In the News: Covid-19, the Balkans begin deconfinement

Text by: Jean-Arnault Dérens | Mail from the Balkans

A press review presented in partnership with Le Courrier des Balkans.

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The first deconfinement measures are being implemented in the Balkan countries. Montenegro has opened its ports and natural parks, Serbia has lifted the state of emergency, Kosovo has presented a three-stage deconfinement plan, Croatia and Greece too… In short, even if the schools will remain closed until 'at the start of the re-entry of september in almost all the countries of the balkans, life gradually resumes its course. Some in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina are also worried about " too fast " deconfinement .

Vigilance remains everywhere, however, while certain effects of the crisis are likely to be lasting, such as obstacles to press freedom and restrictions on fundamental freedoms. Thus, in Montenegro, deplores the daily Vijesti , the opposition is silenced, the Parliament and the Constitutional Court for absent subscribers, the health institutions controlled by the cadres of the DPS, the ruling party. If Montenegro successfully resisted Covid-19, the "  collateral democratic damage  " is therefore considerable. The observation is valid for the whole region.

While a virtual summit brought together, Wednesday May 6, the member states of the European Union and the candidate countries of the Western Balkans, Montenegro and Serbia would no longer be democracies, but "  hybrid regimes  ". In any case, this is what the American NGO Freedom House states in its latest report .

Meanwhile, in Serbia, the opposition has already resumed the path of evening protests against the authoritarian regime of Aleksandar Vucic, first in the form of concerts of saucepans on balconies and, for a few days, real rallies in the street. On these events, [thread info-> https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/les-dernieres-infos-manifestations-en-Serbie].

For their part, a hundred civil society organizations in the Western Balkans are launching an appeal to the European Union  : democracy, rule of law, Green New Deal: more than a hundred civil society organizations in the Western Balkans challenge the EU. It is time for them to take "European values" seriously, with or without the Union. If the latter is no longer able to be there, democratic demands remain.

Indeed, how to react to this interminable European blockage, when integration has represented for years the only political perspective offered to the Balkan countries? And what meaning does this European project still have when it is preempted by increasingly authoritarian regimes? On civil societies in the Balkans and European integration, file: Civil societies in the Balkans put to the test of European deadlock

In a vitriolic text taken up in several media in the region , the Croatian writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina Miljenko Jergovic recalls that "  lost freedoms are never voluntarily returned by the leaders  ". "  What scares me," he stresses , "is not Covid-19, it is the reactions of democratic societies to the epidemic,  " and he launches: "  If health is more important to you than human rights, then, never leave your house again.  "

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