Balkan roadshow - Kosovo (3/6)

As the burly, pistol-packing border police welcome us to Macedonia, I'm happy to report further success from the third leg of our trip: Kosovo.

Kosovo is a fascinating place. Recognised by just 50 countries, and crucially only 22 EU member states, it is a country in waiting.

It's one of the only places in the world where the US and UK are extremely popular. George W Bush has a boulevard named after him, and there are stars and striupes everywhere. The only flag more ubiquitous is the Albanian flag (far more evident than the Kosovan flag, though that may be because it's so new and not enough have been produced yet), which worries many who feared that Kosovan independance was just a halfway measure to creating a unified 'greater Albania'. Macedonia and Montenegro, each of which has substantial Albanian minorities, are specially concerned.

Kopsovo is run by a complex web of overlapping interests. The UN, EU, Kosovan Government and various international donors (both governmental and independent) each have significant control. As someone told us, Kosovo suffers from 'too many cooks in the kitchen'.

Despite the outward signs of development - the last decade has seen shopping centres and petrol stations spring up like mushrooms - the country boasts Europe's worst economic stats. Remittences from abroad contribute around half of GDP, and much of the rest is either the informal or illegal economy. 80% of government revenues come from one broder crossing with Macedonia; if the border is closed for just a week, teachers will stop being paid.

There are also huge challenges in the Serb-controlled north, where everything is massively more complicated than everywhere else in this bafflingly complex place.

And the whole thing is presided over by an inept government of former KLA fighters, who don't know a thing about politics. One government technocrat told us the Prime Minister is stupid and lazy, he just sits in his office all day watching TV. Apparently his brother is smarter - he's made himself rich through building a local mafia empire.

Kosovo is not the easiest place to work then, I hear you say. However we had a very warm reception. As well as meeting the British Embassy, we met with most of the big fish of Kosovan civil society. Though they painted a bleak picture for the country, their charisma, insight and generosity in explaining the local context was truly impressive. They especially liked our approach of working with them as Europeans within a European network, rather than as helpless victims of a failed state in the making, and were all very keen to work with us on concrete initiatives.

Our last meeting was with people from the Kosovan Government Agency for European Integration, who asked us to write a plan for a national third sector umbrella body and an office for the third sector, for the prime minister. Not bad for an hour's work!

We'll clearly have a lot of work to do here, but no time for that now, we have another country to conquer. Three down, three to go.