income taxes…

For the sake of being accurate, I would like to let you know that the population of Macedonia is 2 million (2005 estimates) and not ~2.5 million as you stated in your post.

I would like to also point out that every time a wave of countries joins the EU, their non-EU neighbours suffer as was demonstrated by the entry of Bulgaria and Romania on January the 1st. The citizens of Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and even Bosnia have had extra trouble with their transport and trade routes to and from Turkey via Bulgaria. The Kosovars now need to visa in order to go to Bulgaria for tourism.

When Croatia joins the EU the rest of the countries will be further isolated. The other (non)-option is to bundle them together, but then Macedonia or, say, Albania would have to wait for Bosnia which is not an ideal situation.

Finally, for those people that did not understand why Montenegro wanted to become independent last year, the definite answer came the last couple of days via S&A while Serbia is befriending the Russians and the African countries with each passing day.

All the best!

War crimes and refugee returns: you are so right. Basically, everyone wants to forget about the Yugoslav wars now. It’s been over a decade now! Wrap it up and let’s be done with it!

Note that this has already led to some very questionable decision-making (see my January post on Bosnia).

Refugee returns — Zagreb has done a very good job of manipulating these, admitting back enough refugees to satisfy Europe but not enough to seriously upset the political apple cart. The rate of return has slowed to a trickle. It looks like the number of Serbs in Croatia will stabilize permanently at around 5%, down from about 13% before the wars.

This is one of the reasons I use the word “unseemly”: we have a state that performed large-scale ethnic cleansing in the recent past and that is, frankly, proud of it. I might let them into the EU, but I wouldn’t be in such a hurry about it.

Doug M.

‘The Croats say they’ll be in by 2009. This won’t happen, but 2010 is plausible and by 2012 they should be in barring catastrophe.’

It’s not just Sanader’s government that is tossing about 2009, but Commission reps in Zagreb as well. Even Olli Rehn uses the 2009 date when talking off the record in Zagreb. But, that said, I agree with the overall argument 2009 is very ambitious, whereas 2010 is more likely.

With regard to war crimes trials (and refugee returns) EU member states have gradually been showing less and less interest in these issues as talks progress. There’s no pressure from Brussels or any EU member states to bring more charges against individuals in the domestic courts.