H-Diplo ARTICLE REVIEW 1009 15 December 2020

Benedetto Zaccaria. “Yugoslavia, Italy, and European integration: Was Osimo 1975 a Pyrrhic victory?” Cold War History 20:4 (2020): 1-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2019.1657094. https://hdiplo.org/to/AR1009 Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Seth Offenbach | Production Editor: George Fujii

Review by Saša Mišić, University of Belgrade

n this article, Benedetto Zaccaria assesses the motivations that gave rise to the signing of the treaty between Yugoslavia and Italy in Osimo in November 1975 from the perspective of the treaty’s connection to Yugoslavia’s parallel internal debate on Western European economic integration processes (1). The Osimo Treaty was essentially the culmination of aI border dispute that lasted for three decades, beginning during the final battles of World War II in 1945 and—with varying levels of intensity—continuing to exist and burden the relationship between the two neighboring states over the following decades. This Treaty has already attracted the attention of numerous researchers, and there are several recent publications dedicated to this topic.1 Unlike these publications, however, Zaccaria’s article takes a different approach to his work. Instead of covering the well-documented political and diplomatic dimensions of the Treaty, as has become common practice, he underlines its economic aspect, claiming this to be of foremost relevance to understanding the overall process of negotiation. He also places the wider international dimension of the Treaty in focus. However, he does not frame it, as most scholars have done, in the context of the European détente and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe that was held in Helsinki in the summer of 1975.2 On the contrary, the Yugoslav stance towards the process of European economic integration, alongside the internal Yugoslav debate on European integration processes at the end of 1960s and the first half of 1970s, forms the crux of his approach. This viewpoint is highly pertinent when we take into consideration Zaccaria’s previous work on this topic. He is the author of a book on the Osimo Treaty in which he predominantly analyzed the negotiation process and the signing of the agreement from the Italian perspective.3 He is also the author of the acclaimed book The EEC’s Yugoslav Policy in Cold War Europe, 1968-1980, where he provides an in-depth assessment of the relationship between Yugoslavia, Italy, and the economic integration of Western Europe.4

1 Viljenka Škorjanec, Osimska pogajanja [The Osimo negotiations] (Koper: Založba Annales, 2007); Jože Pirjevec, Borut Klabjan, and Gorazd Bajc eds., Osimska meja: jugoslovansko-italijanska pogajanja in razmejitev leta 1975 [The Osimo border: Yugoslav- talian negotiations and delimitation in 1975] (Koper: Založba Annales, 2006); Giovanni Cavera, “Gli accordi di Osimo e la crisi politica italiana degli anni Settanta” Nuova Storia Contemporanea, n. 3, 2006, 15-44; Massimo Bucarelli, La questione jugoslava nella politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana 1945-1999 (Roma: Aracne, 2008), 45-82; Massimo Bucarelli et al., eds.,, Italy and Tito`s Yugoslavia in The Age of International Détente (Brussels: PIE Peter Lang, 2016); Saša Mišić, Pomirenje na Jadranu. Jugoslavija i Italija na putu ka Osimskim sporazumima iz 1975 [Reconciliation in the Adriatic: Yugoslavia and Italy on their way to the Osimo Treaty of 1975] (Belgrade: Fakultet političkih nauka Univerziteta Beograd, 2018).

2 See, for example: M.Bucarelli et al., eds, Italy and Tito`s Yugoslavia in The Age of International Détente.

3 Benedetto Zaccaria, La Strada per Osimo: Italia e Jugoslavia allo specchio (1965-1975) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2018).

4 Zaccaria, EEC`s Yugoslav Policy in Cold War Europe, (1968-1980) (London: Palgrave Macmillan; 2016).

The author bases his findings on the analysis of published and unpublished primary sources, mostly of Yugoslav origin. It should be noted that archival sources predominantly consist of documents of the Yugoslav Federal Secretariat for Foreign Trade, while there is a noticeable lack of discussion of the diplomatic documents archived in the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On the other hand, the bibliography used in the book is multilingual, relevant and comprehensive.

The author divided his work into three chronological parts. The first of these is used to explain the evolution of closer Page | 2 cooperation between Italy and Yugoslavia from the end of the 1960s. The second part is dedicated to the early 1970s, with a core emphasis placed upon the explanation of differing perceptions of the Yugoslav republics on the processes of European integration. In the final part, which presents the fulcrum of his research, Zaccaria analyses the Osimo Treaty itself.

Zaccaria emphasizes that 1968 was the decisive year in the development of Yugoslav-Italian relations. The events in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968, and fear emanating within Belgrade and Rome as to the possibility that Yugoslavia might become the next target of Soviet-led military intervention, bonded the two states. In that period, a connection was made between the efforts to resolve the border dispute and Italy’s support for Yugoslavia in its problems with the European Economic Community (EEC). Another problem rose to the fore at the end of the 1960s—the internal instability of Yugoslavia and the conflicting political and economic interests of its republics. The author raises the important issue of the idea of confederalism, which was pushed forward by Slovenia and Croatia, which had distinct interests towards Italy and the EEC in comparison to the other republics. Zaccaria places an emphasis on the efforts of the two republics to utilize Yugoslavia’s border with Italy as a “preferential economic channel to enter the Common Market” (7). Through the widening and deepening of economic cooperation with Italy and the EEC they strove to exploit existing mechanisms of economic exchange related to border zone trade, such as the Trieste and Gorizia agreements, as well as the Alpe-Adria commercial arrangement that involved Slovenian, Croatian, Italian, and Austrian companies. Zaccaria argues that the opportunity to use the border zone to avoid EEC restrictions made Italy an even more advantageous trade partner for Yugoslavia. The author concludes that, in the late 1960s “the search for enhanced political relations with Rome (which also included overcoming the border issue) was a key strategy to avoid Yugoslavia’s economic isolation from the Common Market” (8-9).

The author may place too great an emphasis on the specific interest(s) of Slovenia and Croatia for greater economic connection with Italy and the EEC in comparison with those of the other Yugoslav republics. In this sense, Zaccaria cites the position of the Economic Secretariat of Slovenia from October 1970, stressing that “industrial cooperation in the border area was the only means to overcome the trade barriers established by the EEC” (9), and arguing that this was the reason for their demands for wider and deeper border cooperation. Furthermore, in order to “re-launch economic cooperation in the border zone,” Slovenia requested that the federal government “accelerate the conclusion of the frontier question” (10). In this respect, their politics were in full accordance with those of Croatia. Demands coming from these two republics were, according to Zaccaria, ignored by the federal government, particularly by the representatives from Serbia and Montenegro. All this reflected on the issue of final border delineation. He claims that on this issue there were “two parallel trends” and adds: “On the one hand stood the political-diplomatic channel, which proved to be ineffective due to Rome’s reticence and Belgrade’s prudence. On the other, local actors in Slovenia and Croatia urged a rapid solution to the dispute and the re- launch of the border question as a means of connecting [to] Italy and the Common Market” (12).

Since this is one of the author’s central arguments, it deserves a more in-depth analysis; border zone trade was undoubtedly important, but in that period it was relatively limited in scope, constituting as it did less than 10% of the total trade between the two states, while the possibility for its growth was limited.5 Furthermore, Yugoslavia was aware that its increased presence upon the Italian market could not be achieved by focusing primarily on border zone trade. A question mark also

5 Exept for the years 1964 and 1965, when it was 14.7% and 11% respectively, border zone trade was below 10% throughout the second half of the 1960s and the entirety of the 1970s. For example, in 1975 it accounted for just 3.5% of the total trade between the two states. Aleš Lokar, “Gospodarsko sodelovanje obmejnih področij Italije in Jugoslavije in možnosti vključevanja slovenske narodnostne skupnosti v Italiji,” [Economic cooperation between the border areas of Italy and Yugoslavia and the possibilities of integration of the Slovenian ethnic community in Italy], Rasprave in gradivo, Ljubljana, 1982, št. 15, 102.

© 2020 The Authors | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US H-Diplo Article Review 1009 lingers over Zaccaria’s claim that the federal government of Yugoslavia opposed to this type of cooperation. The documents from the diplomatic and political archives inform us that the federal government leant its support to such initiatives. In this sense, the government in Belgrade was attempting to replicate the successes of the model of the Gorizia and Trieste agreements in the creation of other similar agreements. One such idea was the creation of a Center-South agreement, which would have connected southern Italy with the southern parts of Yugoslavia (parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and—particularly—Montenegro)6. In order to strengthen the argument that Slovenia and Croatia held independent Page | 3 politics toward the EEC and Italy, Zaccaria also points to the ethnic affiliation of specific federal representatives in an attempt to demonstrate that representatives of Slovenia and Croatia exercised different politics than those of the Serbs and Montenegrins in the government, irrespective of whether they were republic or federal officials. This argument may be somewhat misleading; for example, Toma Granfil, who was a progressive member of the Yugoslav Government, was in charge of relations with the EEC, is classified in the article as a Slovene, in spite of the fact that he was a representative of Serbia (6).

The final part of the paper is dedicated to an analysis of the final phase of the secret negotiations that were initiated between Italian representative Eugenio Carbone and Yugoslav Boris Snuderl in mid-1974 and which resulted in the signing of the Osimo Treaty in 1975. Zaccaria claims that at this time the negotiators “move[d] border negotiations from a political- diplomatic to an economic dimension” (13). As in the previous part of the article, he links the acceleration of the negotiations and their successful accomplishment to interconnected questions of border delineation and the Yugoslav position towards the EEC. He observes that in the final phase of negotiations there was a “looming divergence between the political side of the negotiations,” represented by President Josip Broz Tito and Minister of Foreign Affairs Miloš Minić, and “clear-cut local economic interests supported by the republics of Slovenia and Croatia” (15). Finally, Zaccaria holds that the economic component of the Treaty, with its project of establishing a free industrial zone at the border, where companies from both states could cooperate without customs restrictions, was a response to the previous demands of Slovenia and Croatia for their companies to achieve entry into the Common Market via extended border cooperation. In Italian historiography, the free industrial zone has been discussed from the perspective of the impossibility of its establishment due to the vigorous opposition of the Italian public in Trieste,7 and it is therefore precisely this aspect of Zaccaria’s approach that is innovative and makes it a noteworthy contribution.

Without trying to undermine the relevance of economic exchange to the totality of bilateral Yugoslav-Italian relations, it is important to offer a different perspective on the role of the economy in the process of border delineation. The Osimo Treaty was composed of a series of bilateral agreements, some of which were of an economic nature. Among these economic agreements, primary importance must be attributed to the establishment of a free industrial zone on the border of Italy and Yugoslavia. However, if one analyses the genesis of the initiative for establishment of the free industrial zone, it is arguable that the key reason for such an unorthodox solution is the strong intention of both sides to achieve a mutually beneficial compromise during the negotiations. According to the rich diplomatic documentation from the Yugoslav archives in Belgrade, the initial proposal to create the zone was not Yugoslav in origin, as argued by Zaccharia, but rather Italian. During the negotiations, Italy attempted to secure from Yugoslavia some kind of territorial compensation in the former Zone B, in order to facilitate Italian public acceptance of the definitive revocation of this territory. For Italy this issue bore both economic and political weight. Economically, it was important because of the ambition to acquire additional territory for the industrial development of Trieste. It was even more important politically because it would serve as a justification

6 On the efforts to conclude the Center-South agreement and other attempts to create economic connections of the southern parts of the two countries, see in detail, Mišić, Pomirenje na Jadranu, 209- 217.

7 See, for example: Diego D’Amelio, “Imperfect Normalisation. The Political Repercussions of the Treaty of Osimo” in: Tito’s Yugosalvia in The age Of International Detent, 343-366.

© 2020 The Authors | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US H-Diplo Article Review 1009 before the local population, alongside the other economic provisions, for the signing of the global agreement, leaving the impression that the Italian state was fully invested in the economic development of the city and region.8

Yugoslavs accepted the idea of an industrial zone, while behaving from the start with considerable reluctance, treating the issue as a favor to Italy. Later on they started pointing out the benefits for Yugoslavia from the perspective that it could acquire privileged access to the Italian market and the EEC. It seems that the originally Italian idea was accepted and Page | 4 accommodated by the Yugoslavs. However, for the Yugoslav side, and Slovenia in particular, achieving a resolution to other disputes, such as the status of the Slovenian minority in Italy, was placed higher on the agenda, and it is for this reason that the political perspective of future agreements was advanced throughout the process of negotiations.9

In addition, Zaccaria’s claim that the interests of Slovenia and Croatia in the economic components of the Osimo Treaty, including that of the free industrial zone, were uniform, needs to be further assessed. In terms of context, it should be pointed out that the free industrial zone would have been located on the border between Italy and Slovenia, while many other economic provisions favored Slovenia over all other republics, including Croatia. As a result of this, Croatia held certain reservations regarding this project and the other economic provisions of the Treaty, while opinions that such economic provisions should be treated independently from border delineation were also put forward.10

Finally, we can agree with Zaccaria’s position that the Osimo Treaty represents an important indicator of change in the relationships between the republics and the federal government of Yugoslavia in the sense of weakening the union and strengthening the interests of the republics and the forces striving for a confederalization of Yugoslavia. It is also undisputed that the western republics, Slovenia in particular, had a tendency to utilize the border cooperation “as a means of further integration with the Italian economy” (17). However, the interpretation that Slovenia and Croatia initiated a resolution of the border dispute in order to secure their economic interests is somewhat questionable. It seems that the economy had its place in the negotiations that led to signing of the Treaty in autumn 1975, but did not act as the primary motivator, as Zaccaria argues.

Saša Mišić is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade, Serbia. His academic interests focus on the foreign policy of Yugoslavia, in particular on political and economic relations with Albania and Italy. To date, he has published two books: Albanija: prijatelj i protivnik. Jugoslovenska politika prema Albaniji u periodu 1924- 1927 [Albania: Friend and Foe: Yugoslav Policy towards Albania 1924-1927], (Belgrad: Službeni glasnik, 2009) and Pomirenje na Jadranu. Jugoslavija i Italija na putu ka Osimskim sporazumima iz 1975 [Reconciliation in the Adriatic. Yugoslavia and Italy on their way to the Osimo Treaty of 1975], (Belgrade: Fakultet političkih nauka Univerziteta Beograd, 2018), as well as numerous scientific articles.

8 Mišić, Pomirenje na Jadranu.

9 Mišić, Pomirenje na Jadranu.

10 See, for example, the file Note on conversation of “Working group” in Zagreb, published in collection of documents VIRI, no. 24, (Ljubljana: 2007), 49.