№ 4 - 2007
Chimiris Ye.S.
The Policy of the European Union in International Conflicts: With the Attempted Settlement of the Relations between Serbia and Montenegro as Example

The article presents an attempt to consider the policy of “Europeanization” pursued by the European Union towards the countries of the “European periphery” and to evaluate its effectiveness in dealing with conflicts. The example chosen is the conflict between Serbia and Montenegro which ended in secession of Montenegro in 2006. On considering the experience of federalism, as well as the economic and political relations between the countries, the author comes to the conclusion that the model of rational choice, that was assumed as the basis of the “Europeanization” policy, is not the most fortunate for dealing with conflicts of the type. The rational choice model approaches the participants of the conflict as actors with similar rationality, while factors of culture, identity etc. are not taken into account. So the EU used such methods of dealing with the conflict, that did not take into consideration the real goals and values of the parties. Moreover, the author points out that the EU may be regarded as one of the parties in the conflict, as it pursued its own goals, for example, keeping stability in the region.