Why Bosnian accession to the EU would help peace in Europe

Christopher Clark's book "The Sleepwalkers" was celebrated in this country because the Australian historian denied Germany's sole responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, this theory was abandoned just a few years after the Treaty of Versailles.

There, Clark's investigation of Slavic, especially Serbian, nationalism and terrorism, which led to the Sarajevo assassination, was received with interest. Serbian nationalists feared that Bosnia's integration into the multinational, multiethnic, and multicultural Habsburg Empire would weaken the South Slavic identity of Serbs living there.

To prevent this, they wanted to provoke a war with Austria-Hungary by murdering the heir to the throne. They succeeded, with the well-known consequences.

On the one hand, these days we are witnessing how Russia – at that time the patron saint of Serbia – started a terror war that could end in a world war with the bogus argument of protecting the identity of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

On the other hand, the EU Commission has just recommended granting Bosnia-Herzegovina the status of a candidate country. When the country joins the European Union, more than a hundred years of exile from Europe, which began with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary on October 31, 1918, will end.

Of course, Bosnia has a long way to go in terms of corruption, rule of law, media freedom and the role of organized crime before it can become a member of the EU.

Moreover, the country is divided into a Serbian – religiously Serbian-Orthodox – republic and a Bosniak-Croatian – i.e. Muslim-Catholic – federation. In a way, the country is reminiscent of South Tyrol in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today there is hardly any trace of the once virulent hatred between Italian and German-born South Tyroleans. Due to the membership of Italy, Austria and Germany in the EU, the Eurozone and the Schengen area, nationality has almost no meaning for most of them.

You go shopping in Innsbruck or Milan, enjoy the best of both cultures in Bressanone and Bolzano in Brixen and Bozen, scold the politicians in Rome, Vienna, Berlin and Brussels, don't imagine you would have it better if you were ethnic among themselves. Home is now not only from the Ätsch to the Belt, but from Sicily to the North Sea.

This cooling down – to use Helmut Lethen's term – of destructive emotions is one of the main achievements of the EU. Will that be easy in the case of Bosnia? no Will it be expensive? Certainly. Who is paying? Well, we. Is it worth? Absolutely.

Vladimir Putin has long promoted Serbian nationalism and pan-Slavism in order to destabilize the region and the EU. In 2022, as in 1914, the forces of national, ethnic, and religious fanaticism have the potential to drag our continent into the abyss.