Falling short of commitments: How Western Balkan Governments fight organised crime

Fight against organised crime has been, at least at least according to officials’ statements, on top of the agendas of Western Balkan governments for almost a decade now. This commitment was often just a declaratory one, brought on by external actors, such as the EU through the accession process which encompasses the WB six and puts  emphasis on the need to more effectively tackle the issue of organised crime.

While the enlargement perspective was still considered credible and alive, the governments had an incentive to invest efforts in dismantling organised criminal networks that traditionally have been organised better than the governments themselves. With the onset of the so-called enlargement fatigue and no certain European future for the WB six, these incentives disappeared. As a result, and coupled with the absence of a genuine, organic drive to deal with organise crime within the WB countries, citizens’ hopes of living in crime-free societies started disappearing as well. This research report investigates a part of the above described problem. Namely, it attempts to determine why the governments are falling short of their commitments relating to organised crime.

 The question that needs to be addressed first is how anyone can even assess the effectiveness of the fight against organised crime in the WB6. While it is a general understanding that the results leave much to be desired, there is a also gap in both administrative and survey-based statistical data available to the public that makes it difficult to establish how effective state responses against organised crime truly are. This leaves room for competing narratives about the achieved results, and this is why it is possible for one WB government to claim that it is leading a highly successful war on mafia while, at the same time, there are credible reports and leading experts claiming that the same government is deeply criminalised and that its war on mafia is nothing but a media stunt. 

Opinions expressed in the publication are sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Netherlands Embassy in Belgrade, Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.