Why is it so hard to fix Kosovo's problems?

Last week, dozens of NATO peacekeepers were injured after violent protests broke out in northern Kosovo. What is going on, and why do Kosovo's problems seem so hard to fix? This week we dig into the deeper context behind the unrest with political analyst Agon Maliqi. We're also talking about why much of Europe is antsy about who's going to be steering the EU next year, and a bizarre dispute in the art world.

You can follow Agon on Twitter at @AgonMaliqi.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: Turn of the Tide and Fatma Aydemir: The State of European Literature at the Forum on European Culture, De Balie.

00:22 The sunny side of the continent
02:14 Bad Week: Looming EU presidencies
12:37 Good Week for Dutch art trolls?
23:20 Interview: Agon Maliqi on why it's so hard to fix the Kosovo-Serbia relationship
35:46 Isolation Inspiration: Turn of the Tide and the Forum on European Culture
40:36 Happy Ending: The magic of Enhanced Rock Weathering

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION - 00’22” 

KATY: Welcome back to The Europeans, the weekly podcast about Europe the continent, not Europe the Swedish rock band. This is Katy in Paris, where it has already been summer for too long. I am ready for autumn in the first week of June. And I'm speaking to my lovely friend Dominic in Amsterdam. What's going on over there?

DOMINIC: Hi. Yeah, I've been sitting in the sun all day, reading up on the latest happenings around Europe, and it's been pretty glorious.

K: So you're not sick of the sun?

D: No, definitely not. This is my favourite time of year.

K: Also, you get like three hours of it in total over the year in Amsterdam, so enjoy it while it lasts, my friend.

D: Three hours of what? Sun?

K: Yeah. That's rude, isn't it? I shouldn't say that.

D: It's not so bad here. And I'm happy that you're actually coming to visit me again for the third time in two months. And I really hope Amsterdam will put on a better show when it comes to the weather this time.

K: I just can't get enough of you.

D: I should probably come and visit you sometime. I've not been to Paris for years.

K: Rude. Anyway, we'll discuss that later. What's coming up on the show this week?

D: Well, this week, we're going to be looking at what has been going on in Kosovo over the past few weeks. You've probably seen headlines about NATO sending hundreds of extra troops to Kosovo as part of a peacekeeping operation in response to violent unrest in the north of the country. It all sounds very concerning, and as with most news from the Balkans, it can sometimes feel quite difficult for those of us who are not in the region to completely understand what's happening and why. But we're in good hands this week, because we're going to be calling up Agon Maliqi, a policy analyst and activist. later on in the show to find out why the north of Kosovo has been in the news so much lately. But of course, it is first time for Good Week, Bad Week.

BAD WEEK - 02’14”

K: Who has had a bad week?

D: Well, maybe it's not really fair to say it's been a bad week for the European Union. But I think I can argue that it's been a week full of nervousness in the European Union, after lots of people working for the European Union and observing it woke up to the fact that, oh shit, Hungary, a country that is in long-term conflict with the European Union and are seen by many as undermining the fundamental values of the EU – they're going to be holding the rotating presidency of one of the institutions of the EU, namely the Council of the European Union, in just over a year's time. For six long months.

K: Uh-oh.

D: Yeah. Uh-oh indeed. There are quite a few reasons for why people would be nervous about Hungary holding that position. One of the most obvious points of discomfort is around Hungary's closeness to Russia. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has consistently resisted breaking ties with Russia and has talked down the chances of Ukraine having success against Russia. He hasn't actually come out in full support of Putin's war in Ukraine, but he has also criticised the EU's response to the war in this tightrope he seems to be walking between the European Union and Russia. And he's certainly been inspired by Vladimir Putin with some of his own domestic policymaking, especially with that law that brought in brutal restrictions for the LGBTQ+ community in Hungary. This is just one of the policies that is seen as not fitting with the fundamental values of the EU. The state of democracy is also a big concern in Hungary. The European Parliament has already voted to say that they view Hungary as an electoral autocracy due to a huge list of things that Viktor Orbán’s government have done to undermine democracy. We've talked about it on the show many times before, but it includes restricting media freedom, concerns around the constitutional and electoral system, the independence of the judiciary, and corruption. And the concern is that Orbán will use this presidency for his own political means. It seems that many European politicians are getting pretty fed up with Orbán doing just that – a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, Sophie in 't Veld, said: ‘I don't think that the European Union is the campaign team for Mr. Orbán. We have allowed him to do that for the last 13 years, so enough is enough.’ Also, it's not just that Hungary are holding the presidency but the country that Hungary will then be handing the presidency over to at the beginning of 2025 is Poland, the other EU country that has been most at odds with the European Union agenda in recent years.

K: That's some awkward scheduling.

D: It really is. And the professor of EU law and former guest of this show, Alberto Alemanno, asked on Twitter: ‘Isn't there an irreconcilable conflict between holding this rotating presidency of the Council and being in persistent breach of EU values?’ And that argument could apply to both Hungary and Poland. We shouldn't forget that there are these Article 7 proceedings against both Hungary and Poland ongoing.

K: What is that again?

D: Article 7 is that procedure where the EU can suspend certain rights like voting rights from an EU country if the country is seen to be persistently breaching the EU's founding values. The process is ongoing and has been ongoing for years for both Poland and Hungary, and is unlikely to lead to either country actually having their voting rights suspended because that would need a unanimous vote from all EU countries. But the fact that they are still ongoing shows quite how uncomfortable the relationship is between the EU and both Poland and Hungary.

K: I feel like holding the EU presidency is one of those things that people inside the Brussels bubble talk about like it's very important, like, ‘Oh, well of course this country's presidency of the EU is coming up.’ But it can be quite hard from the outside to see why that matters. Like, how much can the country that is president for any given six months actually shape things? How big a deal is it really?

D: Yeah, that's a good question. The President of the EU Council doesn't have, like, unbridled power. And I should point out, the president isn't like Viktor Orbán – it's the country as a whole. In theory, they are meant to, quote, ‘help ensure the continuity of the EU's work in the Council’. But there are a few ways in which they can assert influence or drive the political agenda. And they can do that in part because they chair all the meetings of the Council of the EU during the six months that they are at the wheel. That is apart from the foreign affairs meetings, which are chaired by the EU's foreign affairs chief. So that might alleviate some of the concerns around Hungary's position on Russia.

K: Mmm.

D: When you hold the presidency, you also get to set the work programme for the next six months for the Council. So this is also a way in which they can steer the political agenda of the EU to their interests, at least a bit. And remember – no legislation passes the EU unless the Council of the EU, which is the body that's made up of all the government ministers from all 27 member states, agrees. So it's a very powerful body to be steering. And another thing is that the EU president country is often seen as the spokesperson – or spokes country? – for the EU during its presidency. So it'd be pretty strange for Hungary to represent these 27 countries to the rest of the world, at a time when it is in the midst of quite some conflict with the EU institutions, and with most of those 26 other countries in one way or another.

K: So what can the other 26 countries actually do about this? Is there actually any chance that Hungary, and/or Poland afterwards, could be stripped of having the right to be president for six months?

D: Well, it's not totally clear yet. The main reason why I'm talking about this story today is because the European Parliament passed a non-binding motion last week in which they questioned, quote, ‘how Hungary will be able to credibly fulfil their task in 2024 in view of its non compliance with EU law’. They went on to say Parliament could take ‘appropriate measures’ if such a solution is not found. But what are those appropriate measures? I don't really know, they don't go into details about it. But Alberto Alemmano, the law professor I mentioned earlier, wrote a good rundown of some of the options on the table. And one option was for Spain or Belgium, who both hold the presidency before Hungary – they could depotentiate the presidency for Hungary.

K: What word did you just say?!

D: I know, right?! A new piece of EU jargon. I'm so excited.

K: Depo-what?

D: Depotentiate. Or depotensiate? I don't know how to pronounce it. Do I sound pretentious. If I say depotensiate?

K: Well, it’s pretentious to say it full-stop.

D: Thank you. Anyway, I looked it up and it means ‘make it less potent’. You know, de-potentiate. It kind of makes sense.

K: Great word. ‘I'm sick of you d potentiating me.’

D:   I'm gonna start using it everywhere. But funnily enough, actually, I wrote it in my notes and my spellcheck doesn't think it's a word.

K: Not a word, Brussels once again.

D: But yeah, it means that they could basically take away some of Hungary or Poland powers. And the thing that's being floated is that Spain or Belgium could ban Hungary's presidency from hosting any events on the rule of law, which is an issue that Hungary are accused of consistently breaching, hence the Article 7 proceedings. And this would already be quite a big deal because it would be the first time an EU presidency has ever been depotentiated.

K: Sentences you didn't think you'd be saying today.

D: Right? But is that going to be enough to keep Orbán and his team in check for six months? I don't know. Some people would say it's not. So another option is to postpone Hungary's presidency, a kind of delay tactic whilst the institutions presumably tried to come up with a better solution. And if they really wanted to go for it, the Council could attempt to change the rules and say that countries who have Article 7 proceedings pending cannot hold the presidency, which would suspend both Poland and Hungary’s six months each at the wheel until those Article 7 proceedings are over. And we have no idea when that will be. For now, we don't know which route, if any, will prevail. But yeah, the European Parliament vote is a bit of a wake-up call for everyone working in the EU. And I guess I could have argued that this was a good week for the European Parliament, for putting this important issue on the agenda. And it did prompt some response from Hungary, this European Parliament motion. The Hungarian justice minister came out against the European Parliament saying it was talking complete nonsense and arguing that the Parliament had no say in a matter like this. But actually, unfortunately for the Hungarian government, it doesn't seem like it's just the European Parliament who are concerned about Hungary holding the presidency. Actually, the German minister of state for Europe and climate echoed the pPrliament’s comments and said she had doubts about the extent to which Hungary can lead a successful Council presidency, which some were quite surprised that she would be, like, so open about it. So we've got to see where this nervousness leads to. There are calls for decisive action, but as we know, the European institutions aren't always so good at making the decisive actions, as that requires everyone to be in agreement, which is very difficult with all these different countries. So I have a sneaking suspicion that this debate is going to be looming for quite some time.

K: My money is on the delay option, because that feels like the most European way forward, of like, ‘kick it down the road, let's worry about it later.’

D: Yeah, we'll see.

K: Hmm. 

GOOD WEEK - 12’37”

D: Who's had a good week?

K: I am grudgingly giving Good Week to the mysterious Dutch art collective known as KIRAC, mostly because I want to talk about this very weird story that has gripped certain parts of the European art and literary world. Have you been following this one?

D: Oh no, not this story.

K: Why do you say that?!

D: Well, because I deliberately haven't been following it because it seems so strange that I just… In a way I'm pleased you're going to explain it to me. Please go ahead.

K: I’m gonna try. Anyway, I think you can say that the Dutch artists have won the latest skirmish in their utterly bizarre ongoing war with the French celebrity novelist, Michel Houellebecq. If you don't know who he is, Houellebecq is one of the francophone world's most-read living authors. He's won every prize going and he is extremely controversial. You might have heard of a novel that he wrote a few years ago called Submission, which depicts a France that has been taken over by an Islamist party. And he regularly gets accused of spreading anti-Muslim hatred, which he denies. So that's Houellebecq. And his enemies in this story are the Dutch art collective KIRAC. And I was wondering, are they well-known over there in the Netherlands? Because I get the impression that they're pretty fringe.

D: I didn't know about them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not well-known. 

K: Okay. I mean, all I know is that they have a reputation as being pranksters, no one's really sure what they stand for. So those are the strange protagonists in this rather wild story, buckle up because it's quite a ride. And those of you listening to this podcast with children might also want to skip the next eight minutes or so, because it's also rather explicit. Apologies in advance. Anyway, the weekend before last, Houellebecq was on a visit, Dominic, from my country to yours. He was visiting Amsterdam to give a talk. And he agreed to give this talk on the strict condition that no members of KIRAC must be allowed into the event. Houellebecq hates these artists, for reasons that will become clear in a minute. So Houellebecq is preparing to give this talk, all the audience are taking their seats, and then suddenly, in bursts the leader of the art collective, a guy called Stefan Ruitenbeek, and Ruitenbeek is dressed as a giant cockroach, with little waggly legs. And he's shouting, ‘I'm here! I'm the cockroach!’ Another member of the art collective is with him,

wearing a pig's snout and showing her breasts to everyone. And the whole thing is very surreal. But it appears very clearly to be a reference to the fact that Houellebecq refers to Ruitenbeek in his latest book as a, quote, ‘cockroach with a human face’. And he referred to a female member of the KIRAC art collective as a sow, a female pig. Charming.

D: From the little I know about this story, they previously worked together, right? And then they fell out?

K: Right. So they collaborated on making a film together at the end of last year called KIRAC 27. Some reports call it a porn film, others call it a sexually explicit art film. At any rate, the plan was to film Houellebecq having sex – or at least appearing to have sex – with several young women. Houellebecq is 67 years old, he's also married. The court documents do indicate that Houellebecq’s wife was initially supportive of him making this film, FYI. Anyway, Houellebecq and the artists started making this film together, and Houellebecq gave his consent to the whole project, on the basis that you would never see his face and his genitals in the same shot. So that, plausibly, the sex scenes could be an actor, right? Like, you wouldn't know if it was really him or not. According to an interview that KIRAC gave to the New York Times, they filmed 600 hours of footage with him. Presumably not all of them showing him in bed, that would be very impressive.

D: 600 hours?!

K: Supposedly so. 

D: That's 25 days. Is that really possible?

K: Maybe?

D: I guess it is.

K: If you filmed him, like, from getting up and brushing his teeth to going to bed at night, maybe?

D: Or is this part of the prank?

K: I don't know, Dominic, I have so many questions. Anyway, they filmed all of these hours of footage with Houellebecq. Houellebecq then turned against the artists and decided that this project had been a terrible mistake. And ever since, he has been embroiled in court cases in France and the Netherlands, to try and stop the film being shown.

D: I find it very strange that he would have agreed to make this video in the first place, but what was it that made him, like, turn against the art collective and decide he didn't want to do it anymore?

K: Yeah, I mean, why he did it as a good question. I imagine that to a man of a certain age, the prospect of potentially having sex with a bunch of young women might be quite a nice one? Or maybe it was for artistic reasons, Dominic, I don't know. But why did he turn against it? The Dutch court documents say it's not actually clear where the dispute started. But Houellebecq certainly got mad over a two-minute trailer that KIRAC put out for the film in January. It's since been taken down from YouTube. But in it, you heard Ruitenbeek saying that the French writer had been planning a sex holiday to Morocco, and that his wife had spent a whole month booking prostitutes for him. But that Houellebecq now didn't want to go on the trip because he was scared of being kidnapped in Morocco by Muslim extremists.

Houellebecq and his wife were apparently appalled by the trailer, they said it was defamatory and full of lies. And they launched legal proceedings against KIRAC in the French courts to try to get the trailer taken down and the film blocked. But the French court said, ‘We can't rule on this case. This is a Dutch court thing.’ So the Houellebecqs took their case to the Netherlands, this time arguing that KIRAC had misled this very celebrated French author about the kind of film that he was going to be in, and that it was basically going to present him as a porn star, rather than having this arty ambiguity about whether any penis shots you could see were actually Houellebecq or whether it was a body double. Houellebecq started fretting, as well, that the film was going to present him as a creepy old man who takes advantage of young women. And he also argued that he was drunk at the time that he signed the contract, drunk and depressed. And he claimed that the artists knew that and took advantage of him.

D: And what did the Dutch court say?

K: Well, there've been a couple of different rulings in recent months. The thing about being drunk when he signed the contract got dismissed, because the court said they hadn't seen any medical evidence of that. But in the end, last month, a court did rule that Houellebecq can't stop the film from coming out, but he does have the right to watch the film before it's released. And if he doesn't like what he sees, he's allowed to come back to the court and apply again for a ban on it being published.

D: Which presumably he will. 

K: Which presumably he will. I mean, this is the thing – Houellebecq hates these artists so much that it’s kind of hard to see how they could feasibly make any version of this film that he would be happy with, especially one that contains any actual sex scenes in it. He feels that these artists have humiliated him and are out to get him. KIRAC say the film is evolving, and I get the impression that they might be more interested in making a film about fighting with France's most famous living writer than they are in releasing this weird arty porn film. And I don't know maybe that was their plan the whole time along. KIRAC have a

habit of making films about well known people from the art world, who then end up being really unhappy with the films.

D: KIRAC stands for Keeping It Real Art Critics, right?

K: Right, exactly. So that already suggests that they're mostly interested in criticising the art world to some extent, or making some sort of commentary, I don't know. They make these films that get uploaded onto YouTube that seem to be documentaries, but they might be more like mocumentaries. Honestly, it's quite hard to work out how seriously you're supposed to take them. This is one video where they seem to be against diversity in the art world. And you're just like, are we being trolled? Like, what's going on here? Some people do take them at face-value. One of their screenings got cancelled at an Amsterdam art school because dozens of people complained that this group makes sexist and racist films. So the jury is out on KIRAC, we will see what kind of film they end up releasing, whether it is basically a porn film appearing to star Michel Houellebecq, or more probably some kind of weird conceptual art thing that goes completely over most people's heads. But even though the courts have given Houellebecq quite a lot of control over what happens with it, I am still giving the artists Good Week for managing to crash his event dressed as a pig and a cockroach. I don't really know what the point of the story was, apart from to tell you that the art world is ridiculous. And I just figured I'd never done a Good Week, Bad Week that involves both Michel Houellebecq filming potentially regrettable sex scenes, and an artist dressed as a giant cockroach. So I thought it was time to fix that.

D: Thank you.

K: You're welcome.

D: The thing I find weird about this is that you go to their YouTube channel and they don't have that many views.

K: No!

D: Despite all this publicity. They'll be pretty disappointed with their analytics, I think, with their view count.

K: I mean, they all succeeded in getting themselves talked about by the art world. But yeah, the films themselves, they’re not very watchable.

* * *

D: I sometimes realised that it's such a privilege to be able to make this podcast and contribute in our own little way towards Europe feeling a bit more like a place where people are interested and open to stories from other countries.

K: Aww. 

D: We think it's really important that pan-European media exists. But it is really difficult to make a cross-border European podcast like this, partly because all the media markets and most funding systems are so tied to national budgets, which is why we are so grateful to all the amazing people who decide to donate to our show and keep it going with listener support. We have some new Patreon to thank this week. They are Aron, Jennifer and David. Thank you all so much.

K: Thank you so so much! You can join Aron, Jennifer and David in being amazing by sending any spare coins our way at patreon.com/europeanspodcast. You can give a little bit every month or sign up to get a year's worth of support in one go if you prefer, and many different currencies are available.

INTERVIEW WITH AGON MALIQI - 23’20”

K: You might remember that a few months ago, back in March, I gave an extremely tentative Good Week to Kosovo and Serbia, because they had kind of, sort of, agreed on a deal that was supposed to help these two neighbouring countries have a more chill, less antagonistic relationship. Just a quick reminder, Kosovo used to be the southern part of Serbia. But the vast majority of the population living in this area were and are ethnic Albanians, who very distinctly did not feel Serbian or want to be ruled by Serbia. In the 1990s when Yugoslavia was falling apart, there was a terrible war in Kosovo. And a decade later in 2008, Kosovo declared itself to be an independent country separate from Serbia. Serbia, though, never recognised this independence, and things have not stopped being tense between the two ever since. The past week, though, has seen some of the ugliest scenes in a good long while. There have been demonstrations in the north of Kosovo, where the majority of people are ethnic Serbs, not ethnic Albanians like in most of the rest of the country. And NATO peacekeepers got really caught up in these protesters, more than 30 of them were injured. Evidently, the kind-of sort-of deal to build a stronger peace that we talked about a few weeks ago – this deal has not been working, and we want to know why. I'm also really interested in Serbia right now because Aleksandar Vučić, the president, has – quite a lot like Viktor Orbán, actually – been trying to play this balancing act between the EU and Russia, and stay on okay terms with both of them in the midst of the war in Ukraine. So I want to know what's going on with that too. But as always, the Balkans are super complicated, and we need help in figuring out what's going on. So this week we rang up Agon Maliqi. He is a political analyst and activist from Pristina, currently based in Tirana.

K: We really want to dig into the deeper context of what's been happening in Kosovo, but maybe it's best if we start with the most immediate reasons behind this flare-up in recent days. It has to do with some mayoral elections in the north of the country. Can you give us a beginner's guide to what happened with these elections?

AGON: The elections were boycotted by the Serbian community in the north, so only about 3 percent – Albanians – showed up, and elected Albanian mayors in an area that is overwhelmingly Serb. The Serbian government insisted that the Serbs boycott the elections. The reason for the boycott was that, you know, this is all happening against the backdrop of this dialogue process between Kosovo and Serbia, in Brussels. Effectively, both sides are kind of fighting for leverage in these bigger negotiations. So Serbia, when Vučić’s  government wants to kind of create a sort of no man's land there, it helps his negotiating leverage while the Kosovar government doesn't want to let that happen. So, you know, the claim is that these are still legal institutions. And they were actually backed by the international community on this. The international community supported these elections, they just told the Kosovar government to kind of, not claim a high level of legitimacy –  just have these mayors work from kind of more remote and different offices until this big dialogue, this big question of what's going to happen to the north, is resolved. And in this context, the Kosovar authorities kind of thought, ‘We cannot let these people in the north kind of dictate our legal institutions, whether they should work or not.’ And took sort of practical measures to put them in place, which then sparked this reaction of this local community, but also organised gangs, I would say, from Serbia, and the KFOR NATO troops got kind of stuck in between, you know? Because they were trying to protect the Kosovar police that went in with the new mayors, into the new buildings, into the offices, from these violent protesters and mobs. And that's where they got into a skirmish and more than 30 or 40 NATO soldiers got injured. This is just one flashpoint. We've had several of these over the past year on issues of licence plates, what kind of licence plates should be used in the north. The local population there contests the legality and legitimacy of the institutions, while there's a clear pushback from the Kosovar government on that.

D: So we'll get to some of that broader context in a bit. But going back to these mayoral elections for a second, it seems like a very tricky situation to solve now. As an outsider, I can see both perspectives: someone has to govern, but it also hardly seems legitimate to say, ‘Okay, these Albanian mayors are going to run these areas after getting elected with only 3 percent of people turning up.’ Do you think there's blame on both sides for what's been happening in recent weeks?

A: I think on the Kosovar side, it was a bit hasty, the way it was managed. Because that part of the country is effectively – without NATO there, there’d be war. So they had to be a little bit more careful in coordinating, making sure that this does not create this sort of backlash. But on the other hand, there's like a clear frustration, because this is not an isolated incident. For the past decade or more, Kosovo has been struggling to kind of assert any kind of authority in that part. And the Kosovar Serbs are, in a way, double victims of both this pressure from Kosovo, but also of Belgrade, which instigates them and trying to use them as instruments of Serbia within Kosovo. And then all this anger is channelled towards Kosovar Serbs. Because this issue of the north, it's unsustainable. And Belgrade government has elements, they're running the territory, you know, organised crime elements who are kind of effectively ruling the area. So it's a bit of a no man's land in terms of rule of law. It's just that maybe this is not the best way for Koovo’s government to do this, because I fear that they're also alienating and distancing regular citizens, and not just these criminal elements that are in the north. I think a better approach would be to kind of find ways to work with voices within the Kosovar Serb community who might also have grievances with these criminal elements and with Belgrade, and address this question of legitimacy, because you cannot just go there with these mayors and 3 percent and claim that you rule the country. On the other hand, you cannot allow a situation where there is no effective institutional order. So this whole thing is a distraction, to be honest, from the bigger things, you know, using effectively the distraction of the West, which, you know, tends to forget about the Balkans. This is one of the ways in which leaders in the Balkans get Western attention.

K: We talked on the show back in March about a deal, in inverted commas, between Kosovo and Serbia that was supposed to lay the groundwork for a more normal relationship between the two countries. There were already a lot of warning signs at the time that this deal was flimsy at best. Is there actually any political will on both sides to make something like this deal really happen?

A: It's unpopular on both sides. Kosovo and Serbia are very far apart, and there's not enough incentives, if you look at it from a grander scheme of things, the whole thing while this is happening is that the region has effectively lost its EU accession perspective, or at least feels it has lost it. We had worked for about a decade under the assumption that, you know, ‘At some point, we'll all join the EU and these borders won't matter.’ The fact that it's gone so slow, or actually stopped entirely – this process of getting the Balkans inside the EU – has gotten people to think differently, it's changed incentives. And you know, people are thinking of alternative scenarios. So again, even this agreement relies on that assumption both countries want to join the EU, or can join the EU. Kosovo is unrecognised by five EU members. And that, you know, they will just behave accordingly. And this is like the Western condition: you either behave and you implement these agreements, or you will not join the EU. But what happens to a context where one of the countries does not really want to, which is Serbia, and one can’t, which is Kosovo? I would say the problem is that neither side wants to really be seen as the key problem maker. So it's always kind of like a bait, a game of, you know, one side trying to bait the other into making a mistake. Serbia is in a very delicate position, with Vučić effectively running out of steam with all his popularity and power, you know, huge domestic dissatisfaction. And of course, stirring things up in Kosovo is very, very convenient, because it kind of diffuses a little bit of the pressure that's coming towards his government. I think Kosovo is frustrated, because this is holding it back. It really wants to move forward in NATO accession, EU accession. But it can't, because Serbia has some sort of effective veto power, still, over it. And all of his frustration is kind of being channelled in the north.

D: The US and EU have been very involved in trying to find a way forward for Kosovo out of this situation. To what extent have these Western powers actually been helpful?

A: You know, there is no contradiction between what they want and what Kosovo wants ultimately. They want to Kosovo fully recognised, but they want to do this through this process of the dialogue in Brussels, through which they don't alienate Serbia entirely. The problem is that that accommodation of Serbia over the last decade has been costly. And you see throughout the Balkans dissatisfaction, not just in Kosovo –  inMontenegro and Bosnia, wherever Serbia has influence or tries to influence or assert its hegemony. It's seen in the neighbourhood as a little bit of a mini Russia, in the way in which it treats neighbouring states. So the West has been trying to accommodate Serbia with the idea that without Serbia, the region cannot entirely move forward. So this is where now the trick is, you know, everybody has been expecting this kind of Western turn in Serbia, which is not happening. So this is where we are now. A lot of people are calling for a revisit of the Western policy in the sense of, you know, to what extent do you accommodate Vučić? So prioritising this security thing has been essential for the West, and that has helped Vučić, but at the cost of the regional countries, and it's now the question of how sustainable this Western policy is, at this point.

K: If we look beyond who's in charge right now, in Serbia and Kosovo, how much hope do you have that things will get better in the years to come? Do you see any glimmers of hope? 

A: Well, I keep saying this joke. When the pessimist said, ‘It can't get any worse than this’, and the optimist said, ‘Oh yes, it can.’ So I think it can be worse. If you look at Ukraine, and you know, further to the east, things are much more fragile. We're at least surrounded by NATO and EU. There's a bit more resilience, and the memory of the war is still fresher. So I don't think there'll be a full-scale war or anything like that. But I do worry about the fact that the narratives in both countries are hardening rather than suffering. And we still have the grievances, the younger generations have inherited the grievances of the past, while the problems have not been fully solved. So it's very toxic. You know, we used to have this idea that okay, we're moving towards Europe, but that is no longer an attractive narrative. Nobody's really rallying in the squares with European flags or things like that, and societies are getting more authoritarian, especially Serbia. The ethnic distance, especially among Albanians and Serbs, is extremely high, and getting worse I would say, compared to the other parts of the former Yugoslavia where at least there was a linguistic similarity so they can at least understand one another, follow each other's media and humanise one another. Albanians and Serbs do not communicate at all – only, you know, in English on social media and then only in a polarising way. So it's hard to see space from a social perspective, from sort of the grassroots kind of movement that kind of builds peace. That's why I'm focusing on leadership because they're very much elite-driven societies, and societies where leaders really love to use this conflict for domestic power. If you're failing domestically, if your economy is not doing good, if you're suddenly getting unpopular: inflaming these tensions is the best thing possible for you politically. And this is a, you know, very easy thing to pull in the Balkans.

K: Agon is a great person to follow on Twitter if you, like us, are on a quest to better understand what's happening in the Balkans. You can find him @agonmaliqi, the link is in the show notes.

ISOLATION INSPIRATION - 35’46”

D: What have you been enjoying this week culturally?

K: It's been very hot, so I haven't had time to consume any culture, I have been too busy lying in a darkened room. So I hope you'll forgive me for borrowing my isolation inspiration pick this week from a listener in Lisbon, who wrote in to recommend the Portuguese Netflix series Turn of the Tide, or Rabo di Peixe to give its Portuguese name. This show has already topped the Netflix charts for the most-watched series in more than 30 countries already, which is a pretty good sign I think. And it's a thriller series set in the Azores, which is the Portuguese archipelago way out in the Atlantic, 1,500 kilometres from the Portuguese mainland. And the show follows what happens when a boat full of cocaine sinks off the coast of one of the islands,and this young group of friends come across it and have to decide what to do about it. I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that the mafia soon come looking for their drugs and all hell breaks loose. The series is very loosely based on a true story. A huge stash of drugs really did wash up in this village in the Azores called Rabo di Peixe back in 2001. The true story has, of course, been heavily edited to bring the drama. But from the trailer it looks like a really gripping and entertaining watch. Our listener summarises it as having ‘a beautiful setting, mafia, cocaine, pink hair, raw fish and a very Portuguese vibe’. They also mentioned that the Azores are really interesting culturally because they're so far out in the Atlantic that they have quite a lot of links to the US which show up in local culture. It feels very, very far from the Portuguese mainland. So a great recommendation which I'm going to binge on this week.

D: I'm going to watch it too. This is the one that is called Turn of the Tide, right, in English?

K: Turn of the Tide, yes. And generally I also wanted to really encourage people to send in things that they've been enjoying reading and watching from around Europe. We'd love to feature them on the show.

D: It's true. There's only so much Netflix we can watch.

K: I finished Netflix. Well apart from this, I’m going to watch it this week. What have you been enjoying this week?

D: Well, if you listened to our episode a few weeks ago, you will have heard an advert from the Forum on European Culture, which happened last weekend. And I went to one of their events, The State of European literature.

K: How was it?

D: There was a great keynote speech by Fatma Aydemir, one of Germany's most influential writers today. She explored what it was like to have your text interpreted so differently by everyone who reads it, and dug into the tricky question she always gets asked and doesn't know quite how to answer: ‘Who do you write for?’ And I was particularly fascinated by her discussion around the expectations that are placed on writers like her who are seen as being part of a diaspora. She feels there is an unreasonable expectation that you are writing as a representative of that diaspora. And even the every misstep or form of moral reprehensibility that she gives her characters is taken as a criticism on her own community, which… I found it such an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought about much before. So I would say, all go and read her two books immediately, but they're not translated in English yet. So go read them if you read in German or Dutch, they are apparently really brilliant. They were both big hits in Germany.

K: Nice. 

D: And before I go, one other quick remark of some culture that impressed me this week. I was cycling past one of the big central squares of Amsterdam the other night after performing, and in front of the big main city theatre, in Leidseplein, there was a huge semi-destroyed tank. So I stopped to take a look. It's quite a striking thing to be placed in the middle of Amsterdam. And it turns out it was placed there by the Forum on European Culture and De Balie, and it is a Russian tank that was destroyed by Ukrainian forces in March 2022. I found it very confronting to see this machine of war up close in the middle of my city, and confronting I think in an unnecessary way. For those of us who don't live so close to Ukraine it's hard to imagine what it's been like there over the last year or so. And I found it moving and spooky and kind of threatening to see the remains of this vehicle that Russia had used to try to oppress the Ukrainian people. So a very effective intervention, I thought, and it's kind of culture. I think it counts as culture, right?

K: Yeah, for sure.

D: I'll post some photos of the tank that I took on our Instagram, @europeanspodcast.

HAPPY ENDING - 40’36”

D: For my happy ending this week, I want to cheer you all up by talking about enhanced rock weathering.

K: This is the new potentiating. Can't wait for this one.

D: Yes, more jargon for you. Enhanced rock weathering. It's going to make you all very happy, I promise, because a study recently showed there was potential for the powdery flour-like stuff that's produced by rocks grinding under Greenland's glaciers to capture huge amounts of carbon dioxide.

K: Ooh.

D: It's been known for a very long time that the natural weathering of rocks creates a powder which has for millennia helped with the Earth's natural carbon cycle. In very basic terms, the powder that occurs from the weathering of rocks helps with soil fertility, among other things, and then captures CO2, helping limit the heating of the climate. And there's long been a belief that this natural process could be enhanced with some human intervention. And now we have proof that that is possible. In the May edition of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, some scientists showed that this human intervention can indeed work, as they took this rock powder or rock flour and spread it on farmland in Denmark, including farmland that was growing barley for Carlsberg beer. And the experiment was successful. Carbon dioxide was trapped. And one of the most exciting things about this research is that there is almost unlimited supply of this rock flour from the Greenland glaciers. One of the scientists who was behind this research said to The Guardian that you could in theory cover all of the world's agriculture with this rock flour.

K: Wow.

D: The scientists think that if all of Denmark's agricultural fields were covered in rock flour, they would capture 27 million tonnes of CO2, which is about as much as the total yearly CO2 emissions for Denmark. The rock flour also makes the land more fertile, and there is research that it can increase yields, so it's really exciting news and it's really nice for once the news from Greenland’s glaciers to be good news instead of sad news about them melting.

K: You're so right, I'm now super into – what was the process called?

D: Enhanced rock weathering.

K: Enhanced rock weathering! 

D: Are you gonna get it tattooed on your arm?

K: I might just do that.

* * *

K: We are away next week, because I am taking a much-needed holiday, listeners. I am heading to Naples and Sicily to eat continuously for seven days.

D: I’m so jealous!

K: I’m very excited. If you don't want to be jealous of my pizza, you should probably stay away from our Instagram next week because I'm planning on documenting all of the delicious things before they go into my mouth. @europeanspodcast is the account to avoid, or you might actually want to subscribe to it if you like pictures of pizza. We're also on Twitter @europeanspod.

D: This week's show was produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak. Thank you both. I'm sadly not going to be eating any Neapolitan pizza next week, so I'm just going to be sitting here eating Dutch cuisine, which is nothing like as exciting. I'm just so jealous.

K: Oh, sucks to be you. We'll be back in two weeks, listeners, multiple kilograms heavier in my case. We will see you then.

D: здраво!

K: Mirupafshim!