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15 March, 2001It is only the growth of an open and tolerant society, founded on respect for fundamental rights, that can give the citizens of the former Yugoslavia prospects for the future, writes Toni Ferigo, responsible for the Balkan region in the IMF Secretariat.
BY TONI FERIGO
The year 2000 will be remembered in the different states of the former Yugoslavia as "the year of historic changes." The future will tell if this is true, if a new era has really started for this troubled area of Southern Europe. The events of the last year of the century provide ground for such hope.
To use a significant expression by an historian of the Balkans, in Serbia the "necessary but not sufficient condition for real change" has come about: Milosevic is no longer in power. Serbia elected (and imposed) a new president and in late December it voted in a Parliament in which the parties of the former opposition hold a sizeable majority.
THE NEW POLICY IN CROATIA
In Croatia, Tudjman's nationalist heirs, defeated in the 1999 elections, have been pushed to the margins of the political scene. Albeit in the difficult post-war economic and social situation, the Croatian government has definitely left behind all traces of ultra-nationalism. As has been written by P. Garde, one of France's major historians of Balkan affairs, "After the fall of Milosevic, everyone rushed to Belgrade, while the same enthusiasm has not been shown as a result of Zagabria's changes and of its new political direction: cooperation with the International Court of the Hague, full acceptance of the Dayton Accords, no support for the Croatian ultra-nationalists of Herzegovina, moralisation of the State structures."
Even in Bosnia, in spite of the strong electoral support they still enjoy, the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim Nationalist Parties are at a historic low and have been kept out of the Federal government.
KOSOVO -- A TORMENTED REGION
And finally, Kosovo. Even in this tormented region, unknown to many before Nato's intervention, free elections have been held for the local administrations, with a sharp victory of the Democratic League led by J. Rugova, the intellectual "compelled to take up politics." Rugova is a thoroughly democratic individual and the embodiment of the non-violent resistance which has lasted many years.
So the new decade begins with a new scenario. The three main protagonists -- Milosevic, Tudjman and Izbegovitch (with all due distinctions) -- of a decade of violence and distress have gone (a necessary condition), but their legacy is burdensome from several standpoints: economic, institutional, social and human.
For an in-depth examination of these aspects, the reader is referred to the many studies and publications on the origin and evolution of the facts which led to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, and to the not-so-numerous but nevertheless exhaustive works on the economic, political and social analyses of the post-war period (see References). The writer will not attempt to give a summary of these facts; instead, he will try to communicate through his reactions, questions, doubts and ideas for action in his capacity as a trade unionist who has had to challenge these realities.
A RUGGED PENINSULA
First of all, what has disappeared with Yugoslavia is not only a political entity but an entire integrated economic area. There is no need to examine statistical data or read sophisticated analyses to realise this fact. Experience is quite enough.
As soon as I joined the Secretariat of the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), my first task was to organise a conference on stability pacts in the Balkans. This started a long, interesting, if often wearying journey through this rough and rugged peninsula to meet with the union leaders and activists, the non-governmental organisations, foundations and intervention centres. In travelling over only a few hundred kilometres, you run into a number of borders equipped with customs, police checks, forms to be filled in. Driving along these roads which climb up and down mountains rich in vegetation or very bare, it comes as natural, even without having specifically studied the issue, to realise how great are the trade and travelling difficulties in this area.
THE DIVIDED BOSNIA
What was once an integrated economic area is now an area made up of many non-communicating, watertight compartments. A striking example is Bosnia. The Dayton Accords have divided former Bosnia into two entities: the Serbska Republic in the North with Banja Luka as its capital town, and in the South the Muslim-Croatian Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with Sarajevo as its capital town. Each entity has its government, an elected parliament, a legislative system, and trade rules. Above the two is a Federal Assembly and a presidency formed by elected representatives of the various parties. All this comes under the surveillance of the U.N., which has the task of supervising compliance with the agreements. This means that a mayor of a little town who opposes the return of exiles may be removed from office, or more simply that it is imposed on the authorities that automobile plates be the same for everyone so as to avoid ethnic-national discrimination. The division has not only separated the population but also the factories, the industrial plants. It is not unusual that the plants which under the Yugoslav Federation were a part of the same company now find themselves belonging to different zones, or that the production and raw materials are now in a different state, in Croatia or in ... Kosovo.
Visiting the plants and speaking with union activists in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, a recurring phrase would be: "We used to have trade relations with ....", "we used to belong to the industrial group of ...."
SLOVENIA WAS GRAZED BY THE WAR
A good project led by ISCOS, the Italian Unions' Cooperation Institute, which has an office in Banja Luka, has brought together union leaders and managers from different sectors of the two sides to examine proposals and plans to re-launch the enterprises. The division of the country has been found to be a great burden. Even the railways play by different rules!
This is confirmed by the data provided by the economists. Trade among the Balkan countries is at a low; it is almost non-existent even between Serbia and Montenegro, the republics making up what is left of the Yugoslav Federation.
Trade is livelier with Europe, especially in Slovenia, which at the end of the 1980s had the most advanced industrial structure out of all the republics and which was only grazed by the war. Recently, Croatia has seen an improvement in its trade with Europe, but economic development is unthinkable unless an integrated Balkan area is restored. And integration not only means market but infrastructure, trade and tax rules, and communications. Everyone is aware of this, but the obstacles are many.
INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS REMAIN TO BE SETTLED
The intricate institutional problems still remain to be settled: the future of Kosovo, the relationships between Serbia and Montenegro, which is eager to gain full independence, the stability of Bosnia Herzegovina, where the Dayton Accords are deemed by some to be outdated and there are claims to have them reviewed, and then there are separatist ethnic drives.
Ultimately, some of the knots in the Balkan tangle have not been undone yet. It is not difficult to predict that Kosovo is going to go on being a riddle for some time and not only an issue for discussion.
While President Kostunica does not miss a single opportunity to state that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, no Kosovar politician, even the most moderate, is willing to give up the goal of independence. And while the European diplomacies consider this aspiration of the Kosovar Albanians to be "inopportune" on the basis of geopolitical considerations, an independent U.N. committee chaired by Gladstone, a South African of great prestige, suggests a "conditional form of independence." On the basis of what I have seen and heard in Kosovo both before and after the war, a process of self-government is virtually underway.
SARAJEVO HAS BEEN REBUILT
As pointed out by the chairman of the Mother Teresa Association, time and opportunities are needed in order to bring to maturity the solutions which will ensure lasting peace. Backed by the realism typical of one who has experienced reality, Bernard Kouchner has said: "Changes in Belgrade are important, but conciliation in Kosovo is a long way away." Time, good will and development, job opportunities, institutions. Most of the displaced population has returned, and much work is going on to fix the houses, the roofs, and to get businesses back on track.. "The problems are huge. The future is full of unknowns, but we feel free and we look ahead," said the chairman of the trade unions.
That there is a need for time together and a show of good will emerges clearly from the situation in Bosnia, where the ethnic-nationalist parties continue to be soundly supported. The signs of the war, after five years, are still present. While, thanks to international aid, Sarajevo has been almost completely rebuilt (but, unfortunately, not the ancient library), many villages in the mountains go on being bleak mounds of debris and rubble, and the displaced people who have returned are not very many.
THEY WANT TO BE A PART OF EUROPE
The devastation has reached the heart of Serbia. "And now, even we who had watched the previous wars on TV, we now have our debris," says an activist for human rights in Belgrade, and he was not referring only to material destruction.
With the end of the former Yugoslavia, what has disappeared is not only an integrated economic area but also a cultural area, an identity -- very complex problem which cannot be explained in a few lines or through simplistic definitions of the nature of the Balkan peoples, and of their genetic predisposition to violent interethnic conflict. Let us not forget how many wars and conflicts occurred in the heart of continental Europe during the first fifty years of the last century!
All the people I met answered my question on identity saying without hesitation that they feel they are Europeans, and that they want to be part of Europe. Those who do not want this are always a bit farther out, precisely in the Balkans. And so for the Slovenes the Balkans begin in Croatia, for the Croatians the Balkans begin in Serbia .... where you will find intellectuals who criticise the West, but in the name of the Orthodox religion of the Slav (or Serbian) identity, not of a Balkan identity. And yet, as I am told by a professor of Sarajevo, the mix of cultures in these lands has in time created a Balkan specificity which was marvellously embodied for a long time by the town of Bosnia. It is not only a question of co-existence, of physical proximity which is clearly visible in the capital town of Bosnia, in the Orthodox, Catholic churches, mosques and synagogues, in the Hapsburg and Ottoman palaces, but of mutual "contamination."
POLITICIANS WITHOUT SCRUPLES
Before the war, the citizens of Sarajevo would have answered the question, "Who are you?" by saying "I am a Yugoslav Bosniac," during the siege they would have said "a citizen of Sarajevo," and today they say "I am a Bosniac Muslim or a Bosniac Serb." Europe died in Sarajevo, as Edgar Morin has written, and it is not difficult to meet people who continue to call themselves Yugoslavians.
Identity, exploited by politicians without scruples (of which Milosevic and his use of the media and of mass manipulation was an example, and not the only one) and by irresponsible intellectuals, presents the evil face of exclusion, intolerance and prejudice. A Serb journalist told me that new "national" languages are being introduced in some media and in the legislation, hence breaking up the language unity of the peninsula (with the exception, of course, of the Albanian minorities.
THE DANGER OF HATRED
Will the men and women of the former Yugoslavia be able to find the words and actions which will enable them to once again share the common feelings of mankind? Many succeeded in doing so during the war where there were many instances of solidarity and help, but it is a "never-ending task and above all it means taking on one's responsibilities and not only reminding others of theirs," as an Orthodox priest told me. A sound example of this was given by the unions' Confederation of Montenegro which publicly begged pardon of the Croatian unions for the bombardment of Dubrovnik.
The danger of ethnic and racial hatred is everywhere, even outside the Balkans. The beautiful story (which I warmly recommend -- "Stories of Sarajevo") written by the Serb-Bosniac writer, Ivo Andric, has often sprung to my mind; in this story a young man flees his country because there is too much hatred and goes to die, as a volunteer doctor, in the Spanish Civil War, where he is killed by hatred.
THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR
And finally, a consequence of the economic disaster, of the war and of the lack of openness, is social disintegration. With the exception of Slovenia, wherever you go, albeit present in differing degrees, you will find the same diseases.
High unemployment, technological backwardness, subsistence economy, underground work and, we are told, corruption and criminal activities. The effects of the war, with its embargo and the opportunities seized by people without scruples for doing "sound business," have merely come to add to the difficulties of the economic collapse that characterised all the countries of real socialism in the former Yugoslavia. At the Splitz market you would find the goods stolen during the cleansing of the villages. Arms trade, professional mercenaries or people who have become mercenaries and contrivances to skirt around the embargo have generated a highly profitable business which has firmly taken root and will be extremely difficult to eradicate.
TRADE UNIONS IN THE FORMER SYSTEM
What can the trade unions do in such a situation? And what meaning do the trade unions have in that area?
In the former self-managed Yugoslav system, the trade unions were one of the institutions together with the single party making up the power system -- a sort of social work, an insurance scheme, a provider of services with a sprinkle of self-management theory. With the economic and political crisis of the centrally-planned economies and with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the trade unions, as in other Eastern countries, have had to fully redefine their role. You must bear in mind that Solidarnosc in Poland and in the East is an exception and not the rule. The falling apart of the Single Party, of the Communist League, has led to a fragmentation of the trade unions along different political and ideological lines. The conquest of power by the nationalist group in Serbia with Milosevic and then in Croatia with Tudjman has further widened the gap in the unions between a majority, which was part of the power system built up on nationalist grounds, and the other groups making up the independent opposition.
A task of the unions in an economy in transition towards a market system should be that of supervising events so that the social rules and rights are safeguarded through bargaining and social dialogue. But, with the exception of Slovenia, true transition processes have not yet come about. The war put a stop to everything and the economic initiatives such as privatisation programmes after Dayton were opportunities for speculation and not for modernisation. A true development process will begin only when the Balkans go back to being and acting as an integrated area, that is to say when that area stops being merely a geographic expression, as it is today, and becomes an area characterised by cooperation at all levels: state, social and ethnic and cultural. THE UNIONS MUST FIND A ROLE FOR THEMSELVES
This is the goal pursued by the stability pact, and it is in this framework that the unions must find a role for themselves. This is why the main goal of any initiative to be taken in the area (trade, training programmes, workshops, ...) is to promote communications, to build bridges, to work with a long-term perspective so as to water down the conflict. The IMF intends to operate within the framework of activities promoted by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU); the trade unions of the West are called upon to give their contribution. It is only the growth of an open and tolerant society, founded on respect for fundamental rights, that can give the citizens of the former Yugoslavia prospects for the future. The building up of a body of representative, free and independent trade unions, capable of protecting labour and of being in the front line in the fight against discrimination, is one of the essential conditions for preventing that the nationalist beast may return and that a wild type of capitalism without rules may take root and flourish. What is at stake is not only the future of this troubled peninsula but also the very future of Europe.
Bibliography for
the report on the Balkans
Noel Malcom: Books on Bosnia, The Bosnian Institute, London, 2000;
Misha Glenny: The Balkans, Penguin Viking, 2000;
Misha Glenny: The Fall of Yugoslavia, Penguin, 1996;
Florence Hartmann: Milosevic, la diagonale du fou, Denoel, Paris, 2000;
Paul Garde: Vie et mort de la Yugoslavie, Fayard, Paris, 1992;
Silber, Laura and Allan Little: The Death of Yugoslavia, Penguin/BBC, London, 1995;
Kurspahic Kemal: As Long as Sarajevo Exists, Pamphel Press, 1997;
Richard Holbrooke: To End a War, Random House, N.Y., 1998;
Michel Roux: Le Kosovo, la découverte, Paris, 1999;
Jbraim Rugova: La question du Kosovo, Fayard, Paris, 1994;
SEER: South East Europe Review, H. Böckler Stiftung, Düsseldo
THE NEW POLICY IN CROATIA
In Croatia, Tudjman's nationalist heirs, defeated in the 1999 elections, have been pushed to the margins of the political scene. Albeit in the difficult post-war economic and social situation, the Croatian government has definitely left behind all traces of ultra-nationalism. As has been written by P. Garde, one of France's major historians of Balkan affairs, "After the fall of Milosevic, everyone rushed to Belgrade, while the same enthusiasm has not been shown as a result of Zagabria's changes and of its new political direction: cooperation with the International Court of the Hague, full acceptance of the Dayton Accords, no support for the Croatian ultra-nationalists of Herzegovina, moralisation of the State structures."
Even in Bosnia, in spite of the strong electoral support they still enjoy, the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim Nationalist Parties are at a historic low and have been kept out of the Federal government.
KOSOVO -- A TORMENTED REGION
And finally, Kosovo. Even in this tormented region, unknown to many before Nato's intervention, free elections have been held for the local administrations, with a sharp victory of the Democratic League led by J. Rugova, the intellectual "compelled to take up politics." Rugova is a thoroughly democratic individual and the embodiment of the non-violent resistance which has lasted many years.
So the new decade begins with a new scenario. The three main protagonists -- Milosevic, Tudjman and Izbegovitch (with all due distinctions) -- of a decade of violence and distress have gone (a necessary condition), but their legacy is burdensome from several standpoints: economic, institutional, social and human.
For an in-depth examination of these aspects, the reader is referred to the many studies and publications on the origin and evolution of the facts which led to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, and to the not-so-numerous but nevertheless exhaustive works on the economic, political and social analyses of the post-war period (see References). The writer will not attempt to give a summary of these facts; instead, he will try to communicate through his reactions, questions, doubts and ideas for action in his capacity as a trade unionist who has had to challenge these realities.
A RUGGED PENINSULA
First of all, what has disappeared with Yugoslavia is not only a political entity but an entire integrated economic area. There is no need to examine statistical data or read sophisticated analyses to realise this fact. Experience is quite enough.
As soon as I joined the Secretariat of the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), my first task was to organise a conference on stability pacts in the Balkans. This started a long, interesting, if often wearying journey through this rough and rugged peninsula to meet with the union leaders and activists, the non-governmental organisations, foundations and intervention centres. In travelling over only a few hundred kilometres, you run into a number of borders equipped with customs, police checks, forms to be filled in. Driving along these roads which climb up and down mountains rich in vegetation or very bare, it comes as natural, even without having specifically studied the issue, to realise how great are the trade and travelling difficulties in this area.
THE DIVIDED BOSNIA
What was once an integrated economic area is now an area made up of many non-communicating, watertight compartments. A striking example is Bosnia. The Dayton Accords have divided former Bosnia into two entities: the Serbska Republic in the North with Banja Luka as its capital town, and in the South the Muslim-Croatian Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with Sarajevo as its capital town. Each entity has its government, an elected parliament, a legislative system, and trade rules. Above the two is a Federal Assembly and a presidency formed by elected representatives of the various parties. All this comes under the surveillance of the U.N., which has the task of supervising compliance with the agreements. This means that a mayor of a little town who opposes the return of exiles may be removed from office, or more simply that it is imposed on the authorities that automobile plates be the same for everyone so as to avoid ethnic-national discrimination. The division has not only separated the population but also the factories, the industrial plants. It is not unusual that the plants which under the Yugoslav Federation were a part of the same company now find themselves belonging to different zones, or that the production and raw materials are now in a different state, in Croatia or in ... Kosovo.
Visiting the plants and speaking with union activists in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, a recurring phrase would be: "We used to have trade relations with ....", "we used to belong to the industrial group of ...."
SLOVENIA WAS GRAZED BY THE WAR
A good project led by ISCOS, the Italian Unions' Cooperation Institute, which has an office in Banja Luka, has brought together union leaders and managers from different sectors of the two sides to examine proposals and plans to re-launch the enterprises. The division of the country has been found to be a great burden. Even the railways play by different rules!
This is confirmed by the data provided by the economists. Trade among the Balkan countries is at a low; it is almost non-existent even between Serbia and Montenegro, the republics making up what is left of the Yugoslav Federation.
Trade is livelier with Europe, especially in Slovenia, which at the end of the 1980s had the most advanced industrial structure out of all the republics and which was only grazed by the war. Recently, Croatia has seen an improvement in its trade with Europe, but economic development is unthinkable unless an integrated Balkan area is restored. And integration not only means market but infrastructure, trade and tax rules, and communications. Everyone is aware of this, but the obstacles are many.
INSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS REMAIN TO BE SETTLED
The intricate institutional problems still remain to be settled: the future of Kosovo, the relationships between Serbia and Montenegro, which is eager to gain full independence, the stability of Bosnia Herzegovina, where the Dayton Accords are deemed by some to be outdated and there are claims to have them reviewed, and then there are separatist ethnic drives.
Ultimately, some of the knots in the Balkan tangle have not been undone yet. It is not difficult to predict that Kosovo is going to go on being a riddle for some time and not only an issue for discussion.
While President Kostunica does not miss a single opportunity to state that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, no Kosovar politician, even the most moderate, is willing to give up the goal of independence. And while the European diplomacies consider this aspiration of the Kosovar Albanians to be "inopportune" on the basis of geopolitical considerations, an independent U.N. committee chaired by Gladstone, a South African of great prestige, suggests a "conditional form of independence." On the basis of what I have seen and heard in Kosovo both before and after the war, a process of self-government is virtually underway.
SARAJEVO HAS BEEN REBUILT
As pointed out by the chairman of the Mother Teresa Association, time and opportunities are needed in order to bring to maturity the solutions which will ensure lasting peace. Backed by the realism typical of one who has experienced reality, Bernard Kouchner has said: "Changes in Belgrade are important, but conciliation in Kosovo is a long way away." Time, good will and development, job opportunities, institutions. Most of the displaced population has returned, and much work is going on to fix the houses, the roofs, and to get businesses back on track.. "The problems are huge. The future is full of unknowns, but we feel free and we look ahead," said the chairman of the trade unions.
That there is a need for time together and a show of good will emerges clearly from the situation in Bosnia, where the ethnic-nationalist parties continue to be soundly supported. The signs of the war, after five years, are still present. While, thanks to international aid, Sarajevo has been almost completely rebuilt (but, unfortunately, not the ancient library), many villages in the mountains go on being bleak mounds of debris and rubble, and the displaced people who have returned are not very many.
THEY WANT TO BE A PART OF EUROPE
The devastation has reached the heart of Serbia. "And now, even we who had watched the previous wars on TV, we now have our debris," says an activist for human rights in Belgrade, and he was not referring only to material destruction.
With the end of the former Yugoslavia, what has disappeared is not only an integrated economic area but also a cultural area, an identity -- very complex problem which cannot be explained in a few lines or through simplistic definitions of the nature of the Balkan peoples, and of their genetic predisposition to violent interethnic conflict. Let us not forget how many wars and conflicts occurred in the heart of continental Europe during the first fifty years of the last century!
All the people I met answered my question on identity saying without hesitation that they feel they are Europeans, and that they want to be part of Europe. Those who do not want this are always a bit farther out, precisely in the Balkans. And so for the Slovenes the Balkans begin in Croatia, for the Croatians the Balkans begin in Serbia .... where you will find intellectuals who criticise the West, but in the name of the Orthodox religion of the Slav (or Serbian) identity, not of a Balkan identity. And yet, as I am told by a professor of Sarajevo, the mix of cultures in these lands has in time created a Balkan specificity which was marvellously embodied for a long time by the town of Bosnia. It is not only a question of co-existence, of physical proximity which is clearly visible in the capital town of Bosnia, in the Orthodox, Catholic churches, mosques and synagogues, in the Hapsburg and Ottoman palaces, but of mutual "contamination."
POLITICIANS WITHOUT SCRUPLES
Before the war, the citizens of Sarajevo would have answered the question, "Who are you?" by saying "I am a Yugoslav Bosniac," during the siege they would have said "a citizen of Sarajevo," and today they say "I am a Bosniac Muslim or a Bosniac Serb." Europe died in Sarajevo, as Edgar Morin has written, and it is not difficult to meet people who continue to call themselves Yugoslavians.
Identity, exploited by politicians without scruples (of which Milosevic and his use of the media and of mass manipulation was an example, and not the only one) and by irresponsible intellectuals, presents the evil face of exclusion, intolerance and prejudice. A Serb journalist told me that new "national" languages are being introduced in some media and in the legislation, hence breaking up the language unity of the peninsula (with the exception, of course, of the Albanian minorities.
THE DANGER OF HATRED
Will the men and women of the former Yugoslavia be able to find the words and actions which will enable them to once again share the common feelings of mankind? Many succeeded in doing so during the war where there were many instances of solidarity and help, but it is a "never-ending task and above all it means taking on one's responsibilities and not only reminding others of theirs," as an Orthodox priest told me. A sound example of this was given by the unions' Confederation of Montenegro which publicly begged pardon of the Croatian unions for the bombardment of Dubrovnik.
The danger of ethnic and racial hatred is everywhere, even outside the Balkans. The beautiful story (which I warmly recommend -- "Stories of Sarajevo") written by the Serb-Bosniac writer, Ivo Andric, has often sprung to my mind; in this story a young man flees his country because there is too much hatred and goes to die, as a volunteer doctor, in the Spanish Civil War, where he is killed by hatred.
THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR
And finally, a consequence of the economic disaster, of the war and of the lack of openness, is social disintegration. With the exception of Slovenia, wherever you go, albeit present in differing degrees, you will find the same diseases.
High unemployment, technological backwardness, subsistence economy, underground work and, we are told, corruption and criminal activities. The effects of the war, with its embargo and the opportunities seized by people without scruples for doing "sound business," have merely come to add to the difficulties of the economic collapse that characterised all the countries of real socialism in the former Yugoslavia. At the Splitz market you would find the goods stolen during the cleansing of the villages. Arms trade, professional mercenaries or people who have become mercenaries and contrivances to skirt around the embargo have generated a highly profitable business which has firmly taken root and will be extremely difficult to eradicate.
TRADE UNIONS IN THE FORMER SYSTEM
What can the trade unions do in such a situation? And what meaning do the trade unions have in that area?
In the former self-managed Yugoslav system, the trade unions were one of the institutions together with the single party making up the power system -- a sort of social work, an insurance scheme, a provider of services with a sprinkle of self-management theory. With the economic and political crisis of the centrally-planned economies and with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, the trade unions, as in other Eastern countries, have had to fully redefine their role. You must bear in mind that Solidarnosc in Poland and in the East is an exception and not the rule. The falling apart of the Single Party, of the Communist League, has led to a fragmentation of the trade unions along different political and ideological lines. The conquest of power by the nationalist group in Serbia with Milosevic and then in Croatia with Tudjman has further widened the gap in the unions between a majority, which was part of the power system built up on nationalist grounds, and the other groups making up the independent opposition.
A task of the unions in an economy in transition towards a market system should be that of supervising events so that the social rules and rights are safeguarded through bargaining and social dialogue. But, with the exception of Slovenia, true transition processes have not yet come about. The war put a stop to everything and the economic initiatives such as privatisation programmes after Dayton were opportunities for speculation and not for modernisation. A true development process will begin only when the Balkans go back to being and acting as an integrated area, that is to say when that area stops being merely a geographic expression, as it is today, and becomes an area characterised by cooperation at all levels: state, social and ethnic and cultural. THE UNIONS MUST FIND A ROLE FOR THEMSELVES
This is the goal pursued by the stability pact, and it is in this framework that the unions must find a role for themselves. This is why the main goal of any initiative to be taken in the area (trade, training programmes, workshops, ...) is to promote communications, to build bridges, to work with a long-term perspective so as to water down the conflict. The IMF intends to operate within the framework of activities promoted by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU); the trade unions of the West are called upon to give their contribution. It is only the growth of an open and tolerant society, founded on respect for fundamental rights, that can give the citizens of the former Yugoslavia prospects for the future. The building up of a body of representative, free and independent trade unions, capable of protecting labour and of being in the front line in the fight against discrimination, is one of the essential conditions for preventing that the nationalist beast may return and that a wild type of capitalism without rules may take root and flourish. What is at stake is not only the future of this troubled peninsula but also the very future of Europe.
Bibliography for
the report on the Balkans
Noel Malcom: Books on Bosnia, The Bosnian Institute, London, 2000;
Misha Glenny: The Balkans, Penguin Viking, 2000;
Misha Glenny: The Fall of Yugoslavia, Penguin, 1996;
Florence Hartmann: Milosevic, la diagonale du fou, Denoel, Paris, 2000;
Paul Garde: Vie et mort de la Yugoslavie, Fayard, Paris, 1992;
Silber, Laura and Allan Little: The Death of Yugoslavia, Penguin/BBC, London, 1995;
Kurspahic Kemal: As Long as Sarajevo Exists, Pamphel Press, 1997;
Richard Holbrooke: To End a War, Random House, N.Y., 1998;
Michel Roux: Le Kosovo, la découverte, Paris, 1999;
Jbraim Rugova: La question du Kosovo, Fayard, Paris, 1994;
SEER: South East Europe Review, H. Böckler Stiftung, Düsseldo