Security sector reform, 'military neutrality' and EU-integration in Serbia
Publisher: Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies – CEAS
Volume: 88 pages pdf
Description
The security sector constitutes an important component of any country’s governmental structure. Democratic alignment of the security sector is one of the most important prerequisites for any democratically organized country. Because of this, security sector reform (SSR) is a key element of the democratic transformation of authoritarian countries. This is especially true for the countries of South-East Europe where the socialist era was succeeded by an era of warfare that witnessed a substantial erosion of the monopoly on the use of force as the result of a deliberate policy of violent ethnicisation of society and the state. Serbia began the process of security sector reform after 2000 under complex socio-political circumstances which largely shaped and defined the limitations of the scope and effects of such reforms implemented since then. This explains why Serbia entered the final phase of the European Union (EU) integration process – accession negotiations – in January 2014 with an incomplete and unsatisfactory record of security sector reform.