In order to better understand the disintegration of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, it is interesting to recall that Yugoslavia was first created in 1918, and was dismembered firstly during World War Second. Then, it has been dismembered once more with the collapse of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, causing the above-mentioned disintegration. Moreover, between its creation in 1918 and its final disintegration, the Yugoslavian State has been confronted to highly different regional, religious and ethnic composition, which provoked the issues of the fragility and the legitimacy of it, creating instability and great hostility from some people such as Goebbels during the interwar period, who said that Yugoslavia was "a questionable patchwork of states".
[...] II/ The EU between idleness and unsuccessful attempts in Yugoslavia Case Studies: Slovenia and Croatia, two very different situations As we have seen previously, Slovenia and Croatia decided to secede from the Yugoslav Federation in June This decision opened a completely new phase in the Yugoslav crisis, but there is to underline the disparity of the situation in these two countries, as well as the difference of success of the European Community reaction. On the one hand, in Slovenia, the war between Slovene forces and the JNA was fierce but also very brief, causing a dozen killed within the Slovenian forces and thirty-seven within JNA ones. [...]
[...] But because of the lack of common European policy and strategy, these individual successes were insufficient to permit to stop the Yugoslavian wars particularly in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Finally, the United States had been the ones to intervene to put an end to these conflicts, accomplishing what the European Union had been incapable of. To conclude, we can observe that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had done the European Union much harm. In fact, this crisis had revealed publicly and widely its incapacity to implement a common strategy and policy. So we can say that the disintegration of Yugoslavia called in question the efficiency and even [...]
[...] From Brussels: dilemma and incapacity to stop the war It will be unfair to say that the EU did nothing to stop the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia. But obviously, because of its internal divisions principally (on December 1991, Germany reaffirmed its difference with France and Britain at a meeting of EC foreign ministers at Brussels, by announcing that it would formally recognize Croatian and Slovenian independence), its reactions hadn't been very efficient. To give an illustration of this ineffectiveness, we can just recall that over a dozen EC negotiated cease-fire agreements collapsed in rapid succession during Croatian war, and that the small number of EC cease-fire monitors stationed in the region was unable to control the spreading violence. [...]
[...] Of course, these propositions were attractive but as Vasil Tuperkovski (leader of Macedonia) explained to Santer and Delors, lack of a unified European policy toward Yugoslavia was sending mixed signals to the different political forces in the country, exacerbating the crisis”. Yugoslavia's Prime Minister Markovic added that “Europe is not prepared to pay us not to fight. Let's have no illusions about this. We must solve our own problems”. Consequently, twenty days after the nearly failure of the EC mission in Belgrade, the international community made another effort to address the looming Yugoslav crisis. [...]
[...] In the West: Division of the European Union After several months of escalade of ethnic violence and political tension in Yugoslavia, the international community and especially the European Union (which was still the European Community in those days), finally understood, in June 1991, that maybe the negotiations between the republics would fail and that could lead to the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia. For instance, Giani de Michelis (The Italian Foreign Secretary) explained that “according to its present constitutional structure, Yugoslavia could be either united but undemocratic, or democratic but in pieces”. [...]
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