In this work, BalkansJean-Arnault Dérens and Benoît Goffin propose “A journey, from Vienna, a mecca for the Balkan diasporas, to Bihać, at the gateway to the European Union and the Schengen area, which exiles crossing the Balkans are trying to cross. While the countries of the region are still waiting for the European integration promised since 2003, clouds are gathering again: unresolved conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, corruption and cronyism, authoritarian drift of the leaders.”
franceinfo: The Balkans are a little unknown to Western Europe, though?
Jean-Arnault Dérens: This is absolutely true, even though more and more tourists are going to the Balkans. On the coast, but not only.
But aren’t tourists the ones who make geopolitics?
No, indeed, there is still, I would say even more than a lack of knowledge, the idea that it would be impossible to understand the Balkans. Trying to understand it would ultimately be a little suspicious. No, in reality, the Balkans are a European region, even if what characterizes the states of this area is that they are not yet part of the European Union, it is a bit of a gaping hole in the middle of the European Union.
Slovenia and Croatia are already member states…
With Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece, but not other states resulting from the breakup of Yugoslavia, nor Albania, which are candidates, and which will certainly be integrated one day or another, but we will see how that will happen. The Balkans in many ways are more of a laboratory. I think that the wars of the 90s at the end of the last century both ended the cycle of the Cold War and prepared the wars we know today.
It must be remembered that part of the Balkans was the Ottoman Empire, it was also the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They are Southern Slavs, three religions in the Balkans, the Catholics, the Orthodox and then the Muslims. In a way, it is also a mirror of what we all experience?
It is a mirror held up to Europe, particularly in its relationship to power, to the contradiction between the aspirations of peoples, who indeed have different, varied identity references, but who fundamentally want to live together, and political leaders who play on the register of identities to try to set one against the other.
Is this the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina, among others?
This is particularly the case par excellence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the logic is not very different in Kosovo, or in other countries in the region.
The big piece is Serbia?
So, Serbia, of course, the most important country geographically, demographically in the region, is surely one of the keys to the balance of this entire area. Today, Serbia is both a country that has an authoritarian regime, even if for the West, everyone pretends to court it, because we are a little afraid of what Serbia could do…
Sir Vucic is the president of Serbia, and Xi Jinping visited him?
So, the Balkans have also become one of China’s major routes of penetration into Europe, towards the centre of the European continent. It must be remembered today that more than half of Chinese investments are concentrated in the Balkans. But this is essentially explained by two reasons.
First of all, because other foreign investments, especially investments from the European Union, have been slow to arrive, and have never even arrived. And then, in general, the integration process has been so delayed that the Serbs no longer believe in it much, and say to themselves that it is better to turn to the only partner that is available, which, in this case, is China.
And Kosovo, a former Serbian province?
Kosovo is a country that proclaimed independence in 2008, which is still not recognized by Serbia or by the entire international community. It is a country that is still in the middle of the ford. It is a country in which a majority of Albanians live, but also a Serbian minority. And then also, we must never forget, other smaller communities, such as Roma, Bosnians, Turks and a few others.
It is a country that certainly aspires to be independent, which naturally will always have very close relations with Albania, but it is also necessary to hope for it with Serbia, except that today, we are still very far from it. Because these unresolved problems of the 1998-1999 war, still exploited by politicians on both sides, allow to justify nationalist demagogy, on one side as on the other.
Jean-Arnault Dérens, the Balkans, powder keg or not powder keg?
Powder keg if Europe wants it to be. If this marginalized peripheral relationship on which the great powers try to play their strategic confrontation, makes the Balkans remain, I would say, less a powder keg than a magnifying mirror of the contradictions of our world. And then also, a kind of sandbox, a playground, a boxing ring, on which one can show one’s muscles, which many powers have done, notably with regard to Kosovo.
Balkans by Jean-Arnault Dérens and Benoît Goffin, in the collection “Odyssey, cities-portraits” of the National School of Lyon.