The European Union and Member State Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The European Union and Member State Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina Davide Denti PhD programme in International Studies School of International Studies, University of Trento 08 January 2018 Supervisor: Prof. Simona Piattoni Advisor: Prof. Jens Woelk Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Studies Table of contents List of Acronyms ................................................................................................................................. vii Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. xi Introduction and methods .................................................................................................................... 1 1. EU enlargement and state building in Bosnia and Herzegovina ......................................................... 2 2. Analytical aims .................................................................................................................................... 8 3. Research questions .............................................................................................................................. 9 4. Methods and instruments................................................................................................................... 12 5. Thesis structure ................................................................................................................................. 18 I. Towards a Theoretical Understanding of Member State Building ............................................. 21 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 21 1. The notion of EU member state beyond the legal dichotomy ........................................................... 24 1.1 Beyond the legal title of member state: stateness, Europeanness, and behaviour ........................ 24 2.2 Beyond the in/out dichotomy: the growing differentiation of membership .................................. 27 2. From a Community of states to a Union of member states. EU integration as a tool for the state or an instrument for its transformation. ................................................................................................ 28 2.1 Together but separate: member states and the Community in earlier theories of integration ....... 28 2.2 From nation states to member states: blurring the distinction between national and supranational levels .............................................................................................................................................. 31 2.3 The Union and its member states as mutually constitutive: a social constructivist ontology ....... 35 3. The transformation of sovereignty: sovereignty as control, as responsibility, as participation......... 39 3.1 Sovereignty as control .................................................................................................................. 40 3.2 Sovereignty as responsibility ........................................................................................................ 42 3.3 Sovereignty as capacity and participation ..................................................................................... 49 4. Europeanisation: the domestic impact of Europe .............................................................................. 54 4.1 Defining Europeanisation: exploring the domestic effects of Europe .......................................... 54 4.2 The three strands of neoinstitutionalism and the mechanisms of Europeanisation ...................... 58 4.3 Scope conditions and outcome patterns of Europeanisation ......................................................... 63 5. Turning nation states into member states: the internal transformative power of Europe .................. 64 5.1 The anchoring power of international institutions on democracy ................................................. 65 ii 5.2 The relativisation of the state/society linkage ............................................................................... 69 6. Europeanisation beyond the member states and its pitfalls ............................................................... 75 6.1 Europeanisation vs. EU-isation: lack of clear conceptual boundaries .......................................... 76 6.2 Europeanisation East in the shadow of hierarchy: back to a top-down definition? ..................... 78 6.3 Adjectivised Europeanisation: the dangers of degreeism ............................................................. 79 6.4 The issue of stateness: a cul-de-sac for weak states in the enlargement process? ........................ 81 7. Member-state building: building functional member states while integrating them ......................... 84 7.1 From state building to member-state building .............................................................................. 84 7.2 The birth of member-state building: building functional states while integrating them ............... 87 7.3 The paradoxes of member-state building and the role of the EU ................................................ 90 II. Learning to interact: Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union ................................. 97 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 97 1. Bosnia and Herzegovina as a contested state .................................................................................... 98 1.1 The Dayton order in Bosnia and Herzegovina .............................................................................. 98 1.2 Bosnia and Herzegovina’s multiple transitions .......................................................................... 104 1.3 Bosnia and Herzegovina as a contested state .............................................................................. 112 1.4 Consociational and integrative elements in the Bosnian power-sharing system ........................ 117 2. The European Union in Bosnia Herzegovina: an uneasy transition ................................................ 125 2.1 Venus in the land of Mars? In the shadow of the High Representative ...................................... 126 2.2 The police reform saga: a lack of legitimacy of EU conditionality ............................................ 131 2.3. The end of police reform: Unworkable conditions and mismanaged conditionality ................. 142 3. Sysyphus in Sarajevo: the EU and the challenge of constitutional reforms ................................... 146 3.1 The Venice Commission Opinion and the genesis of the constitutional reform debate ............. 146 3.2 The April Package and its failure ............................................................................................... 148 3.3 The botched EU initiatives under Schwartz-Schilling ................................................................ 152 3.4 Further attempts in 2008-2009: from Prud to Butmir ................................................................. 153 3.5 The ECtHR Sejdić–Finci ruling and its impact .......................................................................... 160 3.6 The High Level Accession Dialogue and the Sejdić–Finci talks ................................................ 165 3.7 Towards a rebalanced approach to EU conditionality in BiH .................................................... 172 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 177 III. The Structured Dialogue on Justice: Building Consensus to Restore Legitimacy ................ 180 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 180 1. The 2011 RS referendum threat and the launch of the Structured Dialogue on Justice .................. 182 2. The first meeting of the Structured Dialogue: demining the Bosnian judiciary .............................. 187 iii 3. The Structured Dialogue on Justice from 2012 to 2014 .................................................................. 190 4. The broadening of the dialogue agenda after the 2014 protests ...................................................... 200 5. The entry into force of the SAA and its impact on the Structured Dialogue on Justice .................. 207 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 221 IV. The Instrument for Pre-Accession: Building Consensus to Restore Capacities .................... 228 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 228 1. Training for membership: the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance ........................................ 230 1.1 Decentralised management and the set-up of policy implementation structures ........................ 235 1.2 A premature step? Absorption problems and the return to centralised management ................. 244 2. The IPA-II programme and the shift from structure to function ..................................................... 249 2.1 Sector budget support as vector of state building in fragile countries

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