Documents

Speech of Elisabeth Rehn
at the Reconciliation Workshop
Thessaloniki, 3 April 2003

Dear participants,

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to open this Workshop. If I look around and see so many young faces, I am confident that the 3 days that are lying ahead of us will be fruitful, that we will together develop many creative and inspiring ideas on how to foster the reconciliation process in SEE in order to build a better, common European future for the region.

During the last couple of months, the Stability Pact has explored possibilities on how to embark on an enhanced reconciliation initiative in the Balkans. Consultations were held with governments and international organisations. In this endeavour, an open-ended core group has been established, consisting mostly of individuals rather than states and institutions, hereby focussing on operational aspects of a possible process (SP, Greece, SEECP-Cio, Sweden, Norway, US, Germany, Switzerland, Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in SEE). We have together developed some ideas on what might be necessary components of such an initiative and what could be the best way to foster the reconciliation in the Balkans in the relevant thematic areas.

In this context:

Thanks to Nenad Sebek for organizing event.
Thanks to donors (Greece, Norway, Sweden and Canada) for making this event possible.

In the following, I will try to answer some key questions linked to this event.

Why now?

By now, some time has passed since the latest within the series of violent conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia during the 1990s has come to an end. Within the tedious and long-lasting process of re-establishing a normalisation of relations amongst the peoples in SEE, much has been already achieved: Within the framework of the Stability Pact, regional cooperation on governmental, regional and local levels has decisively improved in the areas of democratisation and human rights, the economic area and the security sector. Impediments to mobility within the SEE region are in the process of being steadily removed which is a prerequisite for people to meet and establish contacts across borders.

But I think we all agree that today we are still far away from a truly reconciled region. Because „reconciliation“ does not only mean the mere absence of physical violence, but, in a positive and more ambitious approach, a process in which the persisting pattern of hostility and conflicts is transformed into cooperation and respect of common values. Despite the countless and numerous initiatives and projects that have been created for the SEE region, divisions continue not only to exist between, but also within countries. They go along religious, ethnic, social, cultural and political lines.

The recent murder on PM Djindjic has made to all of us blatantly clear that there are still forces that want to reverse the current democratisation and reconciliation process in the region. It is a cynical fact that hatred, political anarchy and war represent the flourishing ground for organized crime and trafficking of arms, human beings and drugs. Therefore the economic beneficiaries of the past conflicts have a continued interest in triggering hatred amongst the peoples of SEE, while, ironically enough, they are at the same time operating their criminal activities through well-functioning cross-border networks.

But I do not want to be too negative. The year 2003 does also open up a terrific window of opportunity for the whole region: By now, all the SEE countries are in the process of establishing a structured relationship to the EU. In the framework of the current Greek EU-Presidency, Thessaloniki will host the EU-Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) Summit end of June, where the EU is expected to offer a further elaborated perspective for the countries involved into the so-called „Stabilisation and Association Process“.

This leads me to my key message: it is my firm conviction that the processes of reconciliation and EU-integration are intimately inter-linked and reinforcing each other. The experience of the post-WW II integration process in Western Europe is best proof of it: Reconciliation between the two former enemies Germany and France that have gone to war against each other 3 times within only one century did happen through functional integration in areas where both parties had a mutual interest in cooperation. The initial European Economic Community subsequently expanded not only thematically, but also geographically. Today, nobody in France or Germany could seriously think of going to war against each other. Conflicts and differences of interests are sorted out through dialogue and the search for compromise, and no longer through the use of weapons.

This is a lesson that - in my impression - is still too often forgotten by the countries of SEE. If you ask people whether they want to join the EU, the vast majority would probably immediately say „Yes“, but people tend to forget that being member of the EU involves cooperating and interacting with your neighbours.

„Reconciliation“ is also closely linked to the concept of „democracy“. Democracy means the rule of majority, while respecting the rights of minorities. If applied on relations within countries, this means the respect for human rights, ethnic, religious, cultural and other minorities, and equality between genders. In intra-state relations, democracy implies that relations are based on equal footing, that small and big countries have the same rights and do not perceive each other as a threat.

Here again the European Union, despite its many dysfunctionalities and shortcomings, can serve as a positive example and at the same time explains why under its framework, former enemies could re-establish trust towards each other. From this perspective, Thessaloniki and Greece as the birthplace of democracy and the venue of both the workshop and 2 months later the EU-SAP Summit send important political signals.

What about?

I already mentioned that democracy and regional cooperation ­ European integration are important components within the reconciliation process in the Balkans. In addition, the preliminary ideas on what could be the main pillars of the Reconciliation process have been developed within the mentioned “core group”. The key task in this context, which so far has remained unresolved, is to develop effective mechanisms and strategies that would change the persisting pattern of hostility and conflicts into cooperation and respect of common values, transform the shared history of antagonisms to a new post-totalitarian political culture. This means basically 2 things:

How?

Regional leadership

Our understanding is that it should be the people from the region who can best identify what is still necessary to foster this process, what are the factors that still impede progress in this field. People from SEE are best placed to analyze what can be learned from past experience in the Balkans and what needs to be done in future to enhance the reconciliation process. Therefore we have invited representatives from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, FY Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro to brainstorm at this workshop.

You have experienced the deep ethnic, cultural and political cleavages in your countries day-by-day, you are developing projects and concepts to overcome these cleavages. I am therefore confident that the mix of scholars, NGO representatives and other experienced representatives present here will develop some creative ideas what is still necessary to do on the ground and which measures can produce positive results. This workshop is supposed to make a difference: It is based on the understanding that “Reconciliation” can only come about through an inclusive process, i.e. the full participation and cooperation of local actors ­ individuals and institutions ­ as opposed to a pre-conceived concepts imposed from outside.

The representatives of the international community need to listen to you, what your ideas about the future Balkans region are. Most importantly, it should be the young generation who should tell us what the most burning issues in this field are: it is the young people who carry the main responsibility of building up democratic states in SEE, it is the young generation whose mentality can be still influenced towards adopting more tolerant attitudes. Therefore I am particularly happy and proud to see so many young faces at this event.

Bottom-up approach

The debate has been already initiated through the Internet Forum in which many of you are actively participating. The Internet is nowadays the most democratic medium, easily accessible to a wide public. The discussion within the Forum has already provided us with some important indicators what the most burning issues are: One lesson is that despite all future-orientation, the legacies of the past continue to play a vital role. Another message is that as long as brain drain and youth unemployment will not be efficiently tackled, both reconciliation and the European future of the region are seriously questioned. The questions and issues discussed in the Internet Forum will be further elaborated during the following 3 days and I hope that at the end we will be able to come up with useful recommendations for future action both on political and NGO / project-level.

I hope that on Sunday we will be able to come up with the following results:

Follow-up

In the upcoming weeks, I intend to develop some ideas on the operationalisation of this initiative and the follow-up on the political and grass-root level. What I can say for sure already at this stage, is that we should try to keep the workshop participants’ synergy alive. “Regional ownership “ and “bottom-up approach” imply that this workshop is conceptualized only as the beginning of the active involvement of all of you in this initiative in a longer perspective. I wish all of us fruitful and creative discussions.