Civic and Uncivic Values: Serbia in the Post-Milošević Era

4. The EU in the Values and Expectations of Serbia: Challenges, Opportunities, and Confrontations

4 The EU in the Values and Expectations of Serbia: Challenges, Opportunities, and Confrontations* Stefano Bianchini Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior Caio Valerio Catullo, Carmina. Odi et amo (LXXXV) “Europeanness” and the Peculiarities of the Serbian Transition In an introductory chapter to a book on value changes and transition in Serbia, Dragomir Pantić has observed that values play a double role, since they mirror our time and its relation with the past. Simultaneously , they comprise the capability of going beyond the reality, therefore presenting a pathway for the future.1 In other words, political, cultural and economic changes strictly depend on reshaping values, although the latter—particularly in societies experiencing radical and comprehensive regime transitions—stem from a peculiar and unpredictable combination of cultural/political (as well as economic and social) legacies and future aspirations. In a time of globalization, these aspirations are deeply influenced by external factors and international agencies. Thus, Serbia is dealing with quite dynamic conditions. The Serbian transition is in fact peculiar—within the European post-socialist world—since it is encompassing different processes simultaneously, in a way that has not been experienced by the other states of the Soviet camp. Truly, Serbia—similarly to the other Yugoslav successor states—has moved from a social self-managed society to a free market democracy since 1990. In this context, however, Serbia could (and can) rely on solid State and institutional traditions whose roots have been established since the 19th century. * I wish to thank Srđan Bogosavljević, Vojin Dimitrijević, Vesna Pešić, Dragomir Pantić and Dušan Janjić for generously helping me in identifying and collecting the main sources needed for the present study. At the same time, its society has been deeply traumatized by conflicts , whose social/security component has played a crucial role since the 1980s: in particular, the flourishing of criminality—strengthened in war times—has increased the social insecurity of Serbs dramatically . Nevertheless, these conflicts have not been merely social, since their ethno-cultural and military component was predominant, deeply affecting the relations either with the new neighboring states or with Serbian domestic minorities (mostly to the detriment of the Albanians in Kosovo). Additionally, Serbian society—and this is a peculiarity in the European post-socialist framework—has suffered from long-term political and cultural international isolation, as well as from a well-rooted negative bias, having been systematically considered for a couple of decades the “pariah” of the “European family,” as a consequence of Milošević’s policy, which finally led to the NATO bombing in 1999. Moreover, Serbia is a country with an undefined territory and—after 17 February 2008—its size is differently recognized internationally. In other words, despite the overthrowing of Milošević in 2000 and the democratic developments of its institutional system since then, Serbia is not yet a post-conflict society, where the political elite is expected to reconstruct ties and norms after a regime/State collapse. On the contrary, Serbia is still an in-conflict society: in-conflict with itself, with its statehood, with some of its neighbors, and international agents. Moreover, the post-socialist transition is not necessarily a postnationalist transition. In Serbia, the end of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” has been followed by an authoritarian nationalist regime, able to tolerate a multiparty system (although under severe constraints), as soon as the Yugoslav dismemberment started. Its decline—between 1997 and 2000— paved the way for the regular functioning of democratic rules and institutions, although the stability of the Serbian society remains to be achieved in the coming decades. Particularly, nationalism—and the political culture it generates— proved to be well rooted in the society, far beyond the personal role played by Milošević in the 1990s. Contrary to the naïve expectations of the United States and the older member states of the European Union, Serbian nationalism was not defeated when the project of Great Serbia vanished and Kosovo became a UN administrative territory in 1999. As a matter of fact, even when Milošević was arrested and sent to Scheveningen in order to be prosecuted at the ICTY, the nationalist 78 Stefano Bianchini vision—with its values and expectations—was able to mobilize a significant component of the Serbian political elite and of its society. At the same time, however, and in spite of all that, Serbian society has deeply changed. Suffice...