Examination of Witness (Questions 240
- 259)
THURSDAY 1 MARCH 2001
RT HON
CHRIS PATTEN
240. There is overlap between you and Mr Hombach
if he is coordinating the work of all the donors, and the European
Union is the biggest donor, there must be overlap there?
(Mr Patten) There is only overlap in the sense that
we contribute to Stability Pact programmes and the Stability Pact
brings together donors from Europe as well as outside. I am responsible
to the Council and responsible to the Parliament, which are my
budgetary authority for the 850 million a year, or thereabouts,
that we spend in South East Europe, in the Balkans under our CARDS
Programme. I am responsible to the Council and Parliament for
explaining the progress we make in Stabilisation and Association
Agreements. I am responsible for explaining to the Council and
to the Parliament how our autonomous trade measures for the Balkans
work.
241. How often do you meet Mr Hombach?
(Mr Patten) Mr Hombach, Mr Solana and I meet formally
about once every two or three weeks. Mr Solana and I not only
meet every week but in the last three or four weeks we have spent
the best part of every week together, because in the last three
weeks we have been in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kiev,
Moscow and Moldova together and next week we are in North America,
and the week after that we are in the Middle East, so we spend
quite a lot of time together.
Chairman: Nothing to do with this Committee,
we have a Georgia Parliamentary Group here at the moment and they
were commenting on your visit, not unfavourably I am glad to say.
Mr Mackinlay
242. Mr Patten, in a sense I want to put something
to you I put to the British Ambassador earlier, it seems to me
that your words in relation to Montenegro were a preferred option,
but it struck me in a sense, I do not mean this in a rude way,
you would say that because it is the preferred option, marginally
preferred. It did seem to me that looking both at your responsibilities,
the European Union, in terms of the delivery of aid, of building
up the economy and attracting the aspiration of European Union
membership it could actually be helpful now if there were to be
two states and there is a variable geometry economically and politically,
which probably cannot be married together very easily anyway.
Even the loose confederation, which we have just talked about,
is really almost an impediment to a coherent strategy, both in
Serbia and Montenegro, which has the prospect of being a Malta
in both size, scale, product, tourism, and so on. I just wondered,—this
is the final point I want to make—I want to know if I understand
this, we realise that there are Montenegrins in Serbia and there
are Serbs in Montenegro. Hopefully we share your view that if
there is a referendum it is a pretty robust yes vote. It just
seems to me we are always trying to keep alive something which
is gone and it might be more prudent if everyone embraced that
or at least signalled that we were prepared to work with two separate
independent states and it might be beneficial. Sorry to have gone
on a bit.
(Mr Patten) I was cautious in what I said earlier
because it seems to me that it would be politically maladroit
in the extreme for us to appear to be lecturing the electors of
Montenegro on what they should do. If they are like most electors
in other places they would, I guess, if one gave those sort of
lectures, promptly do exactly the opposite just in order to demonstrate
their independence. I have to say that I find the present political
strategy being pursued by President Djukanovic, who I saw on Monday,
almost at the same time as Dr Solana and we put the same arguments
to President Djukanovic, I do find it curious that having accepted
a constitutional position within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
throughout the 1990s, but standing as a bastion of democracy during
that period, now that Serbia has become democratic President Djukanovic
has decided that he does not want to be part of the Federal Republic.
I just find that rather curious. Some people wonder whether President
Djukanovic believes that he made the wrong option when he chose
not to take part in the Federal elections in Yugoslavia back last
autumn. The other thing which I think is a bit risky is to assume
that a move to independence in Montenegro would not have any effects
on the debate elsewhere. When I went to Podgorica after my first
visit to Belgrade, shortly after President Kostunica had been
elected, the argument that was then being put by President Djukanovic
and his colleagues was that there should be a unitary state in
Yugoslavia but with two seats at the United Nations. I pointed
out that there were rather a lot of members of the United Nations
who might find that difficult to swallow. Since then the policy
has evolved.
243. Kostunica said that?
(Mr Patten) No, that was President Djukanovic. Since
then the policy has evolved, I think, though I am not clear exactly
what constitutional relationship President Djukanovic thinks that
Podgorica should have with Belgrade. The point that we have put
to President Djukanovic is that while we hope there is not any
radical change, and we would prefer to see an accommodation openly
arrived at between Podgorica and Belgrade, what is important is
that whatever happens the process should be democratic and should
be transparent. For example, will the arrangements made for a
referendum and for any subsequent constitutional change be based
on, say, a majority of those voting or a majority of those registered
to vote? Those are important fundamental issues. Will there be
any change in what I understand as the present constitutional
arrangement that there should be a two thirds majority of the
Parliament in Podgorica for any constitutional change? Those are
important questions which I think President Djukanovic has to
be able to answer if whatever happens is to have both national
and international legitimacy. Now, we were strong supporters of
President Djukanovic when he was, I think, extremely bravely standing
up to Milosevic. We cannot because we rather disagree with his
political strategy now simply wash our hands of him, it would
be intolerable. On the other hand, I think it is reasonable for
us as friends, who were very supportive of him and providing 60
million for a country of that size last year is serious chequebook
support, to point out where we think he is wrong. At the end of
the day this is going to be decided by the Government in Belgrade,
by the Government in Podgorica and by the people of Montenegro.
Dr Starkey
244. About the referendum, you said you think
it is reasonable for the European Union to point out a few things
about the nature of the referendum. Do you think that it might
be an actual role for the European Union to make it clear that
if the European Union is to continue to fund Montenegro afterwards
we would expect the referendum to follow certain rules or at least
to live up to certain criteria?
(Mr Patten) I think it is reasonable for us to point
out the point that Sir David and I were talking about earlier,
that to have a relationship with us countries have to have demonstrated
their democratic credentials. I think that is absolutely the right
thing to do. I also think that we have been firm so far but relatively
low key in what we have said about the importance of stamping
out smuggling in Montenegro. I think we have to be much more assertive
about the importance of co-operation with the Montenegro authorities
about dealing with the very, very considerable problems there
are.
Mr Mackinlay
245. And throughout the Mediterranean.
(Mr Patten) And throughout the Mediterranean.
Mr Mackinlay: That is a problem endemic in the
Aegean in the Mediterranean, is it not?
Dr Starkey
246. You did not talk about the referendum.
Would it be reasonable to lay down criteria to meet?
(Mr Patten) No. I think, Dr Starkey, it would be reasonable
for us to make it clear that we would expect any democratic arrangements
to be properly democratic. I think if we were to try to fine tune
those arrangements from outside ourselves it might blow back in
our faces. It is why I said I think we have perhaps a slightly
different attitude to conditionality than others. I am very conscious
of the dangers of applying conditionality in such a minute and
legalistic way as to have the opposite effect from the one you
wanted.
Mr Maples
247. Mr Patten, in the meeting in Skopje last
week, were all the Heads of Government or the representatives
of all the Former Republic there?
(Mr Patten) Yes.
248. What were they saying to you? You painted
a fairly rosy picture of the aid effort being put in. What, if
any, criticisms were they making? What shortcomings were there?
Was there a shopping list? Were you talking about the mechanics
and the conditionality and things like that?
(Mr Patten) On the whole the criticisms tend to be
two fold, leaving aside specific issues like the security issues
on the Serbian Kosovo border. On the whole the criticisms tend
to focus on two things. First of all, there is sometimes criticism
about the firmness with which we negotiate our Stabilisation and
Association Agreements. I think it is exceptionally important,
as it is with enlargement negotiations, that we make it clear
that this is not just a political fix, that this is not just a
question of political lobbying. In Albania, to take a case in
point, where they are trying very hard at the moment, they do
have to demonstrate not only that they have put the right legislation
in place but they are implementing it. In Bosnia- Herzegovina,
where they have a long way to go, they have to demonstrate that
the authorities for Bosnia-Herzegovina are prepared to take ownership
of the reform process and are not going to depend on Mr Petritsch,
the High Representative, to impose every reform on them. I think
it is incredibly important that we maintain the integrity of the
process because if we do not it sends, first of all, all the wrong
signals to those who have not yet negotiated an agreement with
us, and it sends very bad signals to those who have and have made
considerable sacrifices, for example in Macedonia or in Croatia,
in putting into place the reforms which are necessary in order
to sign an agreement with us. So the first thing is there is some
concern that the negotiations take as long as they do and that
we are absolutely insistent that people should meet the criteria
which are specified. Secondly, there is some criticism, though
there is much less criticism than there was, about the speed with
which we deliver assistance. I think we are now delivering assistance
in most of South East Europe as fast or faster than anybody else.
This is the first example, I suppose, of the effect of the reforms
that we are trying to put in place all round the world, and, my
God, we need to do so. There are still a few difficulties, there
are still skeletons in cupboards, but by and large the criticisms
that we were getting a year or ago, or even when I arrived 18
months ago, are greatly muted. There is not much criticism of
the level of assistance that we are providing, nor should there
be. 850 million a year is an awful lot of money in a pretty small
area. I guess we are spending in the Balkans now almost as much
as we are spending in Asia and Latin America put together.
Mr Maples
249. Are they critical at all? You described
your dealings and discussions with Mr Solana and Mr Hombach, do
they find that easy enough to deal with?
(Mr Patten) Yes. I think they know who to call for
what. They see a lot of us. I was in Kosovo last year six or seven
times. I am not going to the Balkans quite as frequently this
year, but last year I was going to the Balkans pretty well every
month.
250. Can I ask you a question in another related
area, we have concentrated a lot on Kosovo and Macedonia and Montenegro
and Serbia, there are some pretty unhappy signals coming out of
Bosnia at the moment. I gather there is a meeting between the
Serbs leadership and Kostunica next week, of which they are going
to sign some sort of pact, I am not quite sure what it is, but
is this a prelude to the Serbs leaving Bosnia. Secondly, the Croat
member of the presidency seems to want to pull Croatia out of
the Federation. Do you see these as signals that we are reaching
some sort of stability?
(Mr Patten) No. One of the conditions that we apply
is acceptance of the Dayton Agreement, and that has been accepted
by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, just as it has been accepted
by Croatia. The Croatians have been pretty firm with some of the
Croatian extremists in Bosnia and I hope that President Kostunica
will be equally firm with the extremists in the Republika Srpska.
Bosnia-Herzegovina has to work. The problem at the moment, as
you know, is that there is not sufficient either political or
commercial traffic between the two Entities, between the Republika
Srpska and the Federation. I think we have to be absolutely insistent
on the state institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina working properly.
We have said on several occasions to Sarajevo, we cannot even
consider a feasibility study for agreeing a Stabilisation and
Association Agreement with them until they have completed a number
of specified reforms. To use one of the cliches of diplomacy these
days, we have laid out a road map for Bosnia-Herzegovina saying
exactly what they need to do before we will even consider a feasibility
study for them. I think every donor, every partner is giving the
same message to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and I hope they believe us.
There are real signs of donor fatigue in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There
are real signs of donors' contributions to Bosnia-Herzegovina
declining, ours is declining. It is very largely focused on refugee
return, but we are not spending as much in Bosnia-Herzegovina
as we were. I hope that people there and political leaders will
recognise that people will lose patience unless they make it absolutely
clear that they are prepared to accept Dayton and make Dayton
work.
Mr Madel
251. There are still, of course, a number of
potential flash points, what I was going to ask you is, do you
think the EU is ready, willing and able to provide more EU monitors
should they be needed? I am conscious of the Swedish presidency,
and Sweden has a long and honourable tradition of an enormous
number of peacekeeping people in the United Nations, stretching
right back.
(Mr Patten) I should make it clear that this is an
intergovernmental issue rather than a Commission issue, it is
an issue which is primarily, although not solely, for Member States.
We sign the contracts with the monitoring mission and pay the
bills. I have no doubt at all that there will be a ready acceptance
by Member States of the importance of providing more people for
the EU, including, as you said already, in some parts of the Swedish
Presidency. You will have seen that earlier this week there was
the announcement of a new head of EUMM, an extremely experienced
Irish diplomat who headed the EUMM before and has recently been
ambassador in Turkey. I am sure they are going to be required
in larger numbers on the border between Kosovo and Serbia.
Dr Starkey
252. I just want to take you up on what you
were saying to John Maples about Bosnia and Dayton. We took evidence
from Misha Glenny where he said—and I was trying to find
the exact words but I will have to paraphrase it because I cannot
find them—essentially that the Dayton Agreement had set
up a Frankenstein constitution in Bosnia which gave a very powerful
incentive to each of the entities to do their own thing. His view
was that there needed to be a Dayton 2. Do you think that the
difficulties of a Dayton 2 are so great that somehow or another
you are going to have to force the entities to follow what the
EU and others now want, not what the Dayton Constitution effectively
incentivises them to do?
(Mr Patten) I start from a position of being deeply
sceptical about advice even from scholars as distinguished as
Misha Glenny, whose book on the Balkans is about the best introduction
to that part of Europe that one can read. I start from being deeply
sceptical about proposals that all that we need in the Balkans
is a bit more tinkering with borders.
253. No, no. He is not talking about the borders,
he is talking about the relationships between different entities
and structures which in his view incentivise each to do their
own thing and not co-operate with each other.
(Mr Patten) I am not sure that even if one found more
diplomats of the personality of the legendary Mr Holbroke it would
be very easy to get better agreements out of the three communities
in Bosnia-Herzegovina than the one they got at Dayton. When you
read the constitution and when you see what it is trying to achieve
I would not pretend it was other than extremely complicated. Perhaps
I am being too modest but I would not fancy my chances at trying
anything better and I am not sure that anything else is more likely
to work. I think there is a very simple, well sort of difficult
simple, issue in Bosnia-Herzegovina: are the political leaders
of the three communities prepared to give the political leadership
which is required to make the state work? I think that Wolfgang
Petritsch has been following a sensible policy of trying to insist
that political leaders own a process of reform but, my God, they
do not want to. They do not want to be identified with some of
the difficult economic and political questions that they have
to face up to but I think we have to go on insisting that they
should take responsibility for those issues. I think that Belgrade
and Zagreb have an enormously important role in saying in very
clear terms to the communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina which have
been most identified with them that they have to make Bosnia-
Herzegovina work, that there is no question of them being a sort
of favoured local Diaspora. I repeat, I think the Croatians have
sent out some pretty good signals. I hope that President Kostunica
will do the same. I think he is sufficiently regarded as a nationalist
by certain communities to be listened to.
Chairman
254. If I might draw this to a conclusion, by
putting some short questions, when Mr Rowlands and I were in Pristina
ten days ago we were immensely impressed with Andy Bearpark, who
seems to provide two roles, that is as Deputy Special Representative
as well as representing the EU. He was suggesting to us that whilst
the funding that was available was not ungenerous, getting some
of it through quickly on a cashflow basis was a problem. Do you
hear that?
(Mr Patten) Yes. There are two problems, first of
all let me explain, just to show you how simple this structure
is, what his position is and the role of the European Community's
Economic Reconstruction Agency is. Andy Bearpark is responsible
for, as you know, that pillar of UNMIK's activity which, by and
large, runs the economy, it is a sort of Ministry of Finance for
Board of Trade functions in Kosovo, which was previously run by
another British Commission official Joly Dixon, a very fine official.
Andy Bearpark is the quasi Gordon Brown, he works most closely,
in terms of the donor community, with our official Hughes Mingarelli,
who runs our Reconstruction Agency, which has a branch in Pristina,
Podgorica and another one in Belgrade, and he manages all our
considerable programmes in those three communities. There is,
I think, a relationship between Bearpark and Mingarelli. Fine.
A lot of people would say, "Why do you need a Reconstruction
Agency and a European pillar supporting UNMIK?" Well, it
started like that. It started with the European pillar and the
Reconstruction Agency came later. I think Bearpark's problem is
not with the funding that he receives through the Reconstruction
Agency for rebuilding houses or rebuilding roads or rebuilding
bridges, I think the problem has been with the running costs of
Pillar 4, where some of the more traditional financial procedures
of the Commission apply. I have to say that the procedures we
apply are not necessarily our own idea, they are as a result of
what are the lowest common denominator, what the 15 Member States
want. The difficulties we have are providing the funding for his
pillar and not the funding for reconstruction in Kosovo. It is
complicated. It seemed to me when some people suggested, when
Joly Dixon went and before Andy Bearpark took over, perhaps we
should have one organisation in Kosovo which should operate as
a Ministry of Finance and the distributor of our funds I thought
that would be too complicated and raise too many difficult political
issues.
255. If you started that that might well have
been the way.
(Mr Patten) It might well.
256. That is not the way, is it?
(Mr Patten) As I know Ambassador Crawford was saying
to you earlier, it is a bit like East Timor, in all of these areas
Ministry of Finance, policing and judiciary it was a greenfield
site. There were no institutions of governance there. The first
thing that Pillar 4 had to do was establish a tax system, finance
ministries, so it might have been difficult for it to have been
distributing funds.
257. Lastly, can I ask you the most difficult
of all questions I suppose. How long do you believe that the European
Union and the West are going to have to have commitments in the
Kosovo, Yugoslav, Balkan area?
(Mr Patten) I think that is the most difficult question
of all because you are not only asking a very difficult political
question, you are asking an economic question as well. I think
in Serbia, for instance, they have not only suffered from years
of Milosevic, the Mafia economics, they have also suffered from
Yugoslav Communist economics for years. The questions one asks
oneself are how rapidly will an entrepreneurial culture take hold;
how rapidly will the economy turn around? I think I am more optimistic
than some because I think one of the consequences of the opening
of markets, and one of the consequences of technology, is that
economic change these days happens a lot faster than it did a
few years ago. As you know, if you go to other parts of Europe,
if you go to Australia, if you go to parts of Canada and the United
States, you see large numbers of Serbs and Albanians and Kosovars
and so on doing extremely well, holding down tough professional
jobs, making money. Would that they were able to do that in their
own countries. By and large I think that it should be possible
to turn those economies around rather more rapidly than some people
fear. I have to say one of the things that I have found most encouraging
in Kosovo is the sign already of entrepreneurial activity as one
goes around. What I think is really important is that the international
donor community should demonstrate what I think Madeleine Albright
used to call Tough Love and not create dependency cultures in
those countries. I think it is a danger in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and I think we have to be very careful we do not make that mistake.
Politically, it is a bit of a lion and lamb question. I hope that
we will see at least a great degree of inter-ethnic tolerance,
even if one cannot expect people to love one another for some
time to come, but we know from our own experiences in Northern
Ireland that sometimes there is almost too much history for people
to get down to the job of shaping the future.
258. Chris, thank you very much. You will always
be welcome here.
(Mr Patten) Thank you very much.
259. We think some of your analyses are very
important to what we are considering and we are more than pleased
that you have been willing to spend some time to come and be cross-questioned
by us. Thank you very much indeed.
(Mr Patten) Thank you very much indeed.
|
