When Enlargement Meets Common Foreign and Security Policy: Serbia's Europeanisation, Visa Liberalisation and the Kosovo Policy

Abstract

In: Europe-Asia Studies, 66 (1). pp. 67-87. Abstract:Applying discursive institutionalism, this article identifies a hitherto overlooked disconnect between rule adoption and implementation and their discursive denial as an example of 'shallow' Europeanisation. This empirical study of Serbia's visa liberalisation and implications for its Kosovo policy, resulting from the simultaneous pursuit of Enlargement and Common Foreign and Security Policy, demonstrates the European Union's leverage on policy, pointing to Serbia's compliance indicative of recognition of Kosovo's border, which is obscured by nationalist discourse on Serbia's territorial integrity. Such incoherent Europeanisation in policy and discursive 2 domains exposes limits to the explanatory purchase of rational institutionalism and sociological institutionalism.

The Framing of the EU Visa Liberalization with Ukraine

“…Its ubiquity in Ukrainian political discourse is indicative of the EU visa liberalization as a process that requires time, effort, and resources. The present findings lend support to prior research by Kostovicova (2014), who argues that the EU visa liberalization is quite often seen as a token of a country's European integration. It should be emphasized that the frame European Integration reflects the EU visa waiver for Serbia (Kostovicova 2014) and Ukraine as a step towards their European future.…”

“…The present findings lend support to prior research by Kostovicova (2014), who argues that the EU visa liberalization is quite often seen as a token of a country's European integration. It should be emphasized that the frame European Integration reflects the EU visa waiver for Serbia (Kostovicova 2014) and Ukraine as a step towards their European future. The findings discussed in this article reveal no framing of the EU visa liberalization discourse as the frame Fortress that is typical in Turkish political discourse (Özdemir-Ayata 2017) associated with the EU visa policies.…”

“…The issue of illegal migration to the EU has attracted a substantial volume of research in linguistics (Abid et al 2017, Charteris-Black 2006, Sciortino-Colombo 2004. At the same time, the issues of legal border crossing, legal visitors with Schengen visas, and visa liberalization with the EU are less numerous in linguistics, and, in particular, discourse studies (Đurović-Silaški 2012, Jansen 2009, Kostovicova 2014, Özdemir-Ayata 2017.…”

“…Political discourse associated with visa liberalization has been addressed in research literature in linguistics and political discourse (Aydın-Düzgit 2016, Baysan 2013, Đurović-Silaški 2012, Happ-Bruns 2017, Jansen 2009, Kortenska et al 2016, Kostovicova 2014, Özdemir-Ayata 2017, Scott 2017, Vieira 2016. Previous studies indicate that the issue of visa liberalization with the EU has dominated political discourse in a number of European non-EU countries, for instance, in Serbia (Đurović-Silaški 2012, Jansen 2009, Kortenska et al 2016, Kostovicova 2014, Turkey (Aydın-Düzgit 2016, Batalla-Adam 2017, Baysan 2013, Tsarouhas 2018), and Ukraine (Burlyuk-Shapovalova 2017, Chaban et al 2017, Kleinschnitger-Knodt 2018, Scott 2017, Vieira 2016. In particular, the EU visa liberalization is thought to be "an example of EU conditionality that triggered rapid reforms in the Western Balkans and Serbia" (Kortenska et al 2016: 9).…”

“…Whilst political discourse associated with visa liberalization has been amply elucidated in the cases of Serbia and Turkey (Aydin-Düzgit 2016, Baysan 2013, Đurović-Silaški 2012, Jansen 2009, Kostovicova 2014, there are insufficient studies involving the issue of visa-free movement by Ukrainian citizens to the EU. The present qualitative investigation seeks to address this gap by means of identifying and analysing the framing of the EU visa liberalization with Ukraine.…”