ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the European Union’s response to the crisis that broke out in Macedonia in 2001, when ethnic Albanian insurgents launched attacks against Macedonian state security forces. It traces the EU’s discourse on the conflict, arguing that this shifted from one stressing that the insurgents were extremists or terrorists, to one that highlighted the role played by ethnicity and the legitimate concerns of Macedonia’s Albanian minority. This shift in the understanding of the conflict is key to understanding the nature of the EU-mediated Ohrid Framework Agreement, which established consociational power sharing in Macedonia. The chapter considers claims that have been made in the existing literature, and by policy-makers, that Ohrid reflects policy learning by EU and other international actors, following the experience of the Dayton Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It concludes that the difference in the two cases have more to do with the difference in context between the two conflicts, rather being the result of a fundamental reconsideration of EU policy. The EU’s promotion of consociationalism in Macedonia is framed as European by policy-makers through reference to a particular reading of the history of European integration, which allows parallels to be drawn between ethnic diversity in Macedonia and between EU member states.
