Interview with Joost Lagendijk, 2004, www.seetv-exchanges.com

Subject: New “European Partnerships” for the Western Balkan countries

Background note:

Inspired by the Accession Partnerships for the candidate countries, the European Commission is preparing “European Partnerships” for the five Western Balkan states. The documents will identify priorities for action in order to support efforts to move closer to the EU, and will serve as a checklist against which to measure progress. They will be adapted to the countries’ specific needs and respective stages of preparation and to the specificities of the Stabilisation and Association process, including regional cooperation. The European Partnerships will be drafted in close cooperation with countries concerned. In the same time, the SA process remains the general framework for the Western Balkan states. The European Partnerships should be adopted in March by the European Council and presented to the Western Balkan countries at the same time as the SAP Reports.

Joost Lagendijk, MEP and member of the EP Delegation for the relations with South East Europe presented a report to the EP on these new Partnerships on 24 February.

Transcript of interview

Are the European Partnerships new instruments in the cooperation with Western Balkan countries? What is the relation between the Stabilisation and Association Agreements and the Partnerships?

The intention of the Thessaloniki Summit was to show to the countries of the region that they are on their way to membership. The European Parliament is not so much in favour of creating new instruments for that. I'm looking forward to the European Partnerships, this will be the documents made by the EU to show what we expect from the countries. And the countries themselves have to adopt their own national programs to implement this request. There is a parallel with the Accession Partnerships (for the candidate countries). To be honest, even the specialists in the European Parliament are waiting for these European Partnerships because nobody knows exactly what they mean.

That would be the thing I would support: to be as concrete as possible with timetables involved. If this is in the Partnership, I welcome that and think that the EU should be extremely clear to the countries of the region, we are offering Stabilisation and Association Agreements, than another instrument like the Partnerships. For me, the relation between the two is not clear. If the Partership contains a clear agenda, with clear objectives and timetable, I think it would be ok.

Are there similarities with the Accession Partnerships which were offered to the ten new member states?

This is something in between. There are some parallels. Like in the part where the country has to make it's national programme to implement the Partnership, there it looks like the Accession Partnerships. The difference is that in the Accession Partnerships for accession countires at the end there is a financial paragraph to show - this is what we want to do and this is the money available for that. Apparently, this is not a plan for the European Partnerships because finances are in the CARDS regulation. There is a danger of creating a lot of fog, different instruments. The EP would be in favour to add a financial paragraph saying - this is the money EU makes available for reaching the goals in the European Partnerships.

On the conditionality and the financial assisstance in the European Partnerships

I think the European Commission (EC) understands that it would be unwise to create unclarity. We wait to see what the Council will do also. What we are afraid of, that we have been discussing conditionnality now for three years: on the CARDS programme, on the Stabilisation and Association Process. We are afraid that all these conditions would be swept away with this new instrument which could create its own conditions. We stressed here in the EP that we should use for the European Partnerships the same conditions that we adopted before. I was happy to hear from the EC that they agree on this point. They also sressed that money in the framework of the European Partnerships will be under the same conditions as for CARDS and SAA. If the country does not cooperate on certain issues, the money could be withheld until the country complies.
The general regulation will be finalised within 1 month and very shortly after the EC will come up with very specific partnerships per country that will make it clear what we expect these countries to do. It should be a very quick operation.