Furthermore, the Albanian insurgency in 2001 was the outcome of copious nods and winks (and dollops of materiel) on the part of the United States and, to a lesser extent, the EU. No such support, implicit or explicit, is to be found today: the International Community is firmly and irrevocably committed to the Ohrid Framework Agreement and will not allow the Albanians to use weapons to try to alter its generous terms.
Albanian posturing concerning the Macedonian procrastination with regards to the Name Issue has to do with internecine strife between the two big Albanian parties: DUI and DPA. They both leverage the name issue and threaten civil war in order to re-divide the spoils of government on all levels.
Myth number 3: EU Accession is Macedonia’s ticket to instant and sustained prosperity
The EU is in the throes of a life-threatening crisis and the entire enlargement project is in ever-growing doubt. Even if the EU were to emerge unscathed from this predicament, its harried officials still regard the Western Balkans as a cesspit, an Ottoman-Byzantine-Oriental Muslim-infested relic in the heart of an otherwise civilized, genteel, and Christian Europe (read: West). The more bigoted of the EU members are going to drag the negotiations with the likes of Macedonia as they have been doing with Turkey for decades now.
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Macedonia currently enjoys all the benefits of EU membership without incurring any of its costs: it has free trade, visa-free travel, and access to regional development funds and EU tenders. The costs of accession are bound to be crippling: Macedonia’s sheltered and inefficient industries will crumble in the face of European competition; its judiciary and legislature will be buried under the 84,000 pages of the acquis communautaire; environmental, sanitation, and labour rules will render the private sector, such as it is in this benighted place, all but dysfunctional and insolvent; brain drain will likely reach epic proportions. Macedonia is not ready for EU accession. For the time being, it is better off as it is.
In the long-term, accession will bring with it sizable benefits in the transfer of technological knowledge and management skills and in encouraging foreign direct investment. But these welcome side-effects and by-products of EU membership depend crucially on an all-pervading internal transformation. Macedonains lack the skills, the knowledge, the emotional maturity, and the cultural background to have a state of their own, let alone a democracy. They have yet to develop a sense of being part of a cohesive collective. Their rampant individualism is malignant and they all perceive the state and any form of authority as potential and actual enemies.
So, why are Macedonians so keen on joining the EU?
Some of them hope to turn a quick profit as asset prices (shares, real-estate) react to the good news. Others can’t wait to abandon ship and join the throngs of economic immigrants from Bulgaria and Poland. Not one Macedonian I have met realizes the full implications of EU accession and not one of them gives a fig. They all perceive the EU as a “get-rich-quick” scheme.
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