To judge from Mr. Bassuener’s presentation, it gains by simply delaying matters. Mr. Bassuener suggested that one solution the European Union can try is slow and evolutionary and comprises being willing to stick around. Another, which he does not recommend, is to apply leverage to achieve fundamental change. Mr. Bassuener should touch on that point again. I refer to the leverage the European Union could apply to achieve fundamental change. While this appears to be essential, I do not know how it can come about. Did the Paddy Ashdown plan foresee a solution coming in that direction or does Mr. Bassuener envisage a different direction?

Mr. Bassuener: Regarding Senator Quinn’s question, the greatest leverage that the EU can apply is the door marked “Enter”. Everything it wants must be done before anyone can enter, which relates to the complaints about Romania and Bulgaria. To be blunt and cynical, the enlargement model worked in Romania and Bulgaria because a political and social consensus could be reached to at least pretend to meet the EU’s conditions. Bosnia does not even have that consensus. This is how far we are on the wrong side.

It is not that a social consensus could not be reached from the ground up. While this is a problem, there is also a transmission mechanism problem. An empowered political class feels unaccountable to its citizens because it is not required. All that one must do in an electoral cycle is scare the hell out of constituents and tell them that one will protect them from someone else. It does not matter if people know someone is a thief. Bosnians cannot be shocked by corruption. They assume people enter politics as a for profit enterprise. If someone is stealing, Bosnians believe that all politicians are like that irrespective of how astronomical the amount stolen.

Citizens feel disempowered. The word “apathy” is wrong because it means that someone does not care. Politics is the only item of discussion over numerous cigarettes at cafés. However, there is a sense that people cannot do anything about it. Members of the empowered political elite know, rather than love, each other. Bosnia is approximately the size of Ireland and many among the elite served together in the Communist Youth League and drink together. While there are some hatreds, they have a common interest in not being accountable. They have competing agendas. The Dayton constitution is a second best for everyone because they at least got to keep what they stole without needing to answer to the population.

Allowing a political centre to develop is what Bosnia needs if it is to survive as a state, let alone become an EU member state. The EU is in a position to demand that development. There are many theological, dogmatic arguments against the EU doing so. For example, it would be telling member states how to organise their internal structures, but this is a specious argument. Once someone is in the door, no one will demand constitutional changes. Bosnia is a clearcut case. Changes are necessary for state functionality and the chance to become a productive contributor to the EU as a member state.

Making the price of entry clear could receive significant political support from the bottom, after which the politicians would be squeezed because they would need to react. There is a price to pay when people know who is not doing his or her homework. Unfortunately, the EU’s message to Bosnian politicians is that its conditionality is infinitely flexible because it must be seen to be progressing. It does not know what to do other than to follow the standard boiler plate enlargement model developed for a different sort of society, namely, Hungary and Poland where political centres could be formed.

Making the price clear is obvious, but how to make it clear is the fun part. Unfortunately, the way in which the international community selects people to operate on the ground has been on the supply side of the equation rather than the demand side - who can be got for the job, not what type of person is needed. This is how the current high representative was found. He is nice and smart, but he is a diplomat with a diplomat’s mentality. He reports up the chain of command as a reporting officer, not as a political actor, which would be necessary to get over the hump. His narcoleptic predecessor was worse.

No one wants the job because it is not sufficiently high profile. Regardless of whether the person in question is competent or qualified, member states argue for the position because it went to someone else last time. It is a job for a big city mayor, someone with political acumen, the ability to play hardball and experience of administering because it is an administrative and political role. There are many such people within the EU. Someone in that population of 500 million would fit the bill and love the job. The difficult part is making the selection in the face of the EU’s bureaucratic structures, but this is not impossible. Bosnia’s marching orders could be to achieve constitutional reform before being allowed into the EU and to let the new person help in that regard.

None of us knows what background level of nationalism Bosnia has, but it exists and is being magnified by a constitutional system that allows politicians to use fear as leverage and provides them with almost unrivalled unaccountability in European politics. They comprise the most stable political class of any European country. The only way out of the upper echelons is to die, go to jail, be on the run from jail like Radovan Karadzic or become politically irrelevant by forming a new party. Otherwise, there is complete mapping of the political elite of 18 years ago after the first free elections in October 1990. This situation is unsurpassed anywhere else in Europe.

Dayton was designed to give jobs to these people because they were the people who fought the war. One cannot gainsay, one made the deal. Now that the door is open to the EU and NATO, which has been open in theory since 1999, we must move to a different model. It has been a long soliloquy but the point I make is that the EU has the potential to do this.