Western Balkans

Among the main stumbling blocks of European Union-Western Balkan integration are the differences in perceptions on both sides. Today, the gap between what the Western Balkan politicians and citizens think about the European Union and what the politicians and citizens in the EU member states think about the Western Balkans is probably wider than ever. This volume offers fresh insights about these misperceptions and how to possibly bridge the gap. It examines perceptions about the region's "European perspectives" both on the side of the six Western Balkan countries - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia - and the key European Union member states (Italy, Germany, Croatia), international donors, USA. An analysis of the diverse views regarding the prospects of EU - Western Balkan integration is today highly relevant, in view of the current uncertainties regarding European Union's enlargement policy, particularly after the attack of Russia on Ukraine and candidate status granted to Ukraine and Moldova.

Reconfiguring EU Peripheries explores the diverse nature of the European Union’s interactions with its peripheries. Focusing on a period of rising regional tensions marked most recently by the war in Ukraine, the volume casts new empirical and conceptual light on the diverse motivations that underpin the political elites’ attitudes towards the EU in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, Türkiye and Ukraine. The volume engages with various understandings of the EU’s interactions with its different peripheries and shows how these dynamics are closely related to the self-perceived nature of the societies in question in relation to the EU. The impact of recent crises and conflicts underscore in some cases the need for strengthening solidarity and for ‘more EU’, whereas others highlight the doubts and disappointment over the challenges these societies have faced over recent years. The empirically rich case studies enable both interpretations of and debates on the EU integration processes. A comparative exploration of countries at different stages in the EU accession process and the various political elites’ attitudes towards the EU outlines the essentially constructed nature of peripherality. By challenging the conventional understanding of contestation and peripherality, this volume is a worthwhile first step towards looking at the EU and the peripheries it creates from an alternative, and sometimes ignored, point of view.

Attempting to pacify the emergent wars in the 1990s, the European Union mediation could not stop the vast destruction and prevent genocide from taking place right next door to the EU, the world's biggest peace project. In the 21st century, the Western Balkans region has again become a subject of testing the EU's "new" foreign policy instrument - mediation. This time, the EU assumed the role of a post-conflict mediator aiming to sustainably resolve the (intractable) conflicts in the post-war setting of the region. While its first mediations in the former Yugoslavia were unsuccessful, the EU's recent mediation attempts in the post-violent stage of the Balkans' conflicts have resulted in varied outcomes. Introducing a new model, this book explains the varying effectiveness of EU mediation in post-conflict and analyses the determining conditions of the EU mediation efficiency in post-conflict settings. The book is among the few publications that shed light on EU mediation utilized as an instrument of conflict resolution that aims to solve protracted conflicts in post-conflict settings.

Moving from a social movement perspective, this timely volume examines narratives on Euroscepticism and frames on Europe from below, at the party and social movement levels. Revealing perspectives from both the Right and the Left, it unpacks the emergence, re-emergence and increase in critical 'voices' and opposition towards Europe. Based on extensive fieldwork in two candidate countries for accession to the EU and three member states, it offers insight from analysis of focus groups, interviews with Eurosceptic and pro-European political actors and ordinary citizens, together with frame analysis and scrutiny of archival material, electoral manifestoes and organisational documents. Revealing the development of Eurocritical frames, it demonstrates the differences and similarities in narratives used to address Europe and the conceptualisation of Euroscepticism. Key cases examined include the rise of illiberalism in post-transition Slovenia; complex Euroscepticism in Poland; the path from strong support to harsh opposition in Italy; indecision over membership in North Macedonia; anticipating the future while revisiting the past in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Offering guidelines for the direction of future research and policy, European Narratives and Euroscepticism in the Western Balkans and the EU is essential reading for scholars and students of political sociology, political science, European studies and international relations, as well as policy makers concerned with trajectories pro and against Europe and the European integration process.

This Brief provides a survey of key political, social, and economic issues affecting the Western Balkans region. Taking a two-pronged conceptual approach focusing on fragmentation and integration, the volume highlights commonalities and differences in a number of simultaneous dynamics currently characterizing the region: Europeanization and EU access, market integration, and migration and socio-demographic transformations. Stressing the interconnectedness of these issues, the volume synthesizes key questions for the future of the region, such as the relationship between socio-demographic trends and economic development, the effects of depopulation on further EU integration, and the economic and political repercussions of enhanced intra-regional trade. Explicitly interdisciplinary, this Brief will be useful for researchers and students specializing in the Balkans and Western Balkans, post-socialist countries, European affairs, enlargement, foreign policy, international relations, regional studies, economics, economic transition, and socio-demographics. 

This book examines the European Union's everyday statebuilding practices, using the case of Kosovo as an example of how it uses informal practices to influence local actors. The objective of the book is to explain how the EU operates as a statebuilding actor in the everyday context, outside its zone of comfort. It illustrates the EU's dynamics of dealing with the local actors through everyday practices, which are understood as informal means or practices of interaction with the local actors in the framework of three key issues of relevance for statebuilding process for the EU: rule of law, reforming public administration and resolving bilateral disputes. The book shows how the EU utilizes everyday practices to influence decision-making process on the part of the government in order to ensure a particular outcome, be that diffusing a norm or promoting its own interests; in doing so, it gives an important insight into what these interests actually are in practice. In providing an insight into how the EU works as a statebuilding actor in practice in the everyday context, it unmasks factors that facilitate the EU's influence on other countries that it considers to be 'ailing', such as Kosovo, in order to secure desired behaviours, decisions, and actions on the part of the local government. It also unmasks the EU's commitment to being an ethical actor by unearthing practices that undermine local agency, the practical intentions of the EU's statebuilding intervention approaches, and the reality that hides behind the façade of public statements on the part of the EU and the local government. In doing so, the book provides a new way to look at the EU as a statebuilding actor. This book will be of interest to students of statebuilding, EU policy, Balkan politics and, International Relations.

This volume explores how the process of European integration has influenced collective memory in the countries of the Western Balkans. In the region, there is still no shared understanding of the causes (and consequences) of the Yugoslav wars. The conflicts of the 1990s but also of WWII and its aftermath have created "ethnically confined" memory cultures. As such, divergent interpretations of history continue to trigger confrontations between neighboring countries and hinder the creation of a joint EU perspective. In this volume, the authors examine how these "memory wars" impact the European dimension - by becoming a tool to either support or oppose Europeanisation. The contributors focus on how and why memory is renegotiated, exhibited, adjusted, or ignored in the Europeanisation process.

This book explores financial trends in the age of financial globalization and explores the changing roles within the global financial industry. At the same time, the book provides a solid foundation for understanding the dramatic process of financial globalization specifically in the emerging Balkans. More elaborately, the book examines financial trends and developments of eight countries in the emerging Balkans defined to include: Albania, B&H, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Romania. Building on this background, this book addresses issues related to the emerging Balkans in terms of financial development compared with the benchmark of mature economies and highlights issues related to the growing impact of financial globalization, global trade, and FDI flows. It brings the focus onto the recent trends in Intra-Balkan trade liberalization and cooperation through the transition process and on the eve of EU membership. It also assesses progress made in banking development, stock market development, and economic growth and critically examines financial trends in the emerging Balkans and changes in its financial landscape.

This collection of essays focuses on locating the multiscale challenge of Europeanisation in relation to the Western Balkans. In a group of countries in which shared interests do not automatically mean constructive cooperation, this encounter needs to be located on multiple levels. The authors of this volume have joined forces to take up this multilayer challenge in a coordinated fashion. They first locate the Western Balkans on the global stage, then examine their shortcomings on the macroregional level, and finally address local challenges using a series of case studies of Montenegro. The contributors examine the topic through their areas of expertise: political science and legal studies.

Increasing revenue mobilization is a top priority for North Macedonia. This can be achieved through tax policy reform coupled with enhanced revenue administration, a focus of IMF capacity development. Options include more progressive income taxation, streamlined special regimes, and more and better use of property and environmental taxes. The administrative capacity to enforce taxes can be strengthened through strong reform leadership and governance, IT modernization, a more systematic approach to compliance risk management, and improved tax audit methods.

The e-book describes and evaluates the status and functioning of the constitutional and governance systems of the Western Balkans countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Serbia), with regard to their EU-accession. As it describes the main branches of government functions, it may also be used as a handbook, which also identifies the bottlenecks of governance (especially the sensitive ethnic power sharing and representation issues) and critically examines the rule of law aspects. This comparative study covers all six countries of the region systematically, in terms of governance and rule of law. The e-book presents all major institutional fields of constitutional and administrative law: electoral system, ethnic issues, organisation of the state, separation of powers (legislative, executive, judiciary), administrative procedure, civil service, and constitutional adjudication. Reihe Studien des Instituts für Ostrecht München - Band 87

This book focuses on Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo; it explores the industrial policies currently in place in these economies and compares their effects with the situation in Slovenia, which is used as a reference country. It provides a brief introduction to some new industrial policy approaches and proposes a new industrial policy framework that focuses on development of the national innovation system through technology upgrading and increased exploitation of technology to build the foundations for sustainable development. Finally, it provides an empirical analysis of the technological capabilities of the manufacturing firms operating in in Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo. It delves into the technical-economic properties of these Western Balkans countries and identifies some strategic options for industrial policy. It emphasizes the need for a form of governance that emphasizes on industrial development and innovation capabilities, which are required for the implementation of these new industrial policies. The analysis draws on the current industrial policy literature and work on developing (catch-up) economies, technological upgrading and innovation studies, which represent current academic thinking in these fields.

The countries in the Western Balkans have been severely affected by the wars and conflicts that led to the breakup of former Yugoslavia, by political instability and the effort of creating new states, weak economies and high levels of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, and inequality. As revealed by recent surveys, such as EBRD's Life in Transition Survey and Eurofound's European Quality of Life Survey, life satisfaction in the region is far below that elsewhere in Europe. In recent years they had achieved a strong impetus of economic growth with falling rates of unemployment and increasing optimism for the future. However, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has brought about a sudden reversal of these trends and a renewed deterioration in the economic outlook, and an increase in social hardships that heralds a repeat of past failures in economic inclusion policies. This book identifies the key challenges in the areas of economic inclusion, focusing on the themes of labour markets, vocational education and skills, female entrepreneurship and the integration of migrants. It considers the opportunities for solutions to "build back better" once the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis begins, and offers proposals for more acceptable, equitable and effective economic inclusion policies.

This edited book will examine the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean from multidimensional geo-strategic, political-economic, socio-cultural/religious and demographic perspectives. It analyzes the conflicting geopolitical interests of the major and regional powers, as well as those of NATO and the European Union, with a focus on energy, democracy and corruption, shifts in population, as well as religious political influence. The authors argue that the US, NATO and EU leaderships can no longer afford to ignore the two regions -- if the increasing potential for conflict is to be averted. The Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean are returning to a major position in the contemporary geostrategic nexus since NATO began a new expansion into the Balkans by bringing Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in March 2020 into membership, after its previous expansion to Slovenia in NATO's "Big Bang" in 2004 and to both Albania and Croatia in 2009.

This book argues that the backsliding or stagnation of democracy should be interpreted in a wider perspective on irregular movements towards and away from contemporary liberal democracy. This a perspective couched by a metaphor, namely the 'pendulum of democracy', which the author has constructed to suggest that democratic regimes may swing between a democratic end (fully developed liberal democracy) and a semi-authoritarian end (competitive authoritarianism). The pendulum does not have a predictable frequency. Democratization may lead to irregular movements back and forth. It is easier to analyze such movements of the pendulum when democracy is not consolidated yet (for instance, in the three post-Yugoslav political regimes mentioned above), as democratic institutions and processes are not yet stable. For this reason, this book analyses the swing of unconsolidated democracy away from the democratic end in the cases of today's Serbia and Montenegro and the swing back towards liberal democracy in the case of North Macedonia which - until 2017 - had been developing into a competitive authoritarian regime, but then embarked on the road to democratic recovery.