Complex, Changeable, or Just Complicated: Understanding EU Actorness Through the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue

Throughout the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue the European Union (EU) has taken a leading role and, in exchange, has been variously supported or criticized for its relatively light touch and the EU’s mandated position as neutral negotiator. With only 22 EU member states (EUMS) recognizing the independence of Kosovo, the EU has had to walk a fine line to encourage the ‘normalization of relations’ between Belgrade and Kosovo without taking a position on what said normalization would look like. While much has been written on the EU’s level of actorness in the case, both as an external actor in negotiations and through its capacity building operations in Kosovo (Barcani 2019; Noutcheva 2020), there has not yet been a relational study of the EU’s underlying capacity to act in this area. Thus, this represents a prime case study to both refine relational understandings of EU actorness (Bremberg and Borg 2020), as it has been so constrained due to interlocking relations of the EU and EUMS. In its findings, this paper corroborates results from non-relational approaches and finds that adopting a relational approach provides a more robust explanation for the EU’s challenges in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue.