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Antidote to nationalism

HERE is a sad little tale with a big, sad conclusion. It begins a decade ago, when I did some work with the British Association for Central and Eastern Europe (Bacee) and joined its governing body.

It organised seminars all over the newly free countries of Europe, brought study groups to Britain, and helped train politicians, judges and journalists in the rhythms of democracy. When central Europe was EU-embraced, it moved on to the parts that Brussels hadn't reached yet: the Balkans and beyond.

But then, suddenly, a minor mandarin arrived announcing that priorities had changed, that the UK Foreign Office grant that helped make Bacee possible was going, gone. Europe didn't matter any longer, it seemed. Only the Middle East counted when disposable funds had to be disposed of. And that, after many gallant efforts, turns out to be the end of active life. Bacee goes into indefinite hibernation next year. The Balkan problem is deemed ‘solved’ for all relevant financing and face-saving purposes.

Except that that’s rubbish. Except that, in a few days' time, Kosovo will bubble over the brink again. Except that more war, in our own continent, seems bleakly imminent. Except that Britain's foreign policy priorities’, as detailed in rolling spending reviews, were bunk.

You learn many things when you hit the seminar trail in the Balkans, but first you learn that the fragments of old Yugoslavia see their future inside the union Britons regard with a curl of the lips. Slovenia joined in the last wave but one. Croatia, accession treaty drafted, stands on the edge of membership. Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and — yes! — Kosovo, are further down the queue but near the top of an urgent agenda. Serbia is key to everything and split: but the forces of relative rationality and reform define themselves by the European issue, too.

And, if you head south, there's the free nation we prefer not to think about — Albania: too much crime, too many problems. But that's not what EU diplomats say when they go to Tirana. They say that Albania, too, waits in union line.

So the links are clear, and so are our defences against anarchy. The Balkans belong to our Europe. They want it, and the chance of prosperity it offers. We want it and have told them as much. The policies we're pursuing in the region only make sense if that's true. Membership is our patent antidote to narrow nationalism. The EU that helped bring peace to western Europe long ago still has much work to do.

But then, as with the fate of Bacee, note how nothing connects. Political Europe is stalled over immigration, Turkey, reform treaties, economic lethargy. Croatia is pending because the European commission needs its structural reforms first. The Foreign Office is more interested in exporting balm to Basra or jets to Saudi. The Balkans have been left to drift and fester. Guess what that means today as Serbia fumes and Russia turns unhelpful? The only solid answer to the Balkan question is a European one.

But mumbling and grumbling far away — in France, the Netherlands, the UK — has utterly lost that plot. Would Bacee, carrying on, have been able to make a difference? Probably not. But the association's biggest coup was starting a New Serbia Forum that brought together future movers and shakers as Milosevic fell. Bacee opened some Belgrade windows to a wider, more peaceful world. But who needs expertise or contacts when interest dies?

And thus that fateful old question is asked again: how to put a region — part inside our house, part waiting on the doorstep — together. By giving it cohesion and hope. By promising and delivering. By knowing what's important and what's blah.

© Guardian News Service