Managing Secession: The European Union’s Normalisation Approach to Kosovo and Transnistria

Ever since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, preserving peace has been a stated foreign policy objective of the European Union (EU). The 2016 EU’s Global Strategy further promised a comprehensive and multi-dimensional EU approach to conflict prevention, management and resolution, emphasising the importance of preserving peace in the neighbouring regions. However, despite this policy promise, the EU’s actual engagement in conflict prevention and resolution processes in the neighbourhood has been critically assessed by observers. Moreover, the EU has not managed to prevent the emergence of de facto states as the result of secessionist conflicts in its immediate proximity. In many cases, the status of these entities remains unresolved to date. In this paper, we argue that this is not surprising, because – despite its own claims to promote conflict resolution – the EU has actually prioritised a policy of stabilising the conflict situations. To develop this argument, we reattend the concept of normalization, conceived as a policy aim of the EU in its efforts to manage secessionist conflicts. Hereby, conflict parties are expected to move towards a peaceful co-existence and increased interactions. This process would reduce the likelihood of conflict reescalation and hence make it more manageable. Yet, it would not necessarily resolve the underlying incompatibilities between the conflict parties (e.g., the status issue of the secessionist entity). In a comparative study of Kosovo and Transnistria, we demonstrate how the EU engages with the two de facto states to promote normalization of their relations with their parent states in different domains: political, economic, and societal. In doing so – we argue – the EU contributes to stabilizing the status quo, that is the frozen state of the conflicts.