THE IMPACT OF EU CONDITIONALITY ON SERBIAN FOREIGN POLICY

Marko Mandić

Abstract

The European Union’s conditionality is a mechanism that the EU practices as part of its own enlargement policy in order to influence the internal political and economic reforms of the candidate country. The mentioned policy was a great success in the process of EU enlargement to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. However, this success has not been repeated in Serbia’s accession process. Serbia refuses to harmonize its foreign policy with the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy within the chapter 31, mostly due to the unwillingness to impose sanctions on the Russian Federation. The incentives that EU membership offers in the form of democratization, rule of law, single market to a candidate country are not a guarantee of harmonization if the topics of negotiations are related to the national interests of the country which are not in accordance with EU foreign policy positions. The central question of this research analysis is why, in the case of the Republic of Serbia, the conditionality policy does not prove to be a successful mechanism for harmonization with the EU CFSP. In the first chapter the theoretical framework of EU conditionality is outlined. The external incentive model which is developed under works of Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier suggest that the candidate country adopts EU rules if the benefits of EU rewards exceed the domestic adoption costs. Thus, EU conditionality is successful if it meets the four criteria: the determinacy of conditions, size and speed of rewards, the credibility of threats and promises and the size of adoption costs. Additionally, the EU conditionality in certain cases can be unsuccessful if it doesn’t pass the “identity test” in candidate country. In both cases the EU conditionality has not met its criteria of success. Serbia is not willing to align and transform its foreign policy with EU CFSP because EU incentives doesn’t exceed the adoption costs. The decision to impose sanctions on Russia would be an unpopular and risky move for Serbia due to close relations and cooperation between two countries. On the other hand, EU is uncertain about the future of its enlargement policy and it is unwilling to pursue strict conditionality towards Serbia. In negotiation process EU has opted for more pragmatic and tailor-made approach and it has put an emphasis on solving the Kosovo issue under chapter 35 bearing in mind that the potential change of Serbia foreign policy may harm the political position of ruling elites which are perceived as guarantor of regional stability and proponents of the country’s EU path.

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