CIAO DATE: 03/04

The Swiss Commitment to Transparency—Building in Southeast Europe

Abstract

As early as in 1996, Southeast European intellectuals like Professor Tilcho Ivanov underscored the importance of defence budget transparency and prudent management for regional confidence-building in the Balkans (see ISIS Research Report No. 6/1996 "Confidence and Security in the Balkans: The Role of Transparency in Defence Budgeting") and warned simultaneously of the adverse effects of unrealistically limited defence budgets:

Defence resources that are excessive and incompatible with reality not only set limits to welfare, but they also raise fears in the neighbour states. On the other hand underrated resources for defence may assist for the improving of welfare, but if they are under a given limit, it is possible that they could create an illusion that the country is of little importance and that its opponents could act with impunity. Thus the incompetent and inept management of defence resources turns into a major mechanism not only for internal welfare but also for external security. The management of defence resources gets more important in the conditions of economies' reformation and of changing the models for guaranteeing security. In that case, the expected effects from the changes might be compromised by the bad management of social resources. The example of our country brings more disappointments than hopes. The cutting of defence expenditures did not lead to reducing of the tax burden and to the desired effects in the private sector. The deep economic depression eats away the expected positive results. On the other hand the rather low level of defence expenditures delays the reform of the armed forces and their putting in accordance with the security conditions. It also holds back the Bulgarian integration in the forming European defence system (op.cit.).

The Stability Pact for Southeast Europe, adopted on 10 June 1999—at the EU's initiative—in Cologne and inaugurated at a summit meeting in Sarajevo on 30 July 1999 has from the beginning stressed the crucial importance of defence budget transparency as a tool for regional confidence-building.

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