Day 13

Alec landed safely in Lima albeit 6 hours but he's there.

Yesterday I had an interview with Professor Jovan Teokarevic at the faculty of political science which went quite well. It was great to talk to someone who was well aware of the politics of Serbia and the EU. He came right out and said that he believed that some point in the future Serbia will have to make a choice between Kosovo and EU membership. This is a significant statement. Everyone else I have spoken to has danced around the issue. It was marvelous to speak to someone who undersands the domestic-international political dynamic on a practical rather than simply theoretical stance.

He actually brought up some of my major concerns vis-a-vis EU policy/ trajectory-- he mentioned the little known 2006 amendment in the French constitution which stated that after Croatia the French public would have to vote in favor of each member states acession. All member countries must vote unanimously for a state to enter the EU. As Jovan said bringing the French public into the equation would have been catastrophic. Luckily under Sarkozy the amendment was nulled.

Jovan and others are calling for Thesoloniki II. The Thesoloniki conference occured in 2003 between SE European countries and EU officials in which the EU affirmed that the SE European countries' futures do lie within the EU (as opposed to Belarus and Ukraine). Since then, however, the commitment of the EU to the region has been incredibly blurry.

Jovan said that the unspoken message conveyed by the EU to Eastern Europe acessor states in the late 1990s differs strongly from the one attitude currently conveyed to the Balkans. The message to Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.) was that you will get in once you are ready. To the Balkans (Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania) the message is that you will get in once you are ready and once we (EU states) are ready as well.

Consequently, Jovan said, despite the posturing of the states to the contrary, all Balkan states are rooting for each other to get in.

Anyways it was a very interesting interview.

I came back and spent the rest of the day waiting for Alec's call-- he got a weak signal to send an email and have a 3 minute skype call at 11pm last night and finally got my longer call this morning at 4:30am. I am understandably taking a bit longer to get up this morning :-p

I'm posting some pictures I took on Thursday walking around town. The pink toes picture above is the view form Kalemegdon.