Interview with Jan Pronk

While preparing for the symposium ‘Sultans Trail: Close Encounters of East and West’, I speak to Jan Pronk, who will act as chairman of the day on 26 November.
He has been asked to do so because of his vast experience with and passion for
international cooperation. He was minister in four governments in The Netherlands, three for Development Cooperation and once for Environment.

And the Sultans Trail is international by definition, from Vienna to Istanbul, through eight countries. A region with a striking past, also from a politician’s point of view. And the people you meet there have a much stronger connection to their country’s past than, say, in The Netherlands.

A region with big changes

My first question is whether he knows the area.

‘Not that well’ he says.
But then things jump out of his memory and he gets into his familiar oral pulpit. As a minister, he participated in a conference in Istanbul. And he visited all the new states after the fall of the wall and the break-up of Yugoslavia.

His experience with the region had two peaks in time: the 1970s and 1990s. To his pleasant surprise, when he first became a minister (1973), he found an existing programme of cooperation with Yugoslavia in the government department. This was quite unique:
cooperating with a communist regime during the cold war. It was not financial support to the Tito government, but cooperation between two countries in a number of areas. Such as the exchange of academics, initiatives in the field of education and training. Exchange of experiences and knowledge.

He mentions that idea of cooperation between countries, outside the ‘politically correct’ pattern, a few more times. Rigid and often hostile relations may well be set in motion as a result. Yugoslavia was important for him to apply that.

Then came the disastrous 1990s with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the wars between formerly colleague states and the failure of the international community to resolve it in a timely and peaceful manner. He tried to appraise the background of the conflicts with visits to several countries. And he felt especially pity with Bosnia, the constituent republic that suffered greatly. This choice was often blamed on him.

The fall of the Berlin Wall

After that fall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, there were fears in the ‘developing world’ that energy and finance would shift from ‘South’ (the Third World) to East.
Question to Pronk if that took place.
He thinks not.
As minister, he was able to prevent the transfer of funds from the Development Cooperation budget to e.g. Economic Affairs, for the benefit of business. No ‘snatching from the sweets pot’. There was something else though: he tried to get cooperation with the new countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to engage in more development cooperation. This met with resistance from the new governments, as they were used to their relations with the Third
World being exclusively through communist ties. The East-West-South programme he initiated, an innovative policy with a limited but sufficient budget, suffered greatly from this.
But he has the impression that private organisations were more successful there, because they were already maintaining contacts with like-minded people before the fall of the wall.
Like the peace movements.

The European Union’s position

The EU summit a few weeks ago made no commitments to Balkan and south-eastern European countries for possible EU accession.
What does he think of that?
Pronk is in favour of a big Union. Even more so before than now. The situation now has become somewhat unstable. The handling of conditions of accession should also be different.
Economic conditions he would downplay as a problem.
But essential is that acceding countries respect the Rule of Law, democracy and Human Rights. These are essential values.
There should always be more cooperation in certain areas, such as environment and nature conservation. That is where they can learn from each other. East is and was better at nature conservation than West, but can learn a lot in the field of environment.

The EU should also be a peace project by cooperating with countries such as Morocco, Algeria and through shared cooperation with the Palestinians and Israel.
All Balkan countries should be offered prospects. The EU should show how good that is.

‘Slow tourism’

Pronk has no experience of his own with “slow tourism”. Nor is he a walker, but more of a runner (did he mean that in other respects also?), who also ran his daily lap when visiting developing countries.

But he thinks it is important to have contacts with ‘ordinary people’ in particular when travelling. Just stay away from the centres of capital cities. He can imagine slow tourism being a good tool for that.
Academic cooperation

He has sometimes heard that academics from countries in the SultansTrail region feel that Western academics do not pay enough attention to their research and situations. Pronk believes that more connections are important, but that governments currently lack funding for this. Such funding is too much focused on direct economic benefit for the home country.
Instead, it should promote university cooperation more. For example, through exchanges within programmes, preferably also with countries on the edge of Europe. Collaborative academic research is simply a necessity. Problems such as biodiversity and climate change are global.
Knowledge and engagement are vital everywhere, in countries of the Trail region and among travellers visiting there.

Ton Waarts
Academic Council Sultans Trail
20 October 2021