EU's needs to cleanup and reorganize: "Cleaning up both the EU and Western Balkans" - by Valery Perry and Toby Vogel

A recent New York Times investigation into EU-funded corruption related to agricultural subsidies , The Money Farmers: How Oligarchs and Populists Milk the EU for Millions shines a spotlight on one of the most troubling cases of a member state gaming the system.

The case of Hungary is notable for several reasons. Prime minister Viktor Orban openly opposes the EU's policies and values while benefitting handsomely from its money.
Under his leadership, Hungary has moved in a fundamentally illiberal direction as he has captured large swathes of the economy.

Moreover, the rightward turn in Hungary is part of a global struggle over core political values – between independent rule of law and authoritarian rule; between rights-based systems and exclusionary nationalism; and between accountable, citizen-driven governance and strongman rule.

The timing of the Times' investigation provides a chance to highlight another recent development on the continent that underscores the importance of dealing with the EU's present seeming inability to safeguard liberal values – the EU's decision, forced by French president Emanuel Macron, to delay the opening of membership talks with Albania and North Macedonia, even though they both had met the EU's own requirements for doing so.

There are a number of reasons behind this decision, most notably Macron's stated interest in improving the EU's own internal governance before welcoming new members.

On the one hand, this sounds sensible, and if implemented could ensure a stronger Union to which western Balkans countries could aspire.

However, there is no reason the EU's own self-improvement cannot happen in tandem with simultaneous efforts in the western Balkans. In fact this would lend credence to the EU's favoured notion, "partnership," by demonstrating to EU hopefuls that they must do as they do, not as they say.

Read more at: Cleaning up both the EU and Western Balkans

EU and Russia vie for influence in volatile Balkans region - by Dusan Stojanovic

For years, Russia has worked to gain influence in Southeast Europe, using Serbia as a foothold to establish a friendly pocket on a hostile continent.

The European Union finally is pushing back. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is embarking on a seven-nation Balkans tour Sunday to promote the EU's new eastward expansion strategy.

Russia mainly wants to discourage the Western Balkan countries — Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia — from joining NATO. But Moscow also is trying to deter them from joining the EU.

The EU sees the prospect of membership as an incentive for reform in the volatile Balkans region, which was torn apart by war in the 1990s. Its expansion strategy puts Serbia and Montenegro in position to join should the bloc open its doors to more members, tentatively by 2025.

Read more here: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/nation-world/world/article201944074.html#storylink=cpy

Read more: EU and Russia vie for influence in volatile Balkans region | The Fresno Bee

European Airline Industry: Ryanair opens first base in Croatia

One of the world’s most popular budget airlines, Ryanair, will open a base in Croatia next year. In an official announcement from the airline the company stated that it would be opening a base at Zadar Airport from April 2013.

The new base will cover seven different routes including Dublin, East Midlands, Gothernburg, Liverpool, Paris Wroclaw and Haugesund. For the time being only one plane will be based at Zadar Airport, although this is the first time that Ryanair have had a base in the Republic of Croatia.

To mark the event Ryanair have launched a 100,000 seat sale with fares starting as low as £8 for travel across Europe. Although if you thinking of grabbing a seat you’ll have to be quick as the offer ends tonight, 20^th December, at midnight. Flights on one of Ryanair’s new seven lines from Zadar can be purchased online.

Read more: Ryanair opens first base in Croatia – The Dubrovnik Times — Dubrovački vjesnik

Balkan asylum seekers come under suspicion in EU - by D. Stojanovic

Azra Ajeti's fellow Gypsies have been buffeted by accusations of filing bogus asylum claims in the rich EU, but she says there's nothing phony about her family's life of misery. "We are starving," said the woman from this impoverished southern Serbian town. "Life here is a disgrace."

Ajeti's son was among some 60,000 people from Serbia and other Balkan countries who have sought asylum in Western Europe since the EU allowed visa-free travel from their nations three years ago.

Many EU and local officials describe the exodus as little more than a fraud in which mostly Gypsy migrants cross over knowing their asylum requests have no chance, their main goal to obtain the food, lodging and, in some cases, living expenses worth hundreds of euros (dollars) per month they are entitled to while awaiting an answer.

As a result of the continued surge, the EU states with the most Balkan asylum requests – Germany, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg – are moving toward re-imposing visas for Serbia and Macedonia, the two countries that send the most asylum applicants.
Many seekers, however, cite racial discrimination in their home countries as the reason for their flight, saying it constitutes legitimate grounds for asylum.

Read more: Balkan asylum seekers come under suspicion

Slovenia seen facing political crisis in addition to economic, financial ones

The daily Delo expressed concern on Saturday about the lack of response from the government to Slovenia's falling credit ratings, interpreting it as an indication that the PM may be looking for his own "exit strategy", STA reports.

While the free fall in Slovenia's credit ratings indicates Slovenia is irreversibly sliding into a destructive spiral of a deep and long recession, the government holds a correspondence session to announce changes to the national anthem act and designate 23 August as a day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes.

The move suggests that the ruling coalition has crossed a breaking point like the one following the triple referendum 'no' for the Borut Pahor government a little over a year ago. From that point on it all went downhill, all the way to the government's fall and a snap election, Delo writes under "Breaking Point".

Read more: Balkans.com Business News : Slovenia seen facing political crisis in addition to economic, financial ones

Crises in the Balkans: While you were watching Egypt...

observers have noted that some of the protestors that brought down Egypt's president used the clenched-fist logo of Otpor, the well-organised, foreign-financed civic resistance movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Parts of the Serbian press, notes Florian Bieber, an academic who works on Balkan affairs, have claimed that former Otpor activists helped train some of the opposition groups. 
 

With the world's attention on the Arab world, the political instability gripping much of the western Balkans has largely been ignored. Yet so serious is the unrest here—including mass demonstrations in Belgrade, Tirana and Skopje—that one diplomat told me his country’s foreign ministry had asked him if he thought that Egypt-style revolution might sweep northwards into the Balkans. (His answer was an emphatic “no”.) 

For more: Crises in the Balkans: While you were watching Egypt... | The Economist

EU: Visa-Liberalisation, Politics and Price

Since being rejected last summer, along with Albania, a number of dates have been floated for the implementation of a visa-free regime for the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now, these citizens – caught in the EU’s carrot-and-stick political net and the vice grip of obstructive local politics – are waiting for the next viable deadline.

Despite the fact that all the initial conditions for visa liberalization have been fulfilled, a precise date has not been set as the international community attempts to punish Bosnia’s nationalist authorities, who have spent their latest four-year mandate batting about nationalist and secessionist rhetoric and further polarizing society in the vote-buying game.

So far, Bosnia has implemented more technical requirements than has neighboring Serbia, which was granted an EU visa-free regime last July, along with Montenegro and Macedonia. At that time, Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo saw their visa liberalization bids rejected. The EU then promised that once the necessary technical requirements were fulfilled, Bosnians would be eligible for visa liberalization.

For more: Visa-Liberalisation, Politics and Price

Real Estate: Don’t balk at the Balkans - by Sally Howard

The former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina doesn’t feature on the list of favourite destinations for British overseas property buyers. Mentions of the capital, Sarajevo, and Mostar, the second city, instead trigger memories of the devastating civil war in the 1990s, which killed 100,000 people and displaced 2m. Fifteen years on, however, a small and intrepid band of pioneering Britons is moving in, attracted by improving transport links, government attempts to boost tourism and property prices half those in neighbouring Croatia.

Among them is Philip Lilleyman, 61, a former colonel from Rotherham, who in 2004 bought a ruined 18th-century Ottoman customs officer’s house in Trebinje, a handsome Venetian-style town straddling the glassy Trebisnjica River, 15 miles inland from the Croatian city of Dubrovnik. Lilleyman was stationed in Bosnia with the British army in the 1990s, and decided to build his dream property there when he retired.

The country remains politically volatile, and since the end of the war has been divided between two entities: the largely Serb Republika Srpska and the mainly Muslim and Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A further reminder of its troubled past was provided by the arrest last week at Heathrow airport of the former president, Ejup Ganic, accused over ambushing a Yugoslav army column in Sarajevo. Yet Paul Bradbury, British director of Agent, an estate agency that sells and develops property in Bosnia, insists the country has potential for buyers with mettle. “There are bargains everywhere — city three-beds for £70,000 and rural three-beds at £50,000,” he says.

For more: Don’t balk at the Balkans - Times Online

Eurostat publishes data on GDP of EU, Western Balkan states

MINA Breaking News

"Eurostat publishes data on GDP of EU, Western Balkan states
Wednesday, 16 December 2009

Eurostat published Wednesday data on the GDP of 27 EU member-states, three EFTA countries (Norway, Switzerland and Iceland), candidate countries (Macedonia, Croatia and Turkey) and four Western Balkan states (Bosnia&Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania).

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per inhabitant in Macedonia, expressed in purchasing power standards, was 33 percent of the EU average in 2008.

Bosnia&Herzegovina (31%) and Albania (26%) are the countries with lower indicators than Macedonia.

Serbian GDP per inhabitant was 36 percent the EU average, whereas Montenegro (43%) is better than the last of the EU member-states, Bulgaria with 41 percent.

Pertaining to the EU candidate-countries, Croatia's GDP amounts to 63 percent, whereas Turkey's 46 percent the EU average."

Scotsman.com: Balkans 'safest place in Europe'

For the complete report from the Scotsman.com click on this link

Balkans 'safest place in Europe'

A UNITED Nations' report says the Balkans, once known as the hotbed of crime and violence, has become one of the safest zones in Europe following the wars in Yugoslavia and a post-Communist transition. "The vicious circle of political instability leading to crime, and vice versa, has been broken," said the UN's Antonio Maria Costa.

BalkanInsight.com - Why We Aren’t Free Yet

For the complete report from the BalkanInsight.com click on this link

Why We Aren’t Free Yet - by Natasha Srdoc

Few citizens in southeast Europe would be surprised to hear that economic freedom in their countries is “repressed”. Whether or not this state of affairs is addressed head-on in diplomatically-tweaked reports from Brussels, it is common knowledge, muttered about in cafes across the region – even where statistics show that economic growth is brisk.

In contrast with the narrative on reform preferred by the EU, which focuses mostly on governmental compatibility with EU norms – which in some cases actually hinder economic freedom rather than enabling it – this index seeks to answer the questions of essential interest to the average person. Does the government let me keep my money, or does it confiscate a lot of it as taxes? Is private property protected in general? Can I get a job easily? If I run a business, can I hire and fire easily when I need to? Can I buy and sell easily within the country, and across its borders? Does the government compete against private businesses, or does it want them to thrive? How important is corruption in this picture? The index grades countries on questions like these. It is along such lines that its authors have once again, as in years past, graded as “repressed” all the countries of southeast Europe. Overall scores were better, with Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia deemed “moderately free” and Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina “mostly unfree”. (The index’s one drawback is that it does not grade Serbia and Montenegro, owing to what the authors say was a lack of reliable data. However, both countries are none the less examined, along with all others.)

In order to beat back the scourge of corruption we need both to help ourselves, most importantly to be helped by outside forces. Citizens can exert a certain degree of pressure, by resolving not to accept endemic corruption. However, they would benefit greatly from more immediate and more robust support from international partners. This is why, contrary to conventional wisdom, many citizens of the countries of southeast Europe would be grateful to the EU and NATO if these organisations would more explicitly pressure governments in the region to curb corruption.

Note EU-Digest: Ms.Natasha Srdoc who is president of the Adriatic Institute for Public Policy, a free-market think tank, certainly has a point here. The EU must must make more of an effort to curb this rampant corruption which one finds in both the Public and Private Sector. If it takes sanctions to do so let it be sanctions. Corruption is like a cancer and will spread also into Western Europe if it is not eradicated.