CEMI news November 22nd, 2008 Zlatko Vujovic - COMMENTARY for DAILY BRIEF No. 51  - INSTITUTE ALTERNATIVA’S THE ‘NEW DEAL’ Montenegro in light of the changing nature of conditions for EU membership by Zlatko Vujovic

It’s been two weeks since the EU’s Progress Report has been published, and reactions to its contents are still resonating. Those reactions reveal that the official Podgorica is managing the EU’s new change of strategy rather poorly. The EU – spellbound by the failure to ratify the Lisbon Treaty and the global financial crisis – shows interest only for the burning issues in the once-upon-a-time-blazing Balkans. As a consequence, it applies one set of standards to Belgrade, and another to Podgorica.

The representatives of the government show a high degree of consistency in comparing the present situation in Montenegro with the situation in other countries in the region, and the newly acceded EU’s Member States (2007). To put it mildly, their disappointment in the assessments of the Montenegrin progress and messages that Montenegro should postpone its application – while the EU funds to Bulgaria (an EU Member State) have been stopped in light of that country’s failure to fulfil its obligations related to the fight against corruption – is not surprising. Even more surprising is the promise to Serbia that it could be granted the status of an EU candidate country in 2009 of it fully cooperates with the Hague Tribunal.

It is perfectly clear that the criteria for the accession to the EU – or at least the assessment of their fulfilment – have significantly been changed, i.e. raised to another level.  The EU’s extremely bad experience with the membership of Bulgaria and Romania - which came about as a result of a political decision, rather than of one based on the fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria for the EU membership – will toughen the conditions for the future enlargement. This will particularly reflect upon the countries which have no contentious issues, or countries which are not a priority in a region.

Montenegro will have to reach higher standards than some other countries in the region. Standards higher than the ones achieved by the countries of the region which already are Members States of - or candidates for membership into –the EU. The answer is simple, and rather in line with the European principles; principles, the strength of which is occasionally being questioned.

Is this change of standards good or bad? From the citizens’ standpoint - especially in terms of the rule of law, good governance, respect of human rights - the situation is not as bad. The worst case scenario would actually be entering the EU with an unchanged system, which would then be ‘frozen’ through the status of an EU’s Member state. The assessment of the European experts for the fight against corruption is that once the country has entered the EU, the latter does not have an efficient mechanism, which could counterbalance the non-implementation of the standards adopted in the respective country. In this respect, the more stringent criteria of accession, in terms of the rule of law, good governance and human rights are more than necessary.

Instead of the persisting attempts to convince the representatives of the European Commission that Montenegro is performing better than other countries in the region – which is true in some cases, less so in others – the state’s institutions should turn to fulfilling the more stringent criteria posed before them. In this way, the process of EU integrations would be accelerated, and the EU would have to fulfil its promise of membership to Montenegro.

Regardless of the fact that the process is termed as ‘negotiations’ for membership, it is still unilateral. Unilateral in the sense that some standards are not negotiable - the aspiring member is expected to fulfil them. Well, don’t we want a membership card of the EU club? By repeating the experience of Bulgaria and Romania we would be ‘stuck’ in the position of Macedonia, expecting a regional wave of enlargement to drop us off into the EU. Instead of comparing ourselves with other countries in the Balkans, we should turn to some – more  representative - EU’s Member States in order to understand how many European standards we have actually adopted, and how much more effort is needed in order for our strategic aim – the membership in the EU – to be realized.

Author is the President of the Managing Board of the NGO Centre for Monitoring (CEMI)