JCMS 2020 pp. 1–16 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.

13056

Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European

Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia
KRENAR GASHI
Department of Political Science, Ghent University, Ghent

Abstract
This article offers a poststructuralist analysis of the role of the European Union (EU) in the dia-
logue between Kosovo and Serbia by employing the works of Jean Baudrillard. Drawing from
the content and discourse analysis of texts – policy documents, speeches, statements – as well
as 14 interviews conducted in Kosovo, Serbia and the EU, the article is framed to explore how
the EU assert power in this dialogue. It suggests that the EU simulates its power, firstly by denying
its own role in the process and secondly by exaggerating the European future for Kosovo and
Serbia. Observing how the dialogue produced ambiguities in which meanings are relativized,
the article suggests that Baudrillard’s framework can be useful in understanding and
problematizing certain aspects of the nature of EU’s power and its effects.

Keywords: European Union; EU external action; power; Kosovo; Serbia; Baudrillard

Introduction
The dialogue on ‘normalization of relations’ between Kosovo and Serbia has been high
on the agenda of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European
Union (EU). Since 2011, when the representatives of the two countries met for the first
time, the dialogue has gone through different dynamics and produced dozens of ambigu-
ous agreements, most of which have been interpreted differently by the negotiating parties
(Koeth, 2013; Bieber, 2015; Gashi et al., 2017). As of 2013, the so-called ‘high-level’ di-
alogue between heads of states and governments is being personally facilitated by the
High Representative/Vice President of the Commission (HR/VP). Despite this prioritiza-
tion by the EU, the dialogue has produced multiple interpretations with few outcomes, or
to put it simply, much more words than deeds.
This article explores and problematizes the discursive realm of the dialogue between
Kosovo and Serbia. Starting from discursive ambiguities that characterize the reached
agreements, the article is framed so as to shed light on the question of how the EU asserts
power in this dialogue. Building on the 2016 Special Issue of this journal, the article aims
to present an alternative voice in a ‘polyphonic engagement’ to study the EU in world pol-
itics. Indeed, a clear majority of research on the EU is focused on exploring the
inter-institutional setting in which the EU produces its policies for external actions. As
Ian Manners and Whitman (2016) rightly argue, the discipline of EU studies needs ap-
proaches that are able to make sense of the integration project, particularly through an un-
derstanding of power and power relations, which is often ignored in mainstream accounts.
By employing the work of Jean Baudrillard, particularly Baudrillard’s view of power,
this article aims to construct an alternative account – a ‘dissident voice’ – and to add value
to the mainstream frameworks through which the role of the EU in Kosovo and Serbia is

© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
2 Krenar Gashi

analyzed. Relations between Kosovo and Serbia represent an ideal case to study the
power of the EU, given that both countries have put European integration as their prime
foreign policy goal; in the context of enlargement, the EU is considered to be in a unique
power position vis-à-vis the countries that aspire to EU membership. Baudrillard’s con-
cepts of simulation and hyperreality provide a powerful heuristic tool to look beyond am-
biguous political discourses and to problematize their effects.
This article is based on discourse analysis of more than 100 texts – speeches, press re-
leases, statements and press clippings – produced by the EU as well as Kosovo and
Serbia. The corpus of text was compiled by accessing virtually every official document
related to the Brussels dialogue available on the official websites, as well as some key me-
dia reports.1 Taking into account Baudrillard’s approach, the analysis does not take into
account only what is present in the discourse but also what is absent. I also conducted
14 semi-structured interviews with politicians in Kosovo, Serbia and in the EU to enrich
this analysis.2
The article begins with a critical review of current literature on the role of the EU in the
relations between Kosovo and Serbia, before introducing the theoretical framework based
on the work of Jean Baudrillard. Then, I explore the discourse of the EU-led dialogue be-
tween Kosovo and Serbia through Baudrillard’s lenses, where I suggest that ambiguities,
which characterize the dialogue, are a manifestation of the EU’s simulated power. In ex-
ploring how the EU asserts power in this dialogue, I look at how the EU downplays its
role in the discourse and how this serves as an alibi to avoid any responsibility for the di-
alogue as well as for any of its outcomes, an issue which is ignored in all previous re-
search conducted on this topic. I problematize how through a process of implied
‘othering’ of Kosovo and Serbia combined with discursive exaggerations of their ‘Euro-
pean future’, the EU projects its role not only as legitimate but also as necessary. Such a
simulation, I argue, has a twofold effect for the EU. Externally, it enables the EU to pro-
ject power in international affairs and to assert such power against Kosovo and Serbia. In-
ternally, it enables the projection of a collective EU position, which, when it comes to the
case of Kosovo and Serbia, the Union lacks. By conceptualizing the EU as what
Baudrillard calls ‘simulated power’ the article does not seek to modulate the understand-
ing of the EU’s power in the world politics, but rather to explore an alternative way of
understanding such power and its effects.

1. The Story of the Dialogue: What Do we ‘Know’ So Far?

The dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia was initiated in 2010 by a UN General Assem-
bly Resolution, sponsored by Serbia and all the EU Member States. The Resolution reads
that the Assembly ‘welcomes the readiness of the European Union to facilitate a process
of dialogue between the parties; the process of dialogue in itself would be a factor for
peace, security and stability in the region, and that dialogue would be to promote cooper-
ation, achieve progress on the path to the European Union and improve the lives of the
1
After searching through more than 300 texts online that referred to the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, a total of 117
texts has been selected for this this research based on their relevance. The texts have been stored in an electronic spreadsheet
and were analyzed using the main tools of Critical Discourse Analysis, such as framing of issues and actors, discursive
strategies.
2
All interviews were conducted by the author, in person, in three languages – Albanian, English and Serbian.

© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 3

people’ (UNGA, 2010). In the view of the EU, the dialogue is officially called ‘the dia-
logue on normalisation of relations between Belgrade and Pristina’ and its aim is to ‘pro-
mote cooperation between the two sides, help them achieve progress on the path to
Europe and improve the lives of the people’ (CFSP, 2015).
In April 2013, Prime Ministers of Kosovo and Serbia reached the ‘First Agreement of
Principles Governing the Normalisation of Relations’, usually referred to as the Brussels
Agreement. Such a political agreement was deemed necessary after the parties had diffi-
culties in implementing the so-called technical agreements on freedom of movement, civil
registry books, cadastral records, customs stamp, mutual acceptance of education di-
plomas, integrated border management, regional representation, telecommunications
and energy, which were reached between 2011 and 2013.
The EU considers the dialogue and the Brussels Agreement to be ‘ground-breaking’
and ‘historic’ (Barroso, 2013; Van Rompuy, 2013). Early commentators, on the other
hand, have highlighted quite a few problems associated with the process of the dia-
logue and its outcomes. Criticism was focused on the lack of transparency (Hop-
kins, 2014) and especially on ambiguities which characterize the agreements
(Bieber, 2015; Gashi et al., 2017). It has been argued that the EU has an ‘awkward’
relationship with Kosovo given that five of its Member States – Cyprus, Greece,
Romania, Spain and Slovakia – do not recognize its independence (Koeth, 2010). This
‘awkwardness’ as well as the virtually non-existent communication between govern-
ments in Pristina and Belgrade has created a situation where if the EU was to make
Kosovo and Serbia agree on anything, it would have to be a highly ambiguous text
(Ernst, 2014). Ambiguities, in this way, could be considered as a technique con-
sciously used by the EU; in effect a strategy in mediating between the parties
(Bergmann and Niemann, 2015). And while such a strategy of ambiguities has
‘yielded concrete results’ starting with the Brussels Agreement, it is also seen as prob-
lematic as it represents a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach (Bieber, 2015).
Furthermore, ambiguities have led to parties interpreting the agreements in their
own, different – if not opposing – ways, which eventually led to the stagnation of
the process and partial implementation of what has been agreed (Hopkins, 2015). More
recent research argues that the lack of implementation of the reached agreements stems
precisely from the EU’s inappropriate strategy and especially from the parties’ doubts
about the goals and benefits of the dialogue (Beysoylu, 2018). The success of the di-
alogue as an external action of the EU is, therefore, at least partially contested.
The prioritization of the dialogue by the EU is also reflected in the research commu-
nity. In this journal, Gëzim Visoka and John Doyle (2015) explored the dialogue through
the framework of neo-functionalism and argue that ambiguities show the EU’s
neo-functional approach in resolving disputes by generating a necessity of a ‘spill-over’
which has allowed the EU to steer parties from technical towards more political and sen-
sitive issues. Julian Bergmann and Arne Niemann (2015) argue that EU’s success in the
dialogue is owed to the leverage it had towards Kosovo and Serbia as well as a strategy of
‘manipulation and formulation’ which is enabled through ambiguities. Economides and
Ker-Lindsay (2015, p. 1039), look at Europeanization of Serbia and establish that while
the Brussels dialogue led to a ‘profound change’ in Serbia’s attitudes towards Kosovo,
‘it is highly questionable’ whether a link between the EU’s approach and the attitudinal
change can be established.
© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
4 Krenar Gashi

In spite of studying a ‘moving target’, all these works have generated substantial
knowledge on both the EU as well as the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. The prob-
lem with these accounts, however, is that they do not engage sufficiently in elaborating
power and thus may fall short in exploring power dimensions of the dialogue. Bergmann
and Niemann (2015), for instance, consider the EU to possess the power of a mediator in
the dialogue, which is neither explained nor elaborated. Furthermore, they do not address
the fact that the EU avoids using the term ‘mediator’ for its role in the dialogue. For
Visoka and Doyle, the role of the EU is portrayed as that of a neo-functional peacemaker,
which ‘does not take power away from local actors but it helps redefine it in a different
and mutually acceptable manner’ (Visoka and Doyle, 2015, p. 13). They assume here that
‘local actors are the main parties that decide on the form and substance of agreements and
implementation’ (Visoka and Doyle, 2015, p. 13). This is, however, questioned by
Bergmann and Niemann who argue that the EU has manipulated the parties towards
reaching the agreements (Bergmann and Niemann, 2015). Such assumption of local own-
ership will be further questioned in this article, in light of interviews conducted with pol-
iticians in Kosovo and Serbia.

2. Baudrillard, Simulated Power and the ‘Hyperreal’ of Europe

Jean Baudrillard is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.
Like his contemporaries Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and
Michel Foucault, Baudrillard’s work generally questions whether we imbue meanings
to things – events, actors, issues – though they do not necessarily possess these meanings.
Broadly speaking, poststructuralist writers like Baudrillard enable us to ‘unpack’ some of
the most commonly accepted concepts, and, by unpacking and problematizing such con-
cepts, shed light on certain unseen and unelaborated aspects of the social world. Power in
the poststructuralist view is not something that actors can possess; power is rather rela-
tional and all actors, the context in which they are embedded and the relationship between
them, are subjects of power (Foucault, 1980). It is perhaps best described in one of Michel
Foucault’s most cited sentences ‘power is everywhere’ – diffused and embodied in the
discourse (Foucault, 1995). Unlike Foucault, however, Baudrillard believed that dis-
course does not reveal power but rather an absence of power. In a seminal essay entitled
‘Forget Foucault’ Baudrillard asks whether ‘Foucault spoke so well to us of power …
only because power is dead?’ (Baudrillard, 2007). For Baudrillard, power does not exist
to begin with, thus it can only be simulated.
Baudrillard’s understanding of power is best described in Symbolic Exchange and
Death (1993, p. 40) where he unpacks the Hegelian dialectics between the master and
the slave. What if the ultimate power of the master, asks Baudrillard, is not the power
to take the slave’s life as it is generally understood, but precisely the opposite, that is
the power to let the slave live (Baudrillard, 1993). This is the power that the slave can nei-
ther oppose nor reject, whilst at the same time it is the power that the master does not have
but can only simulate. Such simulation, however, produces real power effects such as the
master–slave power relations through the institution of slavery. By denying their own
power, the master is de-facto constructing power relations through which power is
asserted. In Simulacra and Simulations (1994), Baudrillard builds further on this elabora-
tion, describing the denial of power as the strategy of the simulated power. Simulations
© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 5

should not be understood as ‘less real’ and consequently simulated power should not be
understood as fake power, because, as Baudrillard argues, simulations produce real ef-
fects (Baudrillard, 1994). Indeed, according to Baudrillard, it is precisely due to such real
effects that we maintain a traditional view of power as something which actors can have.
Baudrillard’s view of power here is not different from his view of social reality as a
reality taken over by simulations, a ‘hyperreal’ in which it has become impossible to dis-
tinguish between the ‘real’ and the ‘simulated’. The hyperreal is characterized by the im-
possibility of determination, by a discourse ‘that is no longer simply ambiguous, as
political discourses can be, but that conveys the impossibility of a determined position
of power, the impossibility of a determined discursive position’ (Baudrillard, 1994). In
Baudrillard’s hyperreal, ‘all the powers, all the institutions speak of themselves through
denial’, which is not only a strategy of simulation but also a strategy of legitimization,
whereby power assertion is accepted as legitimate. In his own words, ‘power can stage
its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy’ (Baudrillard, 1994).
Although Baudrillard’s writings have inspired many researchers, his work is less used
in European studies. Baudrillard saw the EU as a kind of substitution for ‘the real’ idea of
Europe that it promotes, a creation of the idea of Europe ‘in virtual terms’, where the ac-
tions of supranational institutions represent the virtual, the hyperreal of Europe, whilst the
idea of Europe that is promoted by the same institutions ‘does not exist’ (Baudrillard in
Sassatelli, 2002). In a way, the EU could be seen as an exemplar of Baudrillard’s depic-
tion of power.
Aidan Hehir uses Baudrillard’s hyperreality to look how in the process of
state-building the West has been seeking to create political communities which mirror
an idealized version of the Western state (Hehir, 2011). In spite of maintaining a Foucaul-
dian understanding of power, Hehir uses Baudrillard’s work to capture how ‘failed states’
have much to do with the West’s attempt to replicate a state which does not exist to begin
with (Hehir, 2011). Observing the self-denial of power by the EU in Bosnia and
Herzegovina and in Kosovo, David Chandler (2008) aptly employs Baudrillard to assert
that the EU’s domination in the Balkans was manifested to be more ad-hoc and more ar-
bitrary. Although Chandler (2008) goes to argue that the EU simulates power which is
otherwise located in the Member States, an argument that breaks away from Baudrillard’s
logic and understanding of power as simulation, his employment of concepts of simula-
tion and hyperreality in observing how the EU constructs such simulation through denial
and through discursive exaggerations is accurate and serves as a point of departure of my
intervention. In this article, I go one step further and use Baudrillard’s concepts of simu-
lation and hyperreality to explore discourses and problematize the role of the EU in the
dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, whilst maintaining Baudrillard’s view of power
as simulation, as something that does not exist to begin with.

3. Ambiguities: Manifestations of Simulation

The first observation when looking at the discursive realm of the EU-facilitated dialogue
between Kosovo and Serbia is that the aim, enshrined in the very name – normalization of
relations – triggers different interpretations and generates opposing meanings in the two
countries. For politicians in Serbia, be that in the government or opposition, ‘normaliza-
tion of relations’ means enabling ‘people to live together’ that is to do business, trade, and
© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
6 Krenar Gashi

‘normal’ day to day activities (Interviews 1, 2 and 3). In their discourse, they intensify the
post-sovereign and post-national discursive elements that the EU promotes, but only as an
attempt to hide the meaning of such discourse, which reveals itself when asking politi-
cally sensitive questions such as those relating to Kosovo’s statehood and sovereignty.
Only then does the discourse become that of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo (Inter-
views 1 and 2, 2016). Thus, ‘normal’ in Serbia means ‘enabling the state of Serbia to take
care of its own people’ (Interview 1, 2016):
The dialogue cannot and should not be about high-level politics. It should be about the
people, common people. Hence, we expect that the dialogue will result in enabling
Serbia to executive its rightful authority over the territory of our southern province of Ko-
sovo and Metohija.

In the discourse of Kosovo politicians, on the other hand, the aim of the dialogue meets
exactly the opposite interpretation: it is characterized by notions of sovereignty and state-
hood, whereas normalization of relations is ultimately understood as the point where Ko-
sovo and Serbia would achieve mutual recognition and engage in normal diplomatic
inter-state relations (Interviews 8, 9 and 10, 2016):
We expect the dialogue to conclude with Serbia recognising Kosovo as an independent
and a sovereign state. This would resolve the very last dispute in the Balkans following
the dissolution of Yugoslavia and would open the way for a prosperous region, integrated
in NATO and in the European Union. (Interview 9, 2016.)

Furthermore, this ambiguity extends to the legal realm. All the agreements reached in the
Brussels Dialogue have been initialled by the parties, but never formally signed. While
Kosovo has ratified the 2013 Brussels Agreement as an international agreement, making
it part of its directly applicable international law, no such procedure has taken place in
Serbia, which still continues to reject the subjectivity of Kosovo in international
relations.3 Legal ambiguity over the framework of the dialogue as well as the nature of
agreements produced within it indicates a lack of mechanisms to sustain what has been
achieved so far and ensure the progress is irreversible. This is especially pertinent given
that both Kosovo and Serbia representatives expect the EU to serve as a guarantor of
the agreements (Interviews 1, 2 and 8, 2016).
The agreements have no legal significance for the EU either. As one senior diplo-
mat from a large EU member state put it, the ambiguous nature of the process and
its outputs is not only a measure to keep the parties engaged in the dialogue but pri-
marily to keep all the EU member states satisfied, since not all of them are of the same
opinion regarding the process (Interview 6, 2016). In another interview, a diplomat
from a small member state that does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, stated that
the role of his country in the dialogue is to ‘balance the overwhelming support that the
large Member States are providing to Kosovo’s statehood’, indicating a clear discrep-
ancy as to how the role of the EU in this dialogue is understood within the EU (Inter-
view 7, 2016). In other words, what the dialogue means differs based on whether you

3
The content of the agreements reached in Brussels is entirely ambiguous. For instance, the agreement speaks of a political
body of Kosovo Serbs referred to as Association/Community, which when translated into the Albanian and Serbian lan-
guages can mean two very different things. For a more detailed account on ambiguities, see Gashi et al., 2017.

© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 7

are looking at it from Berlin, Paris or Madrid (Interviews 6 and 7, 2016). In this way,
one may question whether the set-up of the dialogue is serving its stated purpose: the
normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia; or whether it is actually en-
abling the EU to manage its internal problems and project an image of itself interna-
tionally as a coherent power. As was clearly articulated during my interviews, the legal
uncertainties are especially problematic, as such ambiguities appear to be more at-
tempts to manage internal issues within the EU rather than serving the purpose of
the dialogue and the parties (Interviews 1, 6, 7 and 8).
Early commentators warned about the ambiguous nature of the agreements stem-
ming from the dialogue (Ernst, 2014; Bieber, 2015) arguing that such ambiguity tran-
scends the dialogue and blurs meanings over the relations between all the parties
involved (Gashi et al., 2017). Through Baudrillard’s lenses, however, ambiguities
can be seen as the very manifestation of the ‘hyperreal’, of a reality driven by simu-
lations; the discourse shows only a simulation of agreements because the parties can
agree to no other determined discursive positions other than their own interpretations
of the processes and texts. As Baudrillard writes, simulation lies in the secret of ‘a dis-
course that is no longer simply ambiguous, as political discourses can be, but that con-
veys the impossibility of a determined position of power, the impossibility of a
determined discursive position.’ In this way, the logic of the discourse ‘is neither that
of one party nor of another’ but rather traverses all discourses without them wanting it
to’ (Baudrillard, 1994). Similarly, in the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, the dis-
course traverses all meanings, which in return means that all the agreements reached in
the framework of the dialogue are only partially accepted by the parties and conse-
quently partially implemented.

4. The European Union: A Power in Denial

In this exploration, it is important to consider how the EU constructs its role in the dia-
logue between Kosovo and Serbia? In the EU’s discourse, it is stipulated that its role is
that of a ‘facilitator’ of the dialogue, which is sometimes explained as per general under-
standing of the term – as an actor who is impartial and whose task is merely to ‘facilitate’
a process. Although in the press as well as policy papers and scholarly accounts, the EU is
referred to as ‘mediator’ and the terms ‘mediator’ and ‘facilitator’ are used interchange-
ably, the term ‘mediator’ is never used by the EU itself.4 In dozens of statements, media
clippings and media interviews published between 2011 and 2019, EU officials have
enforced and reinforced the notion of ‘facilitator’ by repetitively foregrounding the term
in the discourse, whilst refusing to comment either on the substance of the dialogue, or on
the role the EU plays in this process:
The dialogue does not belong to the European Union nor to the Member States of the Eu-
ropean Union. The dialogue is facilitated by me, with the excellent support of the services
in the [European] External Action Service, but the dialogue belongs to the two parties.
We offer them facilitation, space and advice, but it is up to them to define the agenda,
define the speed and the depth of discussions and it is for them to define the outcome

4
It should be noted that in spite of interchangeable usage, facilitation and mediation are Latin root words for ‘to make easy’
and ‘to go between or intervene’.

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8 Krenar Gashi

of the dialogue. It is definitely not for Member States to say what the outcome should be.
(Mogherini, 2018.)

The role of a facilitator is that of creating the conditions, the atmosphere, the possibility,
the space for the two sides to come together. The dialogue belongs to them; it does not
belong to us. Not only are we respectful of the positions of the two sides, but also we take
very seriously our role, my personal role, of not determining the content of a future agree-
ment, but allowing discussions on what this legally binding agreement on full normalisa-
tion of relations could entail. Obviously, we need to create that space – re-create that
space. (Mogherini, 2019.)

Whereas some scholars of international relations see facilitation as distinct and different
from mediation, others argue that facilitation simply means low-level mediation (Beards-
ley et al., 2006). Following the same debates, Bergmann and Niemann (2015) consider
facilitation to be the least interventionist strategy and argue that in the case of Kosovo
and Serbia the EU has used more interventionist approaches, namely those of ‘formula-
tion’ and ‘manipulation’. Similar conclusions can be drawn from the dozen or so inter-
views conducted for this research. Politicians in Kosovo and Serbia very often use the
word ‘facilitator’ to refer to the EU, especially in their opening remarks (Interviews 1
and 8, 2016). However, the content and the discourse of the data co-generated from the
interviews shows that the parties have a different understanding of the EU’s role from that
of a ‘facilitator’, as this term is usually interpreted. Interviewees referred to the EU as the
party that has ‘the authority’ and ‘the means’ to ‘propose’ and even ‘impose’ solutions
(Interviews 1, 2, 8 and 9, 2016), which corresponds more with what Bergmann and
Niemann (2015) call ‘formulation and manipulation’ strategy. In the words of a senior
representative of the Government of Serbia (Interview 1, 2016):
When it is convenient for the EU, they only facilitate the meetings. When it is not con-
venient, they get more involved. They become a party that can set the agenda or can turn
it around as they want to. In some cases, they even twisted the results of the talks in a
certain way when presenting the draft conclusions, that is agreements.

It is important to underline here that such a role is denied by the EU, an element which is
largely ignored by other scholarly accounts on the dialogue. In a Baudrillardian view, it
represents the starting point on how we can identify simulated power, which asserts itself
through denial. Not only does the denial of power in this case provide a better ground for
the EU to construct dominant power relations, especially given the internal division of the
Member States when it comes to Kosovo as well as current relations between Kosovo and
Serbia, but it also provides room to avoid any responsibility for any negative effects of
this power. Such denial of responsibility, as Chandler (2008) observes, makes the power
asserted by the EU more arbitrary and more ad hoc. It blurs the lines that we randomly see
when looking at asserting coercive power and hegemony.
Internally, within the EU, such a denial of power by the EU translates to simulating
European unity. In the entire public communication of the EU, there is no single reference
to the Member States’ position on the substance of the dialogue, that it is the ‘normaliza-
tion of relations’ between two countries in the context that followed Kosovo’s declaration
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Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 9

of independence. Denial, in this case, is not so much made to accommodate the parties as
much as to accommodate the EU itself; the ‘deep divisions’ of the Member States on
Kosovo’s statehood are replaced with references to some kind of European unity regard-
ing the process of the dialogue itself, as this text from CFSP (2015) website describes:

Since October 2012 the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy/Vice-President of the Commission Catherine Ashton is personally facilitating
the high-level dialogue and is backed in her work by all Member States.

What this statement implicitly states is that all the Member States support the HR/VP in
her work. The problem here is the definition of what EU’s ‘work’ in this case is. In the
sense of the support provided by the Member States, it can be understood that this support
is given for ‘facilitation’ of the dialogue, and, not necessarily to (any) of its outcomes. It
remains unclear as to what kind of ‘facilitation’ by supranational institutions the Member
States actually support. Both Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini have maintained
the same discourse on this matter, vaguely referring to the Member States’ support of the
dialogue. In a press conference, Mogherini (2018) stated that she had the ‘full support’ of
the Member States ‘for the dialogue to continue’. A former senior official of the European
Commission interviewed for this article underlined that when it comes to Kosovo and
Serbia, the EU was spending too much energy looking inwards, and, consequently, is
not able to project more concrete power relations towards the parties (Interview 14,
2019). This begs the question whether the dialogue is serving the EU more – by enabling
it to project a power internationally and simulate internal unity – than it is serving the ac-
tual parties to the dialogue, Kosovo and Serbia.
In other texts, going beyond the CFSP, Member States’ support refers to the process of
the dialogue. Citing the Conclusions of the Council, upon providing additional funds to
the process of dialogue, the Commission stated that ‘at the foreign ministers meeting this
week, the EU Member States recognised yet again efforts made by the leadership of
Serbia and Kosovo in normalisation of their relations’( European Commission, 2013b).
Here again, the ‘recognition’ of the Member States is made to ‘efforts’ of the local lead-
ership, whereby the EU’s role in the dialogue as a whole is further denied. By contrast,
there are Member States that continuously express opposing views to those of the supra-
national institutions when it comes to Kosovo, such is, for instance Spain’s frequent re-
frain that it will never recognize Kosovo’s independence (B92, 2015). Indeed, as an
official of the European External Action Service (EEAS) stated in an interview, the EU
repeatedly finds itself ‘juggling with the interests of some Member States’, even when
it comes to managing small tasks within the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia (Inter-
view 13, 2018).
The denial of power, when looked through Baudrillard’s lenses, is enabling the EU to
simulate itself as an all-powerful international actor in the dialogue between Kosovo and
Serbia. Externally, such a denial of power serves the EU well when it comes to entangling
Kosovo and Serbia in a highly ambiguous political process where meanings, agencies and
roles are blurred. In such an entanglement, the EU can simulate an all-powerful actor and
can impose its will to the parties whilst at the same time denying any assertion of power.
When Kosovo and Serbia agree on highly ambiguous texts and then continue to interpret
such text in very different and often opposing ways, it becomes necessary for the EU to

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10 Krenar Gashi

intervene again. Consequently, it has often happened that the EU has hosted meetings be-
tween representatives of Kosovo and Serbia to discuss what was already agreed.
It is however impossible to deny the ‘real effects’ of the EU’s simulated power in the
dialogue. Such effects are primarily seen in some aspects of agreements that the two
countries reached which are already being implemented.5 They can be seen in the condi-
tioning that the EU has put towards the parties through direct instruments of accession,
namely the SAA with Kosovo and Chapter Negotiations with Serbia. The framework of
simulations, however, enables us to see beyond the manifestation of ambiguities and
make sense of the effects of the role of the EU. To further understand how such simulated
power works, however, it is necessary to understand the context in which it operates, or
what in the following section I label the hyperreal of the Balkans.

5. Between War and Peace: The ‘Hyperreality’ of the Balkans

According to Baudrillard, the only weapon of simulated power, ‘is to reinject the real
and the referential everywhere’, to the point where signs are dedicated exclusively to
their recurrences as signs, as they no longer refer to anything real. In this strategy,
writes Baudrillard, power prefers the discourse of crisis, but also that of desire. By ex-
aggerating discourses of crisis and desire, simulators construct a reality which pretends
to be much more real than the real, a hyperreality. The dialogue between Kosovo and
Serbia is embedded in the larger hyperreality of the Balkans, which, as Chandler
(2008) observed, is constructed through the EU’s discourse of crisis over the region’s
violent past as well as exaggeration over the ‘European future’ of the Balkans.
The discourse of crisis is not vividly present in the discourse of the EU in the dialogue;
rather it is hidden, absent but implied. This is the discourse of Kosovo and Serbia as en-
emies, foes, even nemeses of each other, in the context of the Balkans as a region, which
by definition is ‘in crisis’. The crisis of the Balkans in this way is assumed as given, which
reflects what many scholars have problematized: the othering of the Balkans. In Imagin-
ing the Balkans, Maria Todorova (2009) brilliantly uses Edward Said’s framework of Ori-
entalism and captures how the West conceptualized and constructed the Balkans as ‘the
other’ within the continent, and how this construction is not merely a product of the Yu-
goslav wars of the 1990s but rather embedded in a historical discourse of othering. Vjosa
Musliu (2014, 2017) uses the works of Derrida to explore how this ‘othering’ is con-
structed through two steps: (1) by pathologizing the others’ cultural and political traits
as being biologically sick; and (2) by objectifying the others as a laboratory for exporta-
tion of self traits which are superior.
Similarly to observations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Chandler, 2008, p. 73), the strat-
egy of the EU vis-à-vis Kosovo and Serbia is to portray the region as ‘in crisis’ so that
EU’s presence and involvement becomes necessary. In the discourse of the EU when it
comes to dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia such a necessity is very much present, de-
spite the fact that the ‘crisis’ as such is usually implied and not explicitly present in the
5
Although it would exceed the scope of this article to delve deeper into the ‘real effects’ of the dialogue, it is important to
clarify that Kosovo and Serbia are now both present in multiple regional and international meetings, that the citizens of Ko-
sovo can travel to Serbia with the Kosovo-issued ID cards, that there is mutual recognition of customs practices, and so
forth. Sustainability of such effects, however, is highly questioned in both policy circles and academic research (See Bieber
2015).

© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 11

discourse. Now the tumultuous past of the Balkans, the very nature of the Balkans as
‘problematic’ which has been engraved for the past years in the discourse of the EU is
not foregrounded and enforced, but rather backgrounded and assumed. This is not to
say that it is less problematic, especially since it is more difficult to capture, criticize, ob-
ject or oppose something which is assumed and implied.
The explicit discourse of the EU in the dialogue is mainly that of desire, which is put as
the very opposite to that of crisis, very often in the temporal dimension. Indeed,
distinguishing between the conflicts of the past and the peace of the future is a very fun-
damental ‘identity building’ technique of the EU, during which process the most impor-
tant ‘other’ is Europe’s own past (Diez, 2004). In the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue, the
implied tumultuous past of the Balkans is contrasted with a dominant discourse of Euro-
pean integration, the discourse of a ‘European future’ for Kosovo and Serbia. On the very
day that the Brussels Agreement was reached, the HR/VP Catherine Ashton (2013e) is-
sued the following statement:
These negotiations have been concluded. The text has been initialled by both Prime Min-
isters. I want to congratulate them for their determination over these months and for the
courage that they have. It is very important that now what we are seeing is a step away
from the past and, for both of them, a step closer to Europe.

Similar discourse followed throughout the negotiating process:

The implementation plan is designed to solve problems on the ground and to ensure rapid
progress of both Serbia and Kosovo towards the European Union (Ashton, 2013f).

Serbia and Kosovo have proved they can both focus on the future rather than staying
entangled in the past (Füle, 2013a).

The recommendations to open negotiations for EU membership with Serbia and to open
negotiations for an SAA with Kosovo mark a decisive break with the past and a common
step towards a European future (European Commission, 2013b).

In this discursive mishmash between the past and the future, the EU’s discourse turns to-
wards self-praise and self-evaluation, where the dialogue and its agreements are rated as
‘historic’ and ‘outstanding’. The implied ‘problematic Balkans’ opens the way for the dis-
course of desire, to which it also provides meaning. Only in the hyperreal of the ‘Balkan
in crisis’ can the ambiguous agreements that are to this day problematic in their imple-
mentation be rated as ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘historic’, creating in this way the other side
of the coin of the hyperreality – the ‘European Balkans’. Such an idealised version of the
Balkans is portrayed in the discourse as the desire of Kosovo and Serbia to join the EU,
that is to embrace EU ‘norms and values’, for which countries are ‘encouraged’ and
‘applauded’. They are both also applauded for ‘looking towards the future’ which is the
idea of Europe itself (European Commission, 2013a; Füle, 2013b, 2013a;
Ashton, 2013f, 2013e, 2013b, 2013a). This point is crucial as it serves as a link between

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12 Krenar Gashi

the implied ‘crisis’ and the vividly present discourse of desire. The two discourses, of cri-
sis and desire, in a very peculiar way seem to amplify the ambiguity which dominates the
dialogue. In this way, one can no longer tell whether the dialogue is about reconciliation,
conflict resolution, European integration or all or none of the above.
Politicians in Kosovo and Serbia interviewed for this article could not tell such differ-
ences. They both operate in a context in which they understand their countries have ‘no
alternatives to the EU’, in which setting they ‘have to do what the EU tells them to do’
although none of them are ‘really doing it’ (Interviews 3, 4, 5, 11 and 12, 2016):
Serbia has no alternatives to the EU. Although the current government is flirting with the
idea of such an alternative being Russia, we cannot really see how would that work in
practice. Would we join the Russian economic zone? No. There are no alternatives to
the EU at all, particularly to the EU market. (Interview 5, 2016.)
The fact that there are no alternatives to the EU is serving as an idea of stability. If we
would have no European future, the Balkans would not be existing in the same shape
and borders. We would have wars. It is the idea of Europe that keeps the people moving.
Kosovo, particularly, has no alternatives whatsoever to the EU and no alternatives to the
dialogue with Serbia as such. The only alternatives we have are about modalities of the
dialogue. (Interview 12, 2016.)The fatalistic discourse of ‘there are no alternatives to Eu-
rope’ is present throughout the political spectrums in both countries, even among the op-
position parties who continuously oppose the dialogue and have even been labelled anti-
European. Opposition to the dialogue within Kosovo and Serb societies is confined to op-
position to specific aspects of the dialogue but not to the dialogue as a whole, because
opposing the dialogue as a whole would mean opposing the EU to which there are no al-
ternatives. Just like Chandler (2008) observed, in the case of political interventions in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, in an exaggerated discursive context between the war of the
past and the peace of the future, in a ‘hyperreality’ of the Balkans, the EU simulates itself
not only as a legitimate power, but also as a necessary one. In the case of Kosovo and
Serbia the fatal discourse of ‘no alternatives’ goes one step further and shows a
‘hyperreality’ where the role of the EU attaints a supreme character, that is the role of
an uncontested and unquestioned power within its own simulation.

Conclusion
In this article, I have explored the discursive realm of the dialogue on normalization of
relations between Kosovo and Serbia, focusing on the role of the EU in this dialogue
and the power relations between the EU and the two countries. A discursive exploration
reveals how ambiguities, which characterize the dialogue, have constructed a discursive
setting in which meanings can no longer be located. In previous research, ambiguities
were seen as a strategy of the EU to have Kosovo and Serbia engage with each other.
A Baudrillardian framework used in this article, however, presents these ambiguities as
manifestation of the EU’s simulated power. Through these ambiguities, the EU manages
the internal divisions of the Member States when it comes to Kosovo and Serbia, that is, it
manages its own inability to project coherent power on the core issue of the dialogue
which is Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.
This simulated power is constructed first of all through discursive denial. In the dis-
course, the EU constructs its role in the dialogue as that of ‘facilitator’ in spite of the real
role it plays which goes far beyond that of facilitation. By denying its power, however,
© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Simulated Power and the Power of Simulations: The European Union in the Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia 13

the EU is not simply admitting its ‘awkward’ position vis-à-vis the parties and projecting
a powerless image of itself. Baudrillard’s work, quite on the contrary, enables us to see
such denial precisely as a strategy of an inexistent power to reappear as simulation. Denial
is primarily problematic as it serves as a general alibi for the EU to avoid any responsibil-
ities over the process of the dialogue as well as any of its outcomes. It is also problematic
as its primary effect is not that of power effect but rather that of simulation, which in this
case is the effect of intensifying ambiguities of the dialogue.
The context in which the EU simulates its power is that of the Balkan hyperreality. In
the EU’s discourse, this hyperreality is constructed through implied discursive ‘othering’
of Kosovo and Serbia and their problematic past, in other words war, conflict, hatred and
nationalism, or, to put it simply, everything the EU is not. This is further constructed
through discursive exaggerations of the ‘European future’ for Kosovo and Serbia: a sim-
ulated Balkans which is everything the EU is. So often does the EU insert and re-insert in
official texts and speeches phrases about both countries’ European future that the phrase
itself has started to lose its meaning. Operating in a context constructed between the
‘othering’ of the past and the ‘European future’ for Kosovo and Serbia, the EU’s
self-projected role becomes welcome and legitimate. On the other hand, politicians in Ko-
sovo and Serbia, operate in a context where there are no alternatives to the EU, which in
turn makes the role of the EU not only legitimate but absolutely necessary.
Baudrillard (1984) argues that events in the hyperreal, ‘can never return, on them-
selves, as testimony of the meaning,’ but rather, ‘the meaning is always their testimony’.
Put simply, it is rather the pre-defined meanings that dictate the development of events,
instead of allowing events to generate meanings. In the dialogue between Kosovo and
Serbia, the meanings provided by the EU are testimony to any events that may happen.
It does not matter what the dialogue is about, what the parties talk about and agree on,
whether they implement reached agreements or whether the ‘real’ effect of the dialogue
is being reached. In this simulation, the meaning provided by the EU is testimony of all
activities, of all events. Only in such a simulation can an ambiguous text like the 2013
agreement between Kosovo and Serbia have a ‘historic’ meaning in spite of the problem-
atic effects in which the historicity becomes the testimony of the agreement and the dis-
course of historicity becomes the effect. Even in cases when no agreements could be
reached on particular issues during the dialogue, the EU moved to congratulate Kosovo
and Serbia for, ‘almost reaching an agreement’ (Ashton, 2013d). In the discursive realm,
the dialogue as well as the entire triangular relationship between the EU and the two coun-
tries, becomes what Baudrillard calls ‘a marvellous indistinguishability’ of meanings to
the point that the only meanings whatsoever are those within the EU’s simulation.
Although the focus of this article is on the EU rather than on the parties of the dialogue,
it can be argued that the agency of Kosovo and Serbia in relation to the EU also exists
only within the EU’s simulation. Such agency can only appear in its own denial, that is
in the context of EU accession or the ‘European future’ in which the countries ‘willingly’
engage in submissive power relations with the EU. Although further research in this as-
pect is needed, it can be suggested that such agency is neither supressed nor denied but
rather made impossible to the point that it can only appear within the EU’s simulation.
This simulated power by the EU has produced real power effects in the dialogue be-
tween Kosovo and Serbia; tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have been eased while
some agreements are being implemented and have some kind of a real impact on the lives
© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
14 Krenar Gashi

of the people. Using Baudrillard to conceptualize the EU as a simulated power, as this ar-
ticle has demonstrated, enables us to make sense of some empirical elements that are ei-
ther ignored or dismissed by frameworks under traditional understandings of power.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research for this article was carried out during my doctoral studies funded by the European Com-
mission through Erasmus Mundus Basileus V programme. I am very grateful to the three anonymous
reviewers of JCMS for their valuable comments and particularly to Reviewer 3 for thoroughly engaging
with my ideas. I would also like to thank Jan Orbie, Vjosa Musliu, Aidan Hehir, Frederik De Roeck,
Yelter Bollen, Thomas Jacobs and Gezim Visoka, for their valuable inputs during different stages of
my research.

Correspondence:
Krenar Gashi, Department of Political Science
Ghent University
Universiteitstraat 8
9000 Ghent
email: krenar.gashi@gmail.com

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Interviews
Interview 1. A senior official of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, from the ruling
Srpska Napredna Stranka [Serbian Progressive Party], Belgrade, 16 May 2016.
Interview 2. A Member of Parliament of Serbia from the ruling Socijalisticka Partija
Srbije [Socialist Party of Serbia], Belgrade, 18 May 2016.
Interview 3. A senior official of the opposition Socijaldemokratska Stranka [Social-Dem-
ocrat Party], Belgrade, 17 May 2016.
Interview 4. A senior official of the opposition Dosta Je Bilo [Enough is Enough]
movement, Belgrade, 16 May 2016.
Interview 5. A former Member of Parliament of Serbia from the Liberalna Demokratska
Partija [Liberal Democratic Party], Belgrade, 19 May 2016.
Interview 6. A senior diplomat from a large EU Member State, Vienna, 21 May 2016.
Interview 7. A diplomat from a small EU Member State, Berlin, 21 May 2016.
Interview 8. A senior official of the Government of the Republic of Kosovo, from the
ruling Partia Demokratike e Kosovës [Democratic Party of Kosovo], Pristina, 23 May
2016.
Interview 9. A Senior official of the Government of the Republic of Kosovo, from the
ruling Partia Demokratike e Kosovës [Democratic Party of Kosovo], Pristina, 27 May
2016.
Interview 10. A senior official of the Government of the Republic of Kosovo, from the
ruling Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës [Democratic League of Kosovo], 25 May 2016.
Interview 11. A Member of Parliament of Kosovo from the opposition Vetëvendosje
[Self-determination] movement, Pristina, 24 May 2016.
Interview 12. A former Member of Parliament and a senior official of the opposition
Aleanca për Ardhmërinë e Kosovës [Alliance for the Future of Kosovo], Pristina, 27
May 2016.
Interview 13. An official of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Brussels, 18
October 2018.
Interview 14. A former senior official of the European Commission, Brussels, Febru-
ary 2019.

© 2020 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd