Historical and international determinants of the disintegration process of the successor states to the SFRY

• Main Authors: Sandra Fabijanić Gagro, Budislav Vukas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu 2011-01-01
• Series: Zbornik Radova Pravnog Fakulteta u Splitu
• Subjects: succession; successor states; integration; disintegration; Croatia; European Union
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/107780

The history of European relations contains many processes which have determined the phenomenon of integration, disintegration, and territorial separation, armed conflicts etc caused by political, ideological, religious and other reasons. Experience from the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the nineties of the twentieth century certainly has shown a very specific example of the disintegration of a complex country. In this paper, the authors mention the basic disintegration movements in the falling apart of Yugoslavia. They explain them from an international point of view, from a scientific perspective of the state as the dominant subject of international law with its formation and international recognition. Given that the main foreign political aims of the former Yugoslav republics, after gaining independence, were directed at again integrating into the Europe Union (some also at NATO alliance), the future part of the Southern Eastern European territory was again to be marked by their integration. Even though it may seem ironic, the authors note and emphasise that it is not only about a radically different form of integration (compared to the totalitarian regime of the Yugoslav state with planned economic characteristics, significant suspensions of fundamental human rights and democratic standards), but it is about a significantly different perception of the determination of the state within a new integrational framework. Unlike the state in the former Yugoslavia which had few factual determinants of statehood and was only just understood in the formal legal sense of statehood, new understandings of statehood have emerged. These, despite statehood’s liberal concept, have nevertheless affirmed the state as the fundamental subject of the contemporary international community.