Balkans: does France want to block peace?
What do the citizens of the country expect from France to relaunch the European Union? On the eve of the presidential elections in France, we asked two colleagues, one Polish, the other Albanian, what the European Union represented.
(Archives - B2) The idea of the start of European construction - to spread peace on the European continent - seems erased today in France.
By modifying its Constitution, it gave the people, by way of referendum, to approve or block the entry of any new Member State into the European Union, including Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia -Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. A process that may seem democratic for the French but is experienced with anxiety in the Balkans who see it as a form of injustice. Why could 60 million French people decide, in the name of all Europeans, who should join the Union or not? One has the impression that this France, which had had the courage, half a century ago, to embrace its historical enemy (and neighbour), Germany, has today forgotten this dynamic of reconciliation.
The French may not be aware of this. But the peaceful reunification of Europe, of which the founding fathers had dreamed, was undoubtedly “THE” undeniable success of this Union. This is a tangible reality today for the 12 new Member States, from Estonia to Romania. Why wouldn't it be so for the Balkans? This powder keg that only the European dream can extinguish, this mirror which reflects and recalls at every moment the demons of the past, this “black hole” in an almost unified continent could be more destabilizing if it were not integrated.
Even if the European Union failed and did not know how to respond to the crises and wars that set the region ablaze in the 1990s, it has been healing all the same, since 1999, the gaping wounds of the Balkans by its sole power of attraction. . The simple idea of being able to join, one day, this "peace club" strength these south-eastern European countries to reforms that they could not achieve otherwise. Returning to the Union for Albanians is vital. There is no plan B, no other alternative.
For us, Europe is a functioning democracy, responsible political parties, fundamental rights respected, it is also a functioning economy, the freedom to travel within the Union, without visas, without restrictions, and above all , a balm to ancestral hatreds. Can we dream, one day, like General de Gaulle and Adenauer, of Serbian President Boris Tadic kissing Kosovar Fatmir Sejdiu on both cheeks? This dream, only the whole of Europe can bring it...
Ernest Bunguri.
Published in Ouest-France, March 2007