Examination of Witness (Questions 234
- 239)
THURSDAY 1 MARCH 2001
RT HON
CHRIS PATTEN
Chairman
234. Mr Patten, we are delighted to see you.
You know this corridor as well as many of us I should think and
you have been in that position not only as a Commissioner but
as a Minister so that—
(Mr Patten)—and as a Governor.
235.—You will understand the position
only too well. We therefore welcome you. We are concerned obviously
with the role that the European Union is playing in Yugoslavia
in Kosovo and I thought perhaps the best way we might start—we
have obviously got a number of questions that we would like to
put to you—is would you like to say anything to us about
the way that you see the work of the European Union in Yugoslavia,
particularly in Pristina, as a start?
(Mr Patten) Thank you very much, Chairman. Perhaps
I can just say a few words telegrammatically at the beginning
and then take your questions? Clearly since your Committee produced
its excellent report on Kosovo the situation in the region has
improved enormously, largely of course because of the fall of
Milosevic. That is not to say there are not still problems. The
goal of a multi-ethnic community in Kosovo remains unachieved.
There are problems in the Presevo Valley in Southern Serbia, as
the Committee knows, there are problems in the relationship between
Montenegro and Serbia. So there are still problems but the situation
we are in today is incomparably better than it was even a few
months ago. Until the fall of Milosevic we had seen our policy,
as I think I said to the Committee before, largely as a question
of girdling Milosevic's Serbia with a ring of reasonably stable
and, we hoped, prospering democracies, both as an indication to
the people of Serbia as to what it would mean if they were to
be rejoining the European family and, in addition, as part of
the most important element of Europe's external policy, the projection
of stability around our periphery. Serbia remained a black hole
in the region, it was extremely difficult to see how one would
animate the economies of the region while Serbia was still stuck
in the Milosevic years. Well, we are now through that. What we
offer the whole of the region is what we call—it does not
trip easily off the tongue—a part in the Stabilisation and
Association Process. What that means is that we offer countries
contractual agreements under which they enjoy a good deal of assistance;
they enjoy pretty well free access to Europe's market and they
enjoy political cooperation in return for committing themselves
to a process of economic and political reform. Serbia is now part
of that process as well, as I have said. We have already negotiated
a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia. It is easier to call it Macedonia. We should
have completed negotiations of an agreement like that with Croatia
by the summer. Of course the Croatians have done extraordinarily
well since their own return to the democratic family in January
of last year. We hope that we will be able by the second half
of the year to begin negotiations with Albania. Bosnia-Herzegovina
has been more of a problem, but at least now it has a government
which is dominated by moderates rather than extreme nationalists.
We hope that Serbia will in due course join this process as well.
During the Milosevic years we were able to provide humanitarian
assistance in Serbia. We also provided assistance to some of the
democratic municipalities, our Energy for Democracy programme
and the Schools for Democracy programme, both of which were difficult
to run, but they were important in order to sustain the democratic
opposition. We also spent quite a bit of money during the Milosevic
period helping to sustain the independent media in Serbia, and
we are still providing assistance to the independent press today.
Very briefly, Kosovo has been a real challenge, which I hope we
have risen to. We established the Economic Reconstruction Agency
in Kosovo, whose work you will have seen, it works very closely
with the European pillar of UNMIK, which is run by the admirable
Andy Bearpark, who worked for me when I was a minister in the
Overseas Development Administration.
236. We met him when we were in Pristina.
(Mr Patten) He did a wonderful job in Bosnia dealing
with refugee returns and he is doing an excellent job with Pillar
in UNMIK. Our Reconstruction Agency is an example of how we want
to run external assistance around the world, with much more de-concentration
from Brussels, with much more ability to make decisions on the
ground and with much more flexibility in operating procedures.
So far we have committed about 800 million in Kosovo towards reconstruction.
We have contracted about 70 per cent of that and spent about 40
per cent, which are good figures for any development agency.
237. Is that in ecu?
(Mr Patten) That is in euros, yes. When I began this
job it was about the same as the dollar, it has varied a little
since then and it is now slightly below. We have concentrated
on the energy sector and, in particular, on the rehabilitation
of one of the almost medieval power stations which has been serving
Kosovo. I do not know whether you have seen them on any of your
visits, but they have posed some appalling technical problems
for the engineers who have been trying to rehabilitate them. We
have also been working in the agriculture sector, in re-housing,
in local employment schemes and in the restoration of clean water
supplies. Kosovo had been desperately disadvantaged for years.
There has been no public investment there to speak of. We are
not only dealing with war damage, we are also dealing with the
fact that Kosovo had been ignored for so long. As part of all
of those schemes we are trying to make sure that a decent proportion
of the money goes to the minority communities, to the Serbs and
the Roma, that is particularly relevant with re-housing projects
and our village and municipal improvement programmes. In Serbia
we made it clear during the Milosevic period that if Milosevic
was to go, if democracy was to return to the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia and Serbia then we would welcome Serbia back into
the European family, we would provide substantial assistance and
we would drop sanctions, and so on. The only sanctions that remain
are those that are targeted on about 13 individuals, Milosevic
and his cronies, and one or two of the indictees. Within weeks
of Milosevic's departure we started to disburse a 200 million
package of emergency assistance, focused primarily on energy,
both the delivery of oil and the purchase of electricity imports,
the provision of pharmaceuticals, of drugs for the publicly owned
pharmacies, a food programme, principally for the purchase of
flour and cooking oil, which were in short supply, which are provided
to poorer members of the community and then the money that is
raised in that way is channelled back into the social programmes.
We have also been continuing the municipal programmes with particular
councils, schools and municipal services in general, and we have
done some work in agriculture. We have been spending money, I
think, through the winter extremely effectively, not least to
try to ensure that the Government survived these early, difficult
months. I think it has been recognised that we provided assistance
as rapidly as anyone, probably more rapidly than most. We are
now moving into the reconstruction phase in Serbia. We will be
spending about 240 million during the course of the rest of this
year. We have just been discussing with the authorities in Belgrade
how to disburse the first 150 million of that. I am particularly
keen that a good chunk of that should go in the summer to the
rehabilitation of the electricity network, so that there are not
as many brownouts and blackouts next winter as there have been
this. Briefly, in Montenegro, on which I think the Committee in
its last report said that we should provide political and economic
assistance for what was a democratic part of Milosevic's Federal
Republic, I visited Podgorica three times and last year we provided
about 60 million euro in assistance, which I think was probably
more than anyone. We will continue to have a reasonable development
relationship with Montenegro. We have certain views, which we
can go into in questioning, about President Djukanovic's present
political objectives, but we recognise that what is important
at the end of the day is that Montenegro should remain democratic.
Our preferred outcome would be a democratic Montenegro in a democratic
and reformed Federal Republic but that will ultimately be an issue
which has to be decided by the people of Montenegro. I hope when
they do so that the process is fair and transparent, that President
Djukanovic recognises that to make constitutional change you need
substantial public support and I very much hope that the media
in reporting any campaign before a referendum will be a little
more balanced than it is at the moment. One final word about the
Presevo Valley, which I think has rightly caused a good deal of
concern recently. I was in Macedonia last Friday and obviously
there was a good deal of concern there about the leakage of extremist
violence over the border into Macedonia from Southern Serbia and
Southern Kosovo. We recognise in the Commission that the principal
issues are ones concerning security. They are principally issues
for NATO but we think there is also an important role for us in
supporting the economic and social aspects of the plan put forward
by the Deputy Premier of Serbia, Mr Covic. The Presevo Valley
has been very disadvantaged over the years. The public services
are bad or non existent and people are extremely poor. We have
already put about a million euro in humanitarian assistance into
what is quite a small area, mostly for the provision of heating
oil and the rehabilitation of a number of village primary schools.
We have doubled that assistance so that we are now spending nearly
£2 million in that area. We have said to President Kostunica
and to Mr Djindjic and Mr Covic and others that we are quite prepared
as part of our 240 million assistance programme for the long term
reconstruction of Serbia to put a certain amount of it into social
and economic programmes in the southern municipalities of Serbia,
into the Presevo Valley and the surrounding area. So I think that
what is happening in South East Europe is the most important test
of our ability in Europe to manage any sort of common, not single
common foreign and security, policy. I think we are doing much
better today than we were in the mid 1990s in dealing with the
problems of South East Europe but, nobody should kid themselves,
there are some difficulties and problems ahead. I think my main
task is to ensure that the political and financial commitment
to the strategy that we have put in place and which is by and
large working is sustained.
Chairman: Thank you. That is a quite considerable
tour d'horizon. I know there are some questions. Sir David
Madel.
Sir David Madel
238. We found in Belgrade considerable appreciation
and recognition of what the European Union had done to get Serbia
through the winter. In a sense it was almost Marshall-type aid
in that they felt as though they needed to find a Ludwig Erhardt
next to start to move towards a boom. What I want to ask is, is
there conditionality attached to EU aid in the region and how
is this enforced? One worry is the degree of criminality there
still is. Can you say a bit about that?
(Mr Patten) Yes. Yes, there is conditionality though
I do not think it is quite as mechanistic or as precisely calibrated
as the conditionality which, for example, the US applies, for
reasons of getting assistance packages through Congress, for example.
I do not think that it would be right for us, for instance, to
tie the achievement of certain political goals to the provision
of support for electricity imports or the provision of oil for
schools or hospitals. I think that would be too exact a conditionality.
By and large, throughout the region, what we insist on is that
in order to make these contractual agreements with the Stabilisation
and Association Agreements or in order to receive our aid, countries
should meet the so-called Copenhagen Criteria, should demonstrate
that they are democratic societies operating openly under the
rule of law with a free and independent press. We insist that
they should demonstrate good neighbourliness, for example that
they should accept the Dayton Agreements and abide by the Dayton
Agreements. We insist that they should accept the remit of the
International Tribunal at The Hague. We insist that if they are
to have open access to the European market, which they do for
pretty well all products, a few agricultural products are exempt
but they do for most agricultural and industrial products, then
they should lower their barriers to trade among themselves. So
there is a broad conditionality and that has been specified in
the financial regulations. It has been specified in the agreements
in quite a precise form since 1997. Now the Croatians, for example,
at the moment, are clearly taking some tough political decisions
in order to demonstrate that they believe that international crimes
should receive international justice. The President of Croatia
has said, I think wholly correctly, that you can only absolve
a whole country from guilt if you assign guilt to the individuals
who have actually been responsible for appalling crimes. We cannot
at one and the same time insist on that sort of behaviour in Croatia
and say that elsewhere in the region it does not matter whether
people meet the sorts of requirements that I have been suggesting.
We are insistent with Belgrade that they have in due course to
meet the same criteria regarding The Hague as the Croatians or
as anybody else in the region. It is not just a question of the
Hague, though that is what the media, perhaps understandably,
focus on most of all. The criteria are those that you would expect
to be a good definition of an open and decent society. What we
are saying in the Stabilisation and Association Process is if
you come through this then you can be a potential member of the
European Union. I think that is a huge magnet for them but it
does involve them in making changes and we have, from time to
time, reduced or stopped assistance where a country has plainly
been in defiance of those sorts of criteria. For example, we stopped
assistance in the Republika Srpska because of behaviour by the
governing authorities there. Now you mentioned crime and criminality,
that is a very serious problem and the Prime Minister, Mr Blair,
has rightly focused, for instance, on the extent to which South
East Europe has been used for transit of illegal immigrants into
this country. There are problems with smuggling, there are problems
with organised crime of all sorts. We are trying to put into place,
as part of our regional programmes, under the Stability Pact,
which has a very important role to play in underpinning regional
projects, energy, transport and so on, programmes which help with
police training, help in establishing decent border management,
help in establishing an independent judiciary, help in promoting
co-operation between the policing authorities in different South
East European countries. We recognise that crime is a big problem,
and to be fair to them, so do a number of governments in South
East Europe themselves but it is a real problem. It is a real
problem in Montenegro, it is a real problem in Bosnia, it is a
real problem in other countries. The last time I was in Bosnia
in Sarajevo I noticed what seemed to me to be surprisingly large
numbers of Chinese moving around the streets who I do not think
were all working in the restaurant business.
Dr Starkey
239. Mr Patten, you have the responsibility
for the work of the European Commission in the Balkans, Mr Solana
is responsible for the foreign policies and Mr Hombach for the
Stability Pact, how do your responsibilities overlap and how are
you co-ordinating your activity?
(Mr Patten) The former Taoiseach in the Republic of
Ireland, Garrett Fitzgerald, I am told was once presented with
the policy options and he said, "I can see that it works
in practice, but does it work in theory?" I think that whatever
may seem to be the institutional confusion in responsibilities
in the Balkans, or more generally, in practice things have worked
out pretty well. Dr Solana as High Representative and Secretary
General of the Council is responsible for putting in place the
policies which are agreed by Europe's foreign ministers. We, without
being, I hope, too unglamorous, in the Commission run the back
office. Your effectiveness in running the back office, of course,
considerably affects how much people listen to you in the front
office. We are responsible for the trade, for the economic reconstruction,
for the development assistance, for the political cooperation,
and all of those policies, I think, support the general policy
which is agreed by the General Affairs Council, by Europe's foreign
ministers and by the European Council. It was the European Council
which asked Javier Solana and I to devise the strategy on the
Balkans, which is now in place and which we are now pursuing.
We were both at NATO the other afternoon discussing different
aspects of the problems of the Presevo Valley. He was obviously
very concerned about the role of the EU monitoring mission, he
was obviously concerned about Member States' individual views
about security in the GSZ. I was concerned about what we could
contribute in terms of development assistance in the Presevo Valley.
I am responsible for negotiating the Stabilisation and Association
Agreements with individual countries, so I do not think that in
practice there has been any difficulty between Dr Solana and I.
What is interesting is that even though we have been working together
for 18 months nobody has yet been able to find a single occasion
when we have been in disagreement about a policy issue. The role
of Bodo Hombach is different. It is not an institutional role
within the European Union, it represents an attempt to coordinate
the activities, not of European donors solely but of all donors
to the Balkans, including, of course the Americans and the Japanese.
Bodo Hombach's stability pact focuses on regional projects, for
example, as I said earlier, in the energy and transport sectors,
but it has also focused on projects in the field of governance,
the field of human rights and in the field of justice and home
affairs. I think there has been a very successful impact in raising
additional funds, which might not otherwise have gone into the
region. We are the biggest contributor in the European Union and
the European Commission to Stability Pact programmes and projects.
Having said all that, I do not think it would be a wildly good
idea to have any other initiatives in the South East of Europe.
On the whole one of the problems that we faced has been the "Balkanisation"
of Balkan strategies. I think the one thing we have managed to
do over the last year or 18 months is to focus things much more
effectively. There are not as many institutions or organisations
with a finger in the pie. It was only when I saw the number of
organisations involved in policy around the Baltic that I realised
that "Balkanisation" affected other parts of the world
as well as South East Europe. I think it has worked pretty well.
As I said, the strategy that we are implementing is the strategy
which Javier Solana and I put to the European Council at Feira
just under a year ago and together we have been implementing it,
I think, reasonably successfully.
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