Reuters It's a sign of the times when Serbia, once an international pariah, sees fit to reassure the Italian foreign minister that his country is “not the sick man of Europe.” That's exactly what Bozidar Djelic, the minister in charge of steering Serbia's bid to join the European Union, did last month at a press conference with Franco Frattini. Frattini was in Belgrade to commend the former Yugoslav republic on its progress toward EU accession, even as his own country drifted unstoppably into a debt storm that threatens to sink the euro and strain the very bonds of the union. The pull of the EU has driven painful economic and political reforms in the countries of the Western Balkans since the collapse of communism in Albania and the implosion of socialist Yugoslavia. It has helped quieten nationalists in Serbia, disarm insurgents in Macedonia and made Croatia get serious about rooting out graft. So the financial maelstrom has come as a nasty surprise for governments which came to power on the promise that EU membership would cure all ills. Western diplomats warn the crisis threatens the EU's credibility as a driver of stability and reform in its own backyard. “The political class senses that the EU is beginning to look less attractive. Is it worth trying so hard? Is it worth making so many compromises?” said a European diplomat based in the region. Slovenia was the first of the countries that emerged from the ashes of Yugoslavia to join the EU, in 2004. Croatia on the Adriatic coast will join in mid-2013. The rest, plus Albania, have been told they will follow. But when? There were already misgivings within some EU member states about enlarging beyond the current 27 before the onset of the global downturn. European diplomats concede that enlargement is now firmly on the backburner given the existential crisis now shaking the union. While EU accession might remain the aspiration among countries of the region, where is the urgency to reform if it's such a distant dream? “Why bother when Europe is navel-gazing?” said the Balkans-based European diplomat. “Why sell the family silver when the goal is distant and uncertain?” Support for EU membership remains relatively high across the Balkans. There is no real alternative for a region surrounded on all sides by EU members and for whom the EU is its major trading partner. But after years of carrot-and-stick diplomacy, cajoling and criticism from Brussels, the people of the Balkans could be forgiven for greeting Europe's woes with more than a little schadenfreude. “They've been pushing and punishing us for not doing enough reforms while we've been working hard to become worthy of joining their family,” said taxi driver Goran Spiroroski in Macedonia, Greece's northern neighbor. “As far as I can see, they're the ones who need a lesson in reforms.” EU integration is set to be relegated from first to third on the list of campaign issues in Serbia's next parliamentary election in 2012. The loss of EU leverage is a blow to efforts to resolve a variety of differences in a region still healing from the conflict of the nineties. __
