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The most powerful tool of EU foreign policy in dealing with potential candidate countries (and beyond) is that of political conditionality. The successes of this policy, as well as its spectacular failures, have been largely well documented by the political science research community. Far less research, however, goes into explaining the scenarios where the EU goes “beyond conditionality” (Teokarevic 2003) in its dealings with potential candidates for membership in the EU. The goal of this paper is to explain the extremely intensive and pro-active EU involvement in the drafting of the Constitution of Serbia and Montenegro and the subsequent attempts by Brussels to determine the future nature of the union between these neighboring republics. In answering this question the paper looks at the history of EU’s involvement in the region and attempts to provide a theoretical framework that can best provide the explanation for the motivation of EU’s policy makers to utilize such a direct strategy of involvement that goes far “beyond conditionality”. The conclusions of this paper are that EU went “beyond conditionality” in dealing with Serbia and Montenegro on two levels: functional and theoretical. On the functional level, EU did not employ the principle of conditionality per se. Instead of placing conditions on Serbia and Montenegro and then cajoling the two to settle their differences (both pre-State Union agreement and post-Action Plan), EU actually went in and was actively involved, “beyond conditionality”, 1 A longer version of this paper was presented at YRN Conference in University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., on May 18, 2006. The author would like to thank Dr. Stefan Gänzle, Dr. Ljiljana Biukovic, Dr. Lenard Cohen and Dr. Frédéric Merand for their comments and constructive criticisms as well as their encouragement. The author would also like to thank conference participants and anonymous referees of this journal. Any errors in this paper are solely my own. Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 2 issue 2/2006 © RERA 2006 all rights reserved 57 in resolving problems that arose from the weak State Union (harmonizing the financial systems, parliamentary referendum crisis, independence referendum rules clarification and public declarations supporting the State Union). On a more theoretical level of foreign policy preference formation, conditionality had been replaced by ‘high politics’ (similar to the cases of Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia). This can be explained both by a bureaucratic/institutional approach that draws upon neo-functionalism and the constructivist approach, in particular in terms of how the EU constructs its foreign policy preferences. The case of Serbia and Montenegro, which because of its volatility is probably the most important accession case, shows us that high politics indeed rule out in the end of the day and that the EU is read and willing to “look the other way” on a number of its own conditions, for the sake of realpolitik. Introduction In a 2000 Economist article, the European Union’s main external relations focus and task for the near future were understood as “the avoidance of another war in the Balkans, which remains all too real a possibility.” As main evidence of the possibility of another such war, the Economist article proposed that “several signs suggest that his [Milosevic’s] next war could be fought over Montenegro.” The article goes on to suggest that the best way to prevent such a war would be to support the independently minded Montenegro. In defense of the Economist, that article was written well before the October 2000 democratic revolution that toppled the Milosevic regime. However, what the Economist article and many observers since have missed is that one of European Union’s main foreign policy objectives had always been the prevention of war. The very impetus for the creation of the European Union was the fear of another war, not in the Balkans though, but rather one between France and Germany. In general terms, this paper expands on the ability/willingness of the EU to project such a reconciliatory goal in Serbia and Montenegro and subsequently in the wider region of Western 2 “The Next Balkan War.” Economist 4/1/2000 Vol. 355 Issue 8164 Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 2 issue 2/2006 © RERA 2006 all rights reserved 58 Balkans. In particular, the goal of this paper is rather modest: to explain the extremely intensive and pro-active EU involvement in the drafting of the State Union Constitution and eventual “running” of Serbia and Montenegro. It is argued here that the former and the latter are closely related, as the Western Balkan “peace project” requires exactly that form of intensive interaction that often requires the EU to willingly undermine its own conditions and sometimes even look beyond them. In elaborating such a pro-active approach we will have to dwell into the history of the EU’s involvement in the region and also try to assess the EU policy makers’ motives in utilizing such a direct strategy of involvement that goes “beyond conditionality” dynamics evident in the Central Eastern European countries’ (CEEC) accession process. This paper is an attempt to introduce the logic behind the dynamic of EU interaction that goes “beyond conditionality” into the lexicon of the EU enlargement studies. The Constitutional Charter of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro would have been an impossibility had it not been for the “very prominent role played by the EU” whose “proactive role in the constitutional engineering of Serbia and Montenegro far surpasses the policy model known as conditionality,” as argued by Teokarevic. To try to explain such EU involvement in Serbia and Montenegro and how it may have gone “beyond conditionality” we try to explain a theoretical framework that explains such a policy preference (Part I). To empirically test this theoretical model we will analyze how the EU has enacted its conditions in Serbia and Montenegro (Part II) and then attempt to offer some reasons for why it has gone “beyond conditionality” (Part III). However, it should be noted that the question of “why” EU 3 “Beyond conditionality” is a concept first introduced by Jovan Teokarevic who uses it in his article on this same subject matter, “EU Accession and the Serbian-Montenegrin Constitutional Charter” that appeared in the Winter 2003 edition of the Romanian Journal of Political Science. 4 Jovan Teokarevic, “EU Accession and the Serbian-Montenegrin Constitutional Charter,” Romanian Journal of Political Science (3 2 Winter 2003): 45-46. Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 2 issue 2/2006 © RERA 2006 all rights reserved 59 went beyond conditionality in Serbia and not in some other countries is difficult to answer completely. I. Dynamics “Beyond Conditionality” – Theoretical Framework It is necessary to situate the use of conditionality, or in this case the idea of going “beyond” it, in terms of theory. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2005) identify three models of how countries adopt the rules of the EU and in essence get “Europeanized”: external incentives, social learning and lesson-drawing. They note that the success of democratic conditionality depends in large part on the initial conditions in the candidate countries concluding that EU’s influence is the strongest in the fragile and unstable democracies, noting Serbia explicitly as an example of such a case. In this paper, however, we are primarily trying to assess the EU motivations for proactively involving itself in the elaborate tasks of constructing a state constitution and even forgoing its own conditions in order to advance the eventual contractual relationship based on those very conditions. Which theory then best explains such a pro-active EU dynamic? This question needs to be explained from both the perspective of the EU and the specific country in question. A unique dynamic exists in special cases where conditionality alone is insufficient or domestic variables call upon for a different mechanism of Europeanization. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier argue that democratic conditionality is “likely to be ineffective in the case of failed states, primarily those affected by severe ethno-political conflict, such as many successor states of Yugoslavia. In the latter cases, the EU would need to go beyond reinforcement by reward and Review of European and Russian Affairs vol. 2 issue 2/2006 © RERA 2006 all rights reserved 60 use both coercive and supportive strategies to have positive impact.” This paper thus looks at one example where conditionality alone does not suffice. The case of EU involvement in resolving the Serbia and Montenegro constitutional impasse is an explicit example of the EU using such “supportive strategies...beyond reinforcement by reward... to have a positive impact” and is an empirical contribution to the theoretical dynamics uncovered by Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier’s seminal contribution to the study of European Integration. While Serbia and Montenegro is largely (entirely?) an example of the EU using “supportive strategies” one would not need to look much farther/further east to find “coercive strategies” as well, the main example being Lukashenko’s government in Belarus. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier argue that the export of rules and democratic conditionality do not lend to being explained through social learning and lesson-drawing. Our analysis largely agrees with that assessment, although from the EU perspective we will prove that “lesson-drawing” does explain interacting with Serbia and Montenegro “beyond reinforcement by reward”, especially when seen from the historical examples of “learning” from the previous Balkan conflicts. The EU therefore has considerable interests to act so pro-actively in Serbia and Montenegro and has also “learned” to do so.] II. How the EU Acts “Beyond Conditionality” The country created by the 2003 Constitution was dubbed by commentat

“Rolling Up the Sleeves”1 How EU policy towards Serbia and Montenegro acts as the glue that holds the State Union together?