The Peace-Building Efforts of the European Union in the Western Balkans: The Cases of Macedonia and Kosovo
Publisher: Murat Necip Arman and Ekrem Yasar Akcay
Volume: 16 pages, pdf
Description:
This paper is written in the belief that the European Union uses different instruments in order to maintain a permanent peace environment in the post-conflict regions. To answer the question of what those instruments are, we begin by taking a closer look at Macedonia and Kosovo cases which clarify the peace-building conception of the Union. In accordance with the aims of this study, the concept of human security will be regarded to mean a circumstance that the European Union has officially recognized as a basic policy to evaluate the peace-building instruments. The major instrument that the European Union uses at the nation and state building processes of post-conflict regions is the Stabilization and Association Process. Under that process, the European Union signed several agreements with the Western Balkans countries known as Stabilization and Association Agreements. We found a significant correlation between Stabilization and Association Agreements and the reconstruction of the Western Balkan countries’ economic and political conditions, which have gained their independency after the disunification of Yugoslavia but experienced serious state-building problems. These consequences of the Stabilization and Association Agreements with Macedonia and Kosovo complement each other and help to illuminate the phenomenon of the success of Stabilization and Association Process of the European Union.