I almost forgot to share my experience at the debate “Knowledge Circulation” organzied by the Stability Pact, Citizens’ Pact for SEE and EXIT.

We have been informed about the debate quite beforehand. I also read the announcement at the Stability Pact’s website http://www.stabilitypact.org/pages/press/detail.asp?y=2007&p=564 which says, among other things, Students from Serbia (including Kosovo) and Bosnia, participating at the European Rails for Peace Project (The Glocal Forum and Viaggi e Liberta organization) will attend the debate.

The first impression you will get from an announcement for a debate of this nature, where the panel looks like this:

Key Note Speaker: Mr. Janez Potocnik, EU Commissioner for Science and Research
Mr. Hidajet Biscevic, General Secretary of the Regional Co-operation Council
Ms. Ana Pesikan, Minister of Science, Government of the Republic of Serbia
Mr. Davor Kinjikusic, journalist (Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence)
Ms. Jelena Kleut, University of Novi Sad
Moderator: Mr. Goran Svilanovic, Chairman of Working Table I of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

is that there will be a great discussion both from the panelists, the audience and the rest trying to draw some good conclusions, or clarify something. Having Davor, our fellow Fellow, sitting there gave me (and the rest BFJE people) a boost, so to say.

I had thought in my mind several questions to address to the panel, considering that I am participating in a debate destined for open, international audience. (With all those Brits on mind). But what I find is a debate completely in Slavic languages, which left a lot to be wished for.

Without going further into what I barely could grasp from the debate (listening attentively to Marijana Grandits
Director of Working Table I Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe who was taking Austria as an example of superb human resoursces development) I was taken back to several such experiences where Slavic people flock instinctively to celebrate their language, most of times forgetting that they do have others who don’t understand a thing. This experience hurts more when you percieve the setting to be official and international.
Of course, I beg you not to misunderstand, but I cannot help but express the dissapointment to an invitation to participate in a debate where even the EU Commissioner, Mr. Potocnik, speaks in Slovenian at all times. I do understand the need to have an easier flow of conversation in a group’s native language, an easiness everyone seeks for anytime, anywhere. But my problem rests with the Slavs’ ingrained “syndrome of dismissiveness”, in this case, when it comes to language.

I remember while in the U.S. in a program exclusively intented for young people from East Europe and Euroasia to learn English and get to know America, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis and Kyrgyzstanis would speak Russian all the time, while Slavs of Balkan, Slavic.

This is a “syndrome” that, to my opinion, has different ingridients from that of a normal, acceptable tendency to simply have an easier flow of conversation in everybody’s native language. Frankly, I do not want to speculate or polemicize with these ingridients but for sure they leave non-Slavic groups and individuals with bitter afterfeeling in any occassion.

After the debate, I approached Ms. Ana Pesikan, Serbian Minister of Science (initially, I thought Education, also) who, in all that mess around, spared 10 minutes for an interview. And this, thanks to Hedvig Morvai Horvath from Citizens’ Pact for SEE. Without a voice recorder at hand, and completely disoriented after listening to an ununderstandable debate in the capacity of a shut-out, I asked her about the relations Serbian Government maintains with the University of Northern Mitrovica (UNM). She said they are considering UNM as an academic institution and treating it equally as any other such institution in Serbia. She had visited Kosovo three times and once hinted that she has maintained contacts with Education officials in Prishtina, but when I put it more plainly “Are you cooperating with the Kosovo Government on education purposes” she denied it and shifted to the need for cooperation from all sides in order for things to move forward faster. She mentioned a couple of programs of the EU Science & Research Commisson being applied in Northern Mitrovica but I couldn’t catch up with names like Marie Curie, FP7, ERA, or whatever. She was useful, after all when I asked her to comment on the current social reality young Serbs are living in Kosovo. She said “they lack social climate and everybody, every person individually has to try to make a step forward”. However rhetorical , it was worth a thing drawing from that mess in Petrovaradin Fortress.