By Igor Pellicciari – July 19, 2020 – Source: Formiche. Analysis, comments, and scenarios

Beyond the beautiful emotions that seeing Sergio Mattarella and Borut Pahor holding hands has aroused, the historic meeting must be an occasion for reflection on the relations between Italy and the Balkans, beyond the mistrust and ghosts of the past. The analysis by Igor Pellicciari, professor of History of International Relations at the University of Urbino and Luiss Guido Carli. 

The ceremony in Basovizza of the Italian president together with the Slovenian one was politically important but also touching for those who lived halfway between the Italian and the Balkan space.

Among them is the undersigned, born in the then Yugoslavia, who grew up bilingual in Italian and Croatian, at ease in both cultures of family reference.

Having asked himself several times about the reason for the peaceful coexistence of two halves so different and with a history of difficult relationships – he came to the conclusion that this is due to the fact that he comes from territorial realities that do not border each other.

This avoided a direct and frontal confrontation between the two halves and the painful embarrassment of having to necessarily take one side, denying the other.

Or – worse – exclude both in an attempt to place oneself in a comfortable position of equidistance, often passed off as impartiality.

Incidentally, “not taking sides” a priori is an essential condition for an objective analysis but it should not be confused with hiding behind the comfortable argument of never expressing a judgment on who is (more) right or wrong.

Beyond the beautiful emotions it aroused to see Sergio Mattarella and Borut Pahor hand in hand beyond the divisions and mistrust of the past, it is worth reflecting on the state of relations between Italy and the Balkans, particularly after the end of Yugoslavia.

Above all, to clear the field of recurrent Slavic political fears of a real hypothesis of a return of Italian territorial revanchism, but also to understand why they persist east of Trieste.

On the Croatian and Slovenian sides, the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance or similar events (inaugurations of monuments, conferences, etc.) is often followed with attention mixed with concern, with immediate resonance in the respective politics, media and academia.

The provocations of small Italian minorities that accompany these events are given great visibility, while statements by marginal regional politicians are relaunched with great emphasis in the Slavic media, as if they were a direct expression of policy making in Rome.

After the entry of Slovenia (2004) and Croatia (2013) into the EU, which took place with the fundamental Italian approval , the controversies have diminished, attributable to internal political motivations which have left no significant diplomatic aftermath nor tensions in the common popular feeling.

In fact, the central historical fact is that political and institutional relations between Italy and all the new Republics of the Western Balkans have improved in recent decades.

In the last 25 years, it is difficult to find any news of serious diplomatic incidents between Italy and Slovenia or Croatia (the two countries that inherited the Osimo agreements), not to mention Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and, more recently, Kosovo.

Italy has spoken to the Balkans through its center aiming to establish itself as a commercial power, without political ambitions of which any territorial claims would be the main indicator.

Familiarity and knowledge of the Slavic context in Italy remained isolated to its northeastern territories and was not part of the necessary technical background of the Deep State of the high civil service dominant in Rome, moreover largely populated by personnel from Italian territories foreign to and uninterested in the Slavic world.

Italian attention has been directed to new markets on its doorstep, perceived as easy terrain for penetration, which has been followed by the usual network of entrepreneurship in a scattered order, with individual monads active in a jealously autonomous manner and with occasional political-institutional back-ups and on a clientelistic basis.

Furthermore, since the Mani Pulite season and the birth of the Second Republic, international issues have taken a back seat in the Italian political system to the full advantage of domestic political events.

In such a context, there was no real interest in Rome to place the revision of the Treaties of Osimo at the centre of the debate, particularly where they refer to territorial division.

The topic has been missing from the main Italian media – nor have there been any significant political actors who have brought it forward, a circumstance experienced with frustration by the Italian communities of exiles, who feel abandoned in their demands which, incidentally, now only concern the aspect of compensation.

For most Italians today the Balkans are a summer holiday destination, visited with amazement mixed with ignorance of history and traditions and popular sentiment remains distant from the Istrian question.

Even the introduction of the Day of Remembrance itself was a more belated operation and decided from above; an embarrassing run for institutional shelter for the ideological silence of the previous decades, which found the public opinion uninformed and distracted, too long not sensitized on the issue.

On the Balkan side, it must be said that in all the new post-Yugoslav Republics, Italy has enjoyed a widespread, grassroots, "depoliticized" admiration for the Italian lifestyle and Made in Italy products , even though the issue of unresolved issues in Italian-Slovenian and Italian-Croatian relations remains a more feared political issue in Ljubljana and Zagreb than in Rome.

The point is that the main reason for this Slavic distrust towards Italians is to be found in the new geopolitical balances of the area rather than in the troubled history of Italian-Balkan relations.

With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Italy has unwittingly become a much more cumbersome neighbor both in terms of its size and its commercial and cultural potential, as well as the asymmetrical arrangement of minorities in the three countries (Italian minorities in Slovenia and Croatia are more numerous than Croatian and Slovenian minorities in Italy).

In the new global dis-order, with areas of influence developing along new vectors (see the impact of dual citizenship between neighboring states) – the risk for countries of smaller size and economies is to be de facto influenced by their larger neighbors, to the point of affecting their sovereignty.

This is a recurring situation especially in Eastern Europe, where new borders were born from post-war and/or post-Soviet disintegrations.

It is within this geopolitical dynamic, rather than within the context of an unlikely return of territorial revanchist ambitions, that we should place the growing Italian presence (note, not necessarily of Italy ) in the Balkans. This presence can at times be overwhelming and invasive, even in the absence of a real political strategy from Rome in this regard.

Like an elephant that, in turning around, runs the risk, even without wanting to, of crushing someone smaller nearby.

 

Igor Pellicciari is a tenured professor of History of International Relations at the University of Urbino; ​​he teaches at LUISS G. Carli (Rome) and MGIMO University (Moscow). Senior EU expert on international technical assistance programs to countries in transition. He collaborates with several national governments for the creation of state aid and cooperation agencies. He is Ambassador of the Republic of San Marino to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Of Bosnian-Croatian origin, he lives in Moscow. Favorite motto: “Lento viene el futuro, pero viene”. Favorite book: “The Kreutzer Sonata” by Leo Tolstoy (nevertheless, he has a wife and four children). Political orientation: irrelevant (he always votes for parties that reach a few decimal points).