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An agreement between Serbia and Kosovo to settle a long-standing dispute over their mutual border is becoming more than an abstract idea. The countries’ leaders have held initial talks on a so-called border correction, a process that could offer a way to ease their accession to the European Union. The conversation went well enough for Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo President Hashim Thaci to appear together week before last at a news conference in the Austrian town of Alpbach.
The shape of any would-be deal is unknown, as neither leader would say what he meant by “border correction”. A widely-held theory is that the parties are discussing a trade of Kosovo’s majority-Serb territory, located north of the Ibar River, for Serbia’s majority-Albanian Presevo area. There are good reasons to consider this kind of messy land swap a bad idea. But there is one argument that may outweigh any objection: Once all the parts of former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, are in the EU, the significance of the specific demarcation of borders between them eventually will be erased.
The talks were facilitated by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. He is eager to build a reputation as Europe’s indispensable bridge-builder, and is trying to capitalise on the momentum of the recent deal between the leaders of Greece and Macedonia to settle the dispute about Macedonia’s name.
Still, a territorial swap between Serbia and Kosovo would pose a number of problems. First, it would be a move towards more pure ethnic states in both Serbia and Kosovo. After the Yugoslav wars, the western powers that intervened to end the bloodshed hoped the nations that emerged from the conflicts would learn to respect their minorities. A redrawing of borders along ethnic lines would be an admission that these hopes were futile, and it could increase the temptation for minorities in other exYugoslav states to secede. The danger is especially great in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Serb and Croat-dominated regions could gravitate towards Serbia and Croatia, and in Macedonia, which has a strong ethnic Albanian minority.
A swap may not work
If a swap prompts Albanian nationalists in Macedonia and Kosovo to push harder for a “Greater Albania” and Serbs and Croats move to break up Bosnia, the danger of armed conflicts will reemerge. That’s a situation no one wants. That’s why German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes any deal that would involve border changes, even though US National Security Adviser John Bolton has said the Trump administration wouldn’t object to such an outcome. ■ Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics and business.