Europe's Balkan Dilemma: Paths to Civil Society or State-Building? by Adam Fagan

Author:Adam Fagan [Fagan, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, European, Political Science, World, Political Process, General
ISBN: 9780857736383
Google: laSmDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 15794527
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Scope, focus and impact of EU-funded projects

According to the Delegation task manager responsible for the allocation and monitoring of CARDS and EIDHR project funding, the ideal projects, worthy of EU assistance, were those ‘that have three key components: working with the government on legislative aspects; then to work in the field and to prepare activities, and to be able to implement these activities’. The sort of projects that were particularly favoured are those that involved ‘a narrow action’ – not too ambitious in terms of what they intended to deliver, but were able to influence legislation, prepare activities and deliver the programme in conjunction with the municipality or other relevant state agencies.27

Although the broad themes under which projects were supported was reasonably clear-cut – environment, support for returnees and victims of torture, promotion of local democracy, human and minority rights, sustainable economic development – the actual range of projects and the scope of the activities funded through EU micro grants as part of CARDS or EIDHR were wide and outputs varied considerably.

For similar amounts of funding (between €60,000 and €80,000) projects delivered strikingly different outcomes in terms of policy input, quality of service provision and the extent to which there was a creation of knowledge. For instance, the organisation Fondeko received €61,000 to conduct a survey into the attitudes of 3,000 students towards the environment, hold a series of small workshops, and to produce and distribute an environmental handbook to college students in Tuzla, Doboj and Zenica and another booklet for teachers and educators.28 The publications were factual and not directly related to any particular policy development or environmental agenda; they were not available as an electronic resource.

The Delegation provided a similar amount of money (€56,000) to the organisation Fondacija Lokalne Demokratije to undertake a project in 2006 that involved compiling a detailed report based on testimonials from women victims of rape and torture during the war. The project provided, with the help of legal experts, specialist analysis of which laws needed to be changed in order to protect women and to grant them legal status on a par with victims in Republika Srpska.29 The report, which was presented to the Federal Assembly as part of a wider campaign, was compiled on the basis of meetings held in each canton. The Assembly accepted all the recommendations included in the report, and a new law was presented for ratification in September 2006.30 Of all the EU-funded projects analysed in BiH, FLD was the only organisation apparently directly engaged in policy deliberation and advocacy. Yet the politicisation of their project and the impact they were able to exert on the Federal Assembly has to be placed in context: the issue of victims of rape and torture committed during the war gained high-profile status after the release of the Bosnian film Grbavica. The internationally acclaimed film by Jasmila Zbanic, which tells the harrowing story of a Sarajevan victim of rape, was nominated for numerous awards and was internationally acclaimed and was released just as FLD’s project was drawing to a close.

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