Kosovo - What is to be done? (by the EU)

Lenin's famous question, or perhaps challenge, now has immediate relevance to the EU.

No-one can be quite sure what is going to happen. As someone once said "forecasting is difficult, particularly about the future".

But now that the elections are over, reconfirming the intention of Kosovar Albanians to declare independence from Serbia, it is far from speculative to predict the following sequence of events.

1. No agreement on the future status of Kosovo is reached by December 10th
2. Shortly afterwards the Kosovar administration declares independence
3. The US recognises Kosovo's independence
4. Serbia refuses to accept the declaration
5. Russia backs Serbia's stance, so the UN is paralysed
6. The EU declares that there is "grave crisis" and that "something must be done"

But, to come back to Lenin, what is to be done?

None of this, if it happens, will come as a surprise, so why do we need to ask the question? We should know already what the EU stance will be, particularly because the EU stance can influence the outcome.

Of course Kosovo is a difficult issue, but foreign and security policy is often about difficult decisions and Kosovo is currently part of Serbia, with whom the EU has now signed a Stability and Association Agreement (the first step to EU membership). So this is no longer in the EU's back yard but inside the building.

Failure to establish a clear and sustainable position on the way forward, believed because it is backed by the will to act, will again underline the need for a different approach to EU Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The current approach is plainly ill suited to crises and will not be fixed by a move closer to the Community method in the Treaty of Lisbon.

Defence and security are the first duty of a government - and an obsession with a single model of achieving outcomes which it promotes is the main reason for rejecting the Treaty.