Council have had real impact, such as Media for All, which has given the biggest support to independent media in the region over the past few years. It managed to break through the noise and narrative capture that is often present in the Balkans and led by local leaders. Initiatives for citizen engagement on issues of public interest have also managed to work at the local level and give voice to people to hold power to account. In this sense, and in relation to working on the long-term issues that Chris mentioned, this is an area in which the UK has been doing great work that is very important for the long-term democratisation of the region.
The Chair: Maja, do you want to add anything to that?
Maja Raicevic: I fully agree. Since there are international reports, particularly the European Commission report on our countries that usually takes a lot of public attention, similar reporting from the UK Government on the situation in the Western Balkans might also be helpful, particularly with concrete recommendations and less of the diplomatic language that we are used to. We in civil society welcome any support in the form of fact-based information and reporting about what is going on in our countries. We use it as a tool for our advocacy work, which is truly important for us to be able to maintain our activities and achieve sustainable changes.
Even though many of us still have high expectations of the process of EU integration, we are much more prone to advocate for substantial changes in our region instead of simply accessing the EU or getting credits such as those given recently to Montenegro and recent announcements that we will be able to join sooner than others. We would really like strong follow-up on the commitments made by our Governments.
The Chair: Thank you very much to all of you.
Lord Soames of Fletching: I am not sure who will answer this question. Serbia has been rearming extensively. Its military budget has increased by more than 50% in real terms in the last decade, comfortably outspending Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia combined. Serbia is buying Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military equipment, including MiGs, surface-to-air missiles and drones. It has co-developed its own drone system with China. Europe and America continue to sell weapons to Serbia. There are credible reports of arms smuggling across the Serbia-Kosovo border, which British KFOR troops are now patrolling. In Bosnia, there are reports of military training posts being set up on the border with Serbia where Bosnian Serb and Russian youths are being trained in military skills.
Do you see and recognise this situation? What is your recommendation to this committee and to the NATO and European Union presence on the ground?
Christopher Levick: I cannot claim to be a military or security expert in any way, so forgive me for that. A lot of this reflects Serbia’s very complex relationships with external actors. You mentioned Russia, China, and others, as well as the European Union. We often see a rebalancing of those relationships, which can be seen in other areas of policy, such as in Ukraine and alignment with sanctions on Russia. It does not really surprise me at the moment. That is my honest appraisal, but I cannot comment on the specifics.
Dr Tena Prelec: I will try to answer the question. I am not a security expert, but I will give you my view. These issues are definitely not to be downplayed. As a narrative device, the elite in Serbia love to play up fears in order to maintain the status quo; there is an element of that. On the other hand, I find it worrying that the public—even young people—in Serbia are taking more nationalistic stances. It is a reflection of the influence of the media and the political spectrum that has been captured over the past decade. It is a direct outcome of the politics carried out over the past 10 years. As a social scientist, I look at public opinion, and I am truly worried about parts of society becoming in some ways less tolerant and more inclined towards nationalism.
Regarding the picture you painted about governance, and corruption in the defence sector becoming more important, Serbia has indeed been buying and also selling weapons. When we did research with the LSE Middle East Centre on co-operation with the Gulf states, we figured out that the defence sector was a very big element of co-operation between Serbia and the United Arab Emirates, for instance. We found that the defence sector was the fastest-growing publicly owned sector. I think it was growing 30% per year in that period—I may be mistaken, but it was a very big growth.
Crucially, the selling of these weapons has been shown by investigative journalism to often involve illicit traffic and funds, reinforcing the clientelist structures. We have people close to the regime who have preferential treatment and are able to sell these weapons. These weapons often end up in war zones where they are not supposed to end up.
Maja Raicevic: This is also supported by the propaganda of state-supported Serbian media, which shares extremist messages and glorifies war criminals. Bearing in mind our most recent history, that is a matter of concern for us all. We also witness historical revisionism, where our antifascist past is often declared as something that has different war heroes than we are used to. Some declared war criminals are now glorified, with streets in our region named after them. That is concerning for all of us who are active in the public sector.
Q24 Lord Stirrup: I return to the issue of the empowerment of women and girls and tackling gender-based violence, which form one of the UK’s development goals for the region. Maja Raicevic, you have painted a fairly dispiriting picture in that regard. Our inquiry is looking at what, if anything, has changed in the Western Balkans since our 2018 report, so I am interested in the answers to three questions.
First, where have these issues gone since 2018? Have they got worse or has there been any improvement? Have they stayed the same? Secondly, how does the picture look when you break it down across different parts of the region rather than looking at it as one lump? The Freedom House 2023 report noted that in Kosovo civil society had made “remarkable efforts” to effect positive policy changes on gender-based violence and ethnic divisions. How does the picture look when you get down into the granular detail? Thirdly, what key actions need to be taken to drive these issues forward? What are your practical suggestions for effective change?
Maja Raicevic: Thank you very much for your questions. There are certain positive happenings in terms of a normative framework for adopting the international standards related to fighting gender-based violence. One of the most positive is the Council of Europe’s Istanbul convention, which is the most comprehensive legal instrument for suppressing domestic violence and violence against women. We can all share the improvements in our normative framework as a result of these standards, but there are a lot of shortcomings when it comes to implementation. Implementation of the standards is also related to judicial reform and the rule of law.
Judicial reform is much needed, illustrated by the cases of gender-based violence where we see institutional negligence, very mild penal policy, and a lack of victim protection. Unfortunately, that relates to all Western Balkan countries. As we are commonly following these cases, and we also have a femicide watch, we can see that most cases in which women were murdered could have been prevented if the state acted according to their obligations.
The overall situation is that the rise of ethnic tensions and topics related to corruption and organised crime is somehow taking the spotlight away from such important topics as widespread violence against women. Even though really strong women’s civil society organisations are joining together in Kosovo and other Western Balkan countries, as you mentioned, sometimes our efforts are overshadowed by all the big topics that I mentioned. Sometimes, that is even supported by the international community. It often does not have enough time to devote to topics relating to women’s rights, which unfortunately are often perceived as not that important. In a patriarchal context like the Western Balkans, it is very difficult to engage high-ranking decision-makers in changing the behaviour of our institutions when it comes to women’s rights, particularly in the area of gender-based violence.
Lord Stirrup: Is getting key politicians and decision-makers to engage positively on these issues the most significant change for the better that you can see?
Maja Raicevic: Yes. The political will is missing, and with true political will to change the situation we would definitely have much more progress than we have had so far. The lack of political will directly affects implementation of laws and policies as well as service provision for the most vulnerable groups, which is missing all over the region. It is mostly provided by women’s civil society organisations that are not financially or politically supported by the decision-makers as they should be. International support was very important for us in the last decade.
Lord Stirrup: Are you saying that all countries in the region are pretty much the same in this regard?
Maja Raicevic: Yes. We are co-operating very closely, and we follow the situation in each and every country. It is very similar.
Lord Stirrup: Thank you.
Baroness Coussins: I have a quick supplementary. What, if anything, has been happening, or could happen now, perhaps with UK assistance, to tackle the historical impunity around all the testimonies and other evidence collected by EULEX? Five years ago, we were told there was great concern about the body of evidence and testimony being buried and never acted on, and some people were calling for it to be transferred to the UN to hold on to because there was a greater chance of action arising there. Has anything happened with that EULEX testimony?
Maja Raicevic: Not as far as I know. In general, I can talk more about Montenegro. I know that war crimes, particularly against women, were never raised enough in the region. Further insistence on these topics would certainly help our Government to be clear that they really need to address all those issues, including in the future.
The Chair: Chris, have you got anything to add on this?
Christopher Levick: Maja is much better than I for commenting on this. A few years ago, we did a piece of research in Bosnia-Herzegovina looking at violence against women in politics. It looked at not just physical violence but intimidation and hate speech; we took a very broad definition. One of the key findings of the research was that violence against women in politics not only is widespread but affects entryism. Women are turning away from politics because of the violence that, as the evidence showed, they are more likely to receive than not in these countries. You will be familiar with the evidence that increasing women’s political participation and leadership has all sorts of positive benefits in various policy areas.
Q25 Lord Anderson of Swansea: The EU has human rights criteria for accession. As Lord Robertson said, 20 years ago it seemed set fair for the countries of the Western Balkans to join the EU fairly speedily. Since then, there has been a combination of fatigue on the part of the EU and the backsliding that you have described very well across the board. Is there still a wish on the part of the countries to join the EU? Are they prepared to make the move to do so? I noticed that Charles Michel, on behalf of the EU, said that the first accessions should be by 2030. In your view, is that feasible? Is the prospect of entry still a driver of human rights reform? If not, what current drivers can promote human rights reform?
Christopher Levick: Thank you for the question. When I first started working on this region, probably about a decade ago, the EU and the accession process was the driving force of reform. Nothing else was driving reforms. There were pockets of organic reform, but reform was being driven entirely by the prospect of European accession. It may be different country to country—Tena referenced Serbia and its failures—but this depends on credibility. There is no doubt in my mind that the EU is losing credibility throughout the region through its inability to deliver significant progress towards accession. In turn, that is limiting the reforms that might be linked to European accession. It is certainly not the driver that it was a decade or five years ago.
It is quite clear that people—more so than the governments and institutions in the region—are becoming disappointed in the European Union. We have seen many examples of that, including in Kosovo with its visa liberalisation a few years ago. We continue to see it in North Macedonia with the continued blockages to accession. In order to push those reforms—the link to the accession process—the EU needs to provide an honest signal to the countries in the region of what the prospects are. I do not think there is any real alternative to European accession in the region. We have seen some supplementary paths, such as the Open Balkan Initiative and the Berlin process, but they do not replace European accession prospects and the reforms they will drive, including human rights reforms.
To me, there remains an opportunity for the EU and others driving that reform through the accession process. We have seen others making long-term investments in these types of reforms, particularly human rights reforms. For example, the US is a significant investor, as are the Swiss now, but all the reforms they are encouraging through those investments and programming are linked to the European accession criteria. I do not think one comes without the other.
Lord Anderson of Swansea: In your view, is there a readiness on the other side to make the necessary reforms? It is so easy to blame the EU for lack of interest, but if there is no serious effort to reform, it is understandable.
Christopher Levick: Yes, there is. We have seen big examples of it and quite difficult things done to progress the avenue towards accession. North Macedonia is a great example of that.
The Chair: Maja, are you nodding a bit?
Maja Raicevic: Yes. Even in Montenegro, there is still huge support for EU accession among local communities; 70% of citizens approve of it. To be honest, I do not see any other alternative at the moment, and we still need to collaborate in order to have substantial changes in our community. Donor policies are not always in favour of supporting local communities. Very often those policies involve big players such as UN agencies and international organisations with huge administrations that sometimes do not take into account the needs of local communities. Raising the citizen’s voice and direct support to our communities can make a difference.
I will just mention some examples. The UK Government fund some huge projects related to the rule of law, such as the project implemented in the Western Balkans. This huge project, related to organised crime and the rule of law, also had a small component on gender-based violence, allowing us to participate in the activities and to train judges and report on the situation in the field. That kind of synergy between big international organisations and small, local organisations might bring change; otherwise, we will have the status quo. I dare say that sometimes even big organisations support the status quo, because it is much easier than pushing for change and criticising the governments of our region.
Lord Teverson: I would have thought there was hardly any chance of Kosovo acceding because not all EU member states recognise it. I would have thought there probably would not be much expectation there.
It seems to me that there has been a bit of a change of attitude in the European Union recently. It has moved a number of states—Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova—towards candidate status. It has finally decided that it needs to do something and is trying to move this agenda forward. It was originally held up by people such as Macron in France, but I think that is changing, largely because of the Ukrainian situation. Are we being too pessimistic, or is that message getting through anywhere?
My only caveat is that, given the European parliamentary elections next year, which will also change the Commission and affect its membership, and given the populist move forward throughout Europe, I have a feeling that this agenda will go backwards again, because of freedom of movement. There will be a reaction that will set this backwards again. I would appreciate your short comments on that.
Christopher Levick: On the first part, the EU has, quite rightly, found those fast-track mechanisms of bringing new members into the organisation, and that has not gone unnoticed in the Balkans. I refer back to my previous answer: the EU and other accession countries need to make an honest assessment and be open about what the prospects are. As each year goes past in this decade, the 2030 marker draws closer, and there is still a long way to go. It will be a tight deadline.
I do not think I am best placed to comment on the formation of the Commission.
Maja Raicevic: Strong messages from the EU are always welcome. Our accession process is stuck by Parliament not being able to elect judges of the constitutional court. EU representatives came to Montenegro and said that our accession would be stopped if we did not elect the judges, and the judges were elected promptly. Sometimes, we really need a boost and very strong messages from the EU side. We in civil society definitely welcome that kind of assessment of Montenegro and other Western Balkan countries.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I will now take two questions because they are linked. It would be great if you could answer both at the same time.
Q26 Lord Wood of Anfield: We have mentioned the role of the UK before, but do you have any positive examples of UK initiatives in the region that we could take heart from and think about as models for UK involvement in the future?
Q27 Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: The Government has a special envoy for the Balkans: Air Chief Marshal Lord Peach. Are you aware of the work that he does and any appreciation of it?
Christopher Levick: Thank you for the questions. Yes, we are very aware of and familiar with Lord Peach’s work. He is extremely visible in the region, and that is valued not just by my colleagues in our offices but by those societies, broadly. That is a positive innovation for the Government.
On Lord Wood’s question, I refer to our Western Balkans Democracy Initiative programme, which concluded just over a year ago. The programme was about doing things differently in the Western Balkans. It recognised that, although there had been a lot of democracy investment in the region with institutions, political bodies, civil society, et cetera over 20-plus years, governance issues and democracy challenges were still intractable in that region. We tried to do a different type of programming, supported by the UK Government through the CSSF, recognising that we needed to work in a much more political and informed way to interact with political incentives.
We also looked at the ways in which we try to realise change, trying not to make small institutional improvements that might get in a report but do not really impact how people experience democracy, and looking at more intractable governance problems. By working around those for four-plus years we were able to demonstrate how those changes in democratic practice were affecting people every day. For example, we did some work that impacted how palliative healthcare was accessed in Albania, how winemakers were able to access markets in Macedonia, and on allocations of funding to firefighters in Montenegro, who were then able to work in the forest fires last summer. Different ways of working are important and they make a positive change.
Maja Raicevic: I would like to share a personal experience of being supported by the UK Ambassador in Montenegro. Our work with women politicians was supported by the British Embassy here when we managed to create a women’s club in parliament and further the agenda for gender equality and women’s rights. The Ambassador appeared at our events strongly supporting what we do. Giving visibility in that way to civil society organisations really supports our efforts.
I have one last point. Women have not been included enough in political dialogue in the region, that is for sure, but sometimes other processes such as the Berlin process have not heard women’s voices. I remember that, in 2018, at the Western Balkans summit in London there were attempts to give a bit more space to gender equality, but at the end the recommendations from that process were very weak and we did not have any concrete indicators that we could follow.
I strongly encourage opening the space for women’s organisations in political dialogue, particularly in areas such as Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia where there are stronger nationalistic tensions. There is a strong history of peacebuilding movements among women’s organisations and there is a lot of mutual co-operation that might support those efforts in the future.
The Chair: Thank you very much indeed for your evidence, and good luck in the work you are doing. It is very important that we have people such as you working there. We are very grateful for your contributions. I remind you that we will send you a transcript of your answers so that you can review them. With that, I declare the public session closed.
