Reinhard Priebe, responsible for the western Balkans in the European commission’s external relations directorate, wagged his finger at a group of visiting MPs from the Balkans. “We will forgive you,” he growled, “but we will not forget.”
The Brussels bureaucracy is making itself clear-it resents those Balkan governments that signed or might sign an agreement with the US, exempting American nationals from deportation if served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court.
But the message from Washington is equally unambiguous. If you want to get ahead in Nato, then you need to share some of the US’s strategic values. By the time Lawrence Rossin finished his term as US ambassador to Zagreb earlier this summer, most Croat politicians refused to see him. “His hectoring about Croatia’s signature on the ICC exemption treaty had exhausted us,” a senior member of the governing coalition told me.
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